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i missed the Dominion Resources shareholder meeting this year after having attended faithfully every year for perhaps half a dozen.  Perhaps CEO Tom Farrell missed my annoying questions about how the utility which i own two shares of continues to waste money on plans for another reactor at North Anna, which will likely never be built.

I was not able to be there to gloat over the fact that Dominion was forced this month to close the Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin. i would be gloating for as the NY Times wrote about this plants closure:

The decision was viewed as an early sign that the wave of retirements of old generating stations across the Midwest is now stretching from the coal industry into nuclear power, driven by slack demand for energy and the low price of natural gas.

Also in this NYT article Dominion’s Farrell said of the closure of the plant.

“This decision was based purely on economics.”

On Friday morning I went downstairs to have breakfast a bit later than usual. There was only one egg left in the fridge, and it was tiny! So I went to the neighboring kitchen to see if they had some eggs I could steal. They had plenty, including an impressively large egg, which I decided to take and pair with the tiny egg.

I was surprised and delighted to find when I cracked the large egg open that it had two yolks! I wondered what unusual or deformed chicken might have hatched from it, had it been fertilized and incubated. I then added the small egg, which seemed to mostly contain yolk.

So, all in all, it was an amusing start to my day.

I then headed over to Acorn to start some germination tests on seed that had survived the warehouse fire they had some months ago. Of the containers that survived many (though certainly not all) had labels that were at least partially legible, so it is hoped that at least some of the seed is still viable. I was told that one of the gallon containers had seed that would be worth a thousand dollars! I wished I’d had a camera at the time…The residue on the outside of the containers was pretty nasty, and some of them were kind of interestingly deformed. Some of the seed can be sold if it passes germ, but many of the containers were archival. Someone else will be following up on the tests, and I hope to hear good news on them.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

Within four months of moving here, I became manager of the dairy program at Twin Oaks.   I have no prior experience in animal care, no prior experience with farm work in general, and really, no prior experience with physical work of any kind.  I was a computer programmer prior to moving here, for god's sake.

I think I just appear competent, and…

Read more… 1,330 more words

How to go from being a IT person to being a farmer, in one hard lesson.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

After you become a full member at Twin Oaks, you can take up to a year long leave of absence (which we call a PAL) and return without having to do the visiting process over again. Basically, you drop your membership status for the time you are away, and you return as full member with your previous labor balance intact. If you have lived at Twin Oaks for three or more years, you have the right to return to the bedroom you were living in before you went on PAL.

Read more… 743 more words

There is a new blog in town called Running in ZK. Here is one of the earlier articles by returning member Rayne on her experience landing in a new room. If you are interested in the insiders view of Twin Oaks, you should follow RunningInZK.wordpress.org

The talented and lovely Tikva has started a comic which is largely about polyamory.

poly means more processing

Tikva and i lived at Twin Oaks together some years back

her talents are not limited to art stuff

Of course poly folks are our own best critics

guilty

Tikva is telegenic – making for great blog material.

how many times have i heard this …

i recruited her perhaps a decade back on the Harvard Yard, she was a shooting star

In hopes of starting a new community, i have largely dropped out of the general management of the Twin Oaks Hammocks business.  i do continue to do some work with Hawina and Dawn and Gordon mostly on retail marketing of our website (TwinOaksHammocks.com).

We are exploring discount codes to find out which advertising we are using works.  And i am pleased to announce that this blog has it’s own discount code.  When you buy a hammock, before you check out if you enter the discount code PAXSBLOG you will get 10% off, which is our deepest retail discount and cheaper than you are going to find these hammocks anywhere.

three lovely unrelated people, presumed to be a family by most viewers

But if you want to win your hammock instead of buying it, you can enter one of our two Fathers Day competitions.  Before you get your panties in a twist, we have defined father so broadly that a 3 year old girl could qualify as a deserving dad.  Here is the link to the 500 word essay contest or the 2 minute video contest

Spring is here, relax a bit and enjoying it.

The Eastern Conference on Workplace Democracy is in July!

Held in Philadelphia, July 26 – 28, their theme this year is, “Growing Our Cooperatives, Growing Our Communities” – Democratic Community Economic Development Through Worker Ownership.

“We have a voice in our own communities’ economic development through democratic workplaces!  Democratic workplaces – such as worker-owned cooperatives – are growing in many ways as a viable alternative to a society that lacks meaningful humanizing jobs and democracy in everyday life.”

And one more event, up in Vermont this June!

Connecting Community Visions

June 15th at Wheelock Mountain Farm in Wheelock, Vermont

A gathering to explore politically and socially focused intentional housing communities.  Come join us for a day of workshops and storytelling.  Come share your ideas and skills to make us all stronger. Everyone invited to come early on Friday night June 14th for informal storytelling, potluck dinner, networking and socializing.  There are several indoor places to sleep and lots of space for camping. An additional donation of $10-$15 and a head’s up to wmf@riseup.net is requested of people staying Friday night.

i check my blog statistics regularly.  Which generates far more questions than answers for me:

• Why do i have clusters of readers in Pakistan and in the Philippines?
• Why do i get so many people finding the blog thru image searches?
• Why are there some many people who found me by searching for just “Red“

So the other day i come in to look at traffic, which has been a bit down recently and i see that there are over 2000 hits for the day on an old post (which i might get 400 or 500 on a popular post most days).  And as i look more carefully, these are all coming in thru an image search for “Bart Map and Schedule”. And when i check further, completely inexplicably to me this image which i put up in that post

How did this end up as number 1 in yahoo.images?

is now ranked number one on Yahoo Images if you search for “Bart Map and Schedule”.  And almost as quickly as it came up, the traffic from this vanished in the days following this promotion. The image remains in its top ranked position, but the traffic spike abated.

This is an image i stole from the regular BART site, as i presume hundreds of other people have.  But for mysterious reasons i have been promoted to this top spot.

i have long been slightly on the fence about going barefoot.  i definitely like the way it feels and i also appreciate the foot protection and speed afforded by shoes.  Today i fell off the fence.

“You know that there are studies showing there is a preventative  effect on Alzheimer’s and other aliments by going barefoot.” Feonix said.

Feonix does yoga int he shadow of the Tapan Zee Bridge

And i saw my mind decisively shift.  Even if there was only a small chance that there were significant health benefits from walking barefoot more often, i live in places where i can often easily be barefoot.  And on this day i was working at a craft fair on the beautiful Lyndhurst estate outside New York City, and i kicke doff my shoes.  i carried them with me some, where they made occasionally convient detached pockets, but mostly this afternoon i was bare foot on grass.    More generally on the commune it is fairly acceptable and accessible to be mostly barefoot, Rowan has modeled this behavior for his full 17 years of life.

Am i sure this is better for me? No.

The first time i played pick up ultimate Frisbee i was introduced to a new way to select teams, for the many one-on-one sports out there.  As we gathered as a group someone said “find someone of about your ability and pair up with them.  Everybody on the left is on this team the rest are on the other.” It was fast, it felt fair and it was completely novel to me.

I selected my fine friend Rabbit as my partner, not so much because we were the same ability, but rather because i knew him.  This was a tremendous mistake.  Rabbit could out play me in almost all aspects of ultimate.  The afternoon was frustrating and exhausting.  And what was clear was this was my choice.  Demonstrating that the system was also self correcting, since i would not repeat this mistake.

I thought to myself afterwards, why dont we select all teams this way?  It seems to be better in every way.  I mentioned this to a couple of players who were often selected as captains.  They did not see a reason to change from the existing system which rewarded their talents.  They talked about team work and balancing abilities, the need for leadership.  None of it was convincing.  This was one of the foundational  moments in my embracing anarchism.  The broken system was perpetuating itself, despite clear better alternatives.

i had a bit of the same feeling when i saw this video:

This design takes exactly the same footprint in terms of space and makes it better for bicycles and safer for car and bike interaction.  And why does this better design not happen?

Duke energy has announced it will not be building two new reactors at the Shearon Harris site in North Carolina after wasting $70 million on the ill conceived pipe dream.  Duke, which is the largest utility in the US, decided in February to shutter it’s idled Crystal River reactor both because it had one of the most expensive malfunctions in US history and because the utility was able to bilk rate payers for $1.6 billion for closing the plant.

Crystal River reactor – we make mistakes, you pay for them.

The organizers made a deal with the forces which control the weather.  “If you dont really need it to rain, it would be great if you could hold off until after the celebration”. With this deal struck, the rain remained at bay until after the circle was open.

assemble in the courtyard

Willow and Hawina before the ritual begins

Acorners are part of the event

The procession begins

We are at Ganas on our way to the Tarrytwon craft fair.  There are a number of things i appreciate about Ganas, and one of them is the bucket brigade food unloading line.

Stars join Ganasians to move food from truck to kitchen

On the surface this might appear quite mundane, just moving food from place to place.  But this is more like a complexly coordinated dance, where some participants need to opt out of heavier packages and people who are on top of it are always moving.

Stuff is picked up in a cargo van and unloaded by perhaps 20 people

But using this approach no single person is burdened for very long, there are lots of short treks and you can always extend your rest by stepping out of the queue or by taking on another job in the unload.  And there is a beautiful self correcting aspect to these lines where people move closer to each other or further apart depending on their enthusiasm and ability.

Willow and Hawina on Corson Ave on Staten Islamd

Help us put on an amazing conference!  Got a great idea for a workshop to present?  Send us a proposal.

We are looking for dynamic presenters who can offer interactive and/or engaging workshops.  The focus of the event is on intentional communities, but we also have workshops on other forms of cooperative living and working, as well as other alternative lifestyle topics.  There is of course limited space in our schedule of workshops, so if you’re proposal is not selected you can also present it in our Open Space sessions on Sunday.

Workshop blocks are usually 1.5 or 2 hrs.  The conference site is rustic and mostly outdoors. There is limited electrical access; presentations requiring projectors or other electrical presentation tools can be accommodated if requested in advance.

Presenters are encouraged to participate in the whole weekend.  Camping is the standard accommodation; indoor accommodations are available for a fee.

Please send a one to three paragraph workshop description with title and a little bit about yourself to conference(at)twinoaks(dot)org.

Reblogged from Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History:

Today brings another first in American gay history: NBA player Jason Collins comes out and becomes America's first openly gay and still-playing male major professional athlete.  I'm not really a sports girl, but this is a big deal and as a queer gal I'm grateful to Jason Collins for being brave enough to be the first.  I look forward to the day when this kind of an announcement is no big deal, and it's people like him who will help us get there.

Read more… 174 more words

We are watching the political tide in this country turn. As recently as two years ago many thought it was unlikely the nation would legalize gay marriage, now most think it is all but inevitable. Collins is a privileged hero, but no less a hero. Angie caught some of what is great about this announcement in this post i am happily reblogging.

When I first heard about fracking, I knew it was bad. I just didn’t understand much beyond that.

Post-drilling tap water. A delightful chemical cocktail!

Then my friend Tom said something about getting payments from his parents’ land and a Natural Gas lease.  Yes, it turns out, they have signed a lease with the natural gas company allowing fracking on their land. Last night I watched the rivetting documentary Gasland, which is essentially Tom’s story. Living on the beautiful piece of land he grew up in in PA, one day Josh Fox (creator of Gasland) got a gas lease form in the mail. Curious, he started asking questions. Talking to people. Collecting samples of people’s tap water. Travelling to other fracking sites in the west and midwest.

And the story slowly comes together. Turns out its really quite simple. Ten years ago, 1% of our natural gas came from fracking. Today its 30%.

This past weekend I facilitated a series of meetings in Boston (at Jamaica Plain Cohousing), and I started my work —as I always do—by asking for permission to operate under a set of Ground Rules that I've developed over the years. Among them is the group accepting my being "agreement prejudiced."

As that may sound like an odd request—a) why is that noteworthy; and b) is it OK to be "prejudiced" about anything?—it occurred to me that it would make a worthy blog focus to explain why I go there.

Almost without exception, people who have been raised in the dominant culture have been conditioned to think first in terms of how they are distinct from others, rather than how they are the same. To a large extent, our identities are associated with differences more than with similarities, and you know yourself most surely by the ways in which you stand apart from those around you. Certainly that was true for me. (Note that from an anthropolocigal perspective that all cultures aren't like this. In Inuit society, for example, individuals develop a much stronger sense of "we" than "I.")

Mind you, I am not saying that we have been raised to be cantankerous, or iconoclastic (although some, of course, turn out that way). Rather, I'm saying that when someone says something with which we are in partial agreement (which happens "only" all the time) our overwhelming tendency is to focus our initial response on the ways in which we disagree, rather than on celebrating the ways in which we align—even though they are equally valid responses, and one isn't more true than the other.

In the lead up to the Loud Love event we have reached out to several different communities to both bolster the attendance of the event and diversify the world views of the participants.  This has put us into conversation with local progressive church groups, some of whom are curious about why we reached out to them.  In response to one pastor’s query about my characterization of the event as “edgy” i wrote the following letter.

I took a PAL (personal affairs leave) from Twin Oaks about ten days ago. A PAL can be granted to a Twin Oaks member who is not in the money or labor hole, and has lived at Twin Oaks for at least a year. A person taking a PAL can be gone from Twin Oaks for up to a year and return within that time and still become a member of the community. I don't receive money from the community while I am gone. I'm really not a member, but I can come back, pretty much anytime. Although, I might have to wait until a room opens up. It's a pretty neat thing that I decided to take advantage of.

I felt very content at Twin Oaks after being there almost two years, but I also felt a desire to explore some more communities, and gain some more primitive skills.

Twin Oaks is a community of about 100 people. Sometimes I think of it as more of a village than a community. I've yearned to be in a close knit family, or small group of people who work together and support each other to grow and learn. It seems like I would need a smaller community for that. I also want to be in a community that focuses on emotional healing. There are so many people at Twin Oaks, going in all different directions. There isn't as much community as I want there. There isn't a main goal or purpose of the place. I think this is true just because it's so big. I think it could be possible for me to create that there, but I am not sure. That is part of what led me to take some time off to find out what I really want.
There are some people in Virginia who I really, really miss already..

i appreciate that we try vaguely impossible things.

Dove is visiting Acorn with her 4 kids.  To the casual observer we cant absorb this number of children, particularly in that there is only one parent, but we are trying anyway.  We are willing to risk falling in love with these charming people and not quite knowing how it is that they can live in a place which has a waiting list and is well under capacity for bedrooms.  Fortunately, we are not casual observers.

Dragon did an amazing job of prettying up the Rec Collective.  Until the weather got warm it was being used as a dorm for all the interns and guests.  This is a receipt for entropy maximization.  Take a slightly small oddly shaped one room straw bale and fill it with a constantly rotating collection of scruffy hippies and it will clutter and start to rot.  Fox and a team of declutters shifted it from funky mattress and random junk hell and made it something usable, Dragon took the set up and made the place really nice.  Kara’s two oldest girls, Bob and Anonymous, were reading and playing guitar in this newly liberated space.

Beaders in the newly clean Rec Collective