Archive for May, 2008
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
If you are new here, you may want to subscribe to the community buzz via email:
Last week a Texas appeals court ruled that the state of Texas had acted inappropriately when it seized 468 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in west Texas. That decision was upheld Thursday by the Texas supreme court. From the New York Times:
The court said the record did "not reflect any reasonable effort on the part of the department to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation would have eliminated the risk."
It said that the evidence of danger to the children "was legally and factually insufficient" to justify the removal and that the lower court had "abused its discretion" in failing to return the children to the families.
From the Washington Post:
"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse," the three-judge panel wrote, ". . . there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent' . . . with respect to every child in the community."
Of particular interest to other communities was the courts statement that the community did not constitute a single household:
The notion that the entire ranch community constitutes a "household" as contemplated by section 262.201 and justifies removing all children from the ranch community if there even is one incident of suspected child sexual abuse is contrary to the evidence. The Department's witnesses acknowledged that the ranch community was divided into separate family groups and separate households. While there was evidence that the living arrangements on the ranch are more communal than most typical neighborhoods, the evidence was not legally or factually sufficient to support a theory that the entire ranch community was a "household" under section 262.201.
The Mormon Community's families, as well as many child-welfare experts, say that the separation of the children from their families will likely have negative and long lasting effects. From the New York Times:
They say a growing body of research supports the contention of the mothers that forceful removal can have both significant short-term and long-lasting harm, particularly for younger children. Some studies have found that the wide-ranging effects include anxiety, extreme distrust of strangers and, in the future, higher rates of teenage pregnancy and juvenile incarceration.
Legal issues for the ranch are not over as the state will continue to investigate specific cases of abuse. Again the New York Times:
State and federal criminal investigations are under way and could still produce criminal charges.
"It's really unfortunate, because obviously there are some children who have been sexually abused," Ms. McCurley, a lawyer representing some of the children, said. "But this doesn't keep them from coming back and having another hearing. They could get their proof together, for example have a doctor come in and say this child is 13 years old and she has already given birth to another child, and the father of that child is 46 years old.
At this point it is unclear when the children will be returned to their families as the legal process has hit another snag:
Negotiations for the state's release of more than 460 children who were removed from a polygamist sect in April broke down Friday in a scene of chaos and bitterness in a courtroom in this West Texas city. Lawyers for the families said the judge overseeing the release lacked authority to impose restrictions on it, and the judge, in disagreement, ended the proceedings and walked out of the courtroom.
Articles cited:
Court Says Texas Illegally Seized Sect’s Children (New York Times)
Appeals Court Ruling
Court Rejects Seizure Of Tex. Sect's Children (Washington Post)
Sect Mothers Say Separation Endangers Children (New York Times)
Texas Loses Court Ruling Over Taking of Children (New York Times)
Deal to Return Children to Sect Breaks Down (New York Times)
Commentary:
Laird's Blog - Sanity Prevails
 Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Mormon, Texas
Posted in Blog posts, News Articles | No Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Katie McCamant & Chuck Durrett won a Silver Award for Best of of Senior Living from the National Association of Home Builders on Tuesday according to various articles and a press release.
Nevada City architects, McCamant and Durrett's design for Silver Sage Village, a senior cohousing project in Boulder, Colorado, received the Silver Award for Best of Senior Living. Competing against hundreds of firms across America, the NAHB rated McCamant and Durrett's design as one of the country's best senior housing. Firm principal Charles Durrett was on hand to receive the award, "We are excited to see our ideas become working realities in communities shaped by residents, like Silver Sage."
Silver Sage Village cohousing is part of a trend towards less conventional solutions for aging with independence within communities, or as architect Charles Durrett so aptly puts it "the challenge of aging non-institutionally." Durrett coined the term cohousing - people buying homes in a community they plan and run together - for the type of communities he experienced as an architecture student in Denmark during the 1980's. America may be more ready than ever to consider cohousing's benefits, which include about 25% to 50% less driving, 75% less land used for housing, and at least 80% less energy used.
A recent article on McCamant and Durret also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days before the award was announced where Durret speaks to the issue of senior cohousing:
Two years ago my follow-up book, "Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living," came out. In research, I kept asking them, 'Why are you bothering with this? You're 60 or 70 years old.' I marveled at the answers. People talked about things like, 'I'm not going to just sit here in this house and be bored and lonely and curate my furniture. I want to have fun.'
This month, we're starting construction for a 30-unit senior cohousing project in Grass Valley. One of the reasons I like working with seniors is that they are so much more impatient. These seniors tell me all the time, 'Hey Chuck. I don't even buy green bananas anymore. Let's make this thing happen."
Read the press release.
Read the article on McCamant andd Durret in the Sand Francisco Chronicle.
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Chuck Durrett, cohousing, Katie McCamant, senior cohousing, Silver Sage Village Cohousing
Posted in News Articles | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
The environmental news site, Grist, has a great article about how Cleveland is going green. The article highlights the Cleveland Ecovillage a "pedestrian-friendly neighborhood linked to mass transit".
The project is the brainchild of five local nonprofits, the city, the regional transit authority, private developers, and neighborhood residents. They aim to bring residents back to the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood, and to serve as an example to other cities of how to redevelop the inner city in a green fashion.
Near the newly renovated West 65th Street rapid transit station, Cuyahoga Community Land Trust is in the process of building five two- and three-bedroom homes, between 1,226 and 1,350 square feet each, called the Green Cottages. They're designed to be LEED-certified and models of energy efficiency, with projected heating costs of just $36 a month thanks to energy-saving appliances and heavy insulation.
Because mixed-income housing is a key to sustainability, EcoVillage designers wanted to coax both lower- and upper-middle-class residents to return to the inner city. The cottages are surrounded by Craftsman-era homes, many of them carefully restored, painted the colors of Easter eggs and with wide front porches. Down the street, within walking distance to the rapid-transit station that links to downtown, are 20 1,600-square-foot EcoVillage townhouses constructed by GreenBuilt Homes, an eco-friendly Cleveland builder.
"We had a few folks who moved in from the suburbs, some who moved from within the local neighborhood, and some that came from other cities and other states," said Metcalf. At this point, the people behind EcoVillage feel pretty safe claiming the project a success.
The article goes on to describe a number of other ecological projects in and around Cleveland.
Read the Eco-city Cleveland article at Grist
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Cleveland, eco-city, ecovillage, Ohio
Posted in News Articles | No Comments »
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
The local paper in Brooklyn, New York has an article on Brooklyn Cohousing's efforts to start the first community in the New York burroughs. The Brooklyn group plans to buy an apartment building in the recently this recently trendy part of the city, sharing meals and common spaces within a condominium arrangement.
The article follows the standard "they're not hippies" line with an emphasis on the inherent cost of New York City condo ownership with the headline, "Wanted: Roommates with money".
"We want more out of life. We want more community. We were lonely and felt too isolated," said Alex Marshall, who started planning the first co-housing dwelling in the city with his wife last summer.
Alas, the 1970s are dead. This will not be a pot-smoking, patchouli-filled, free-loving, anything-goes compound.
"Take a commune and a condo, put them in a blender and this is what you get," said Ben Watts, a likely resident of the building, which will probably be in Park Slope, Prospect Heights or Windsor Terrace.
The article goes on to get some quotes from members of true communes from New York's past and finishes with a mildly humorous comparison of co-housing and communism noting that in cohousing the main source of conlfict is "Hectic, impersonal modern life" whereas in communism it is "Unequal ownership of the means of production."
For the real trash, see the commentary on the article at nymag.com where their only context to comment on the cohousing group is based on TV and movies and they snidely quip, "Something about a bunch of adults living as roommates seems inherently pervy to us."
Read the article on Brooklyn Cohousing.
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Brooklyn, cohousing, New York
Posted in Blog posts, News Articles | No Comments »
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Another cohousing community is not big news these days but this article in Delaware Online had an interesting twist, drawing the connection to Delaware's historical Arden Villages. The three villages of Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft were founded in the early 1900s based on Henry George's single-tax theory and were part of the Garden City Movement.
While the goals and theories behind the Arden Villages and cohousing are quite different they are both examples of movements to intentionally reshape our human settlements for a greater good. Both foster a sense of community and an attention to the ecological effects of our homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
The article focuses on Empty-Nest Cohousing and Concord VIllage which are both looking for land in Delaware.
Read the article on Cohousing and Arden Village in Delaware.Cohousing in Delaware Evokes Historical Arden Villages
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Arden Village, cohousing, Concord Vllage, Delaware, Empty-Nest Cohousing, Garden City Movement, Hennry George, Single Tax
Posted in News Articles | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
The news coverage of the Texas fundamentalist Morman community that was raided by Texas authorities last month has dies down recently. This article in the Dallas Morning News gives a good picture of the raid's effect on the 700 person community, where only a few dozen remain to keep up the physical plant and manage the legal crisis.
Emptiness echoes off this polygamist community's once-lush lawns, now parched and brown.
And the schoolhouse sits frozen in time, its half-finished spelling tests and chalky blackboard lessons a reminder of the religious sect's absent children.
Standing amid Nike Air Jordan sneakers and orthopedic house shoes on the porch of one of the commune's few occupied homes, Kathryn Jessop offers a pained smile. She said she wishes she'd never taken for granted the sound of her grandchildren's voices as they traipsed across the lawn collecting wildflowers or recited their evening prayers."These children have been so happy here," said Mrs. Jessop, who was seized from her own childhood home 55 years ago in the infamous Short Creek, Ariz., raid. "To be taken away from your parents, from everything you know – I didn't think I'd see this again in my lifetime."
The fate of the community and the children still remains open and is in the hands of the courts at this point.
Read the article in the Dallas Morning News.
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Mormon, Texas
Posted in News Articles | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 12th, 2008
The financial investment advice website, The Motley Fool has an article promoting Cohousing as a great option for retirement living. This fits with the recent trend of community on the business pages with recent articles in Forbes. For the most part it is your standard cohousing article with the added twist of stock symbols for any company mentioned.
The idea of settling into a rich, close-knit community in your post-working years appeals to many folks contemplating retirement. Such a community can be hard to find under the best of circumstances. As you age -- and as you or your old friends move to warmer climes or to downsized houses in different neighborhoods, grown children disperse, and interests long shared with friends start to diverge -- community can be a downright scarce resource.
As I've noted in the past, choosing to downsize one's house runs counter to the way many of us think about our own paths to success in life, but it can make a lot of sense. A smaller house costs less to buy, heat, and maintain -- good aspects anytime, but even more so during retirement. And if you can have a smaller house without losing the functionality of a larger home, why not?
Cohousing isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for a comfortable, friendly place to retire to, cohousing communities deserve serious consideration.
The author mentions plans to move to a cohousing community and follow-up blog posts indicate that it is Mosaic Commons in Massachusetts.
Read the Motley Fool article on Cohousing
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: cohousing, Mosaic Commons, Motley Fool, senior cohousing
Posted in News Articles | No Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2008
EcoVillage at Ithaca is helping set up a car sharing cooperative for the town of Ithaca, NY. Car Sharing co-ops are designed for people who don't own cars but have occasional needs for them. Members are often cyclists, walkers, and frequent users of public transit.
After about three years of planning, Ithaca CarShare is set to launch June 1 with six Nissan Versa hatchbacks and a Ford Ranger pickup. The organization expects to add more vehicles in August.
Jennifer Dotson, executive director of Ithaca CarShare, said the average car sharing member spends $100 a month compared to the $600 a month that AAA says the average car owner spends.
Nancy Jacoby, an Ithaca resident, said, "I'm really excited. It's been rocking my world all week. It's the missing link to getting rid of my car."
One of the locations cars will be available is at the Ecovillage. I'm sure a number of Ecovillage members will take advantage of the program.
Read the article on Ithaca CarShare.
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: Car Sharing, Ecovillage at Ithaca, ecovillages, New York
Posted in News Articles | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
 Meredith Medland of Living Green interviews Diana Leafe Christian on the subject of Ecovillages and Intentional Communities in this 24-minute podcast.
Diana was the editor of Communities Magazine for 14 years and is now the editor of the Ecovillages online newsletter. She is the author of two books Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community and Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities.
Diana shares her immense experience of community living and the communities movement in this interview. Here's some highlights:
I feel like I'm in a network of a lot of brothers and sisters and cousins. I feel like I'm living inside of a family of likeminded people going towards the goals of learning how to live more ecologically and economically and socially sustainably, and also we're learning, we're teaching what we learn to others through classes and workshops.
I got interested in intentional communities because I, like thousands and thousands of people across the country, this is in the early 90's, I began to feel like something was missing and I finally could feel my way to identify that what it was, was community.
Diana goes on to describe "13 kinds of Intentional Communities" including ecovillages, cohousing, communes, christian communities, other spiritual communities, retreat centers, student co-ops, and more.
She even explains how to find the community oyu are looking for:
Well, when you're checking communities out on the internet, and the website you need to know about is directory.ic.org, where you can look up any community by its name alphabetically or you can go to any state or province or country and look up the community. It's North America based, so you'll find most communities in the US and Canada, and then you can read the listing about the community and you can read their website if they've got one. Here's some things to look for: does the community have a lot of people? Do they have land and have they been there for a number of years? That tells me that they actually exist as a community. Read their mission and purpose. Is it in alignment with yours? Could you make a living there? Is it in the part of the country that you're interested in? Is there internal community finances, one that you like, income sharing, independent income? How would you make a living? What are the annuals dues and fees? What's the joining fee? How can you, can you afford it?
Diana gives a vision of the future where community is much more common:
Meredith asks: If you look ahead thirty years from today, what kind of transition and awakenings and new emergings do you think are going to be happening in the co-housing and intentional communities based?
Diana Leafe Christian: Well I think that many, many more people will be living in various kinds of intentional communities, including ecologically oriented ones like Eco Villages in cities and towns out in the country, I think that income sharing communities and independent income communities will be everywhere, and food co-ops and worker owned co-ops will be everywhere. People will be getting around I would say by bicycle and donkey cart and not using petroleum and using all kinds of transportation methods from olden times, people will be growing their own foods in urban areas, on their rooftops, on their balconies and in public parks in the median strips just like in Havana today, and people will be growing most of their food in towns and in rural areas because of the industrial shifts without petroleum.
This podcast is a great overview of intentional communities and a great listen. There are also a ton of community resources in Diana's bio on the site.
Listen to the Ecovillage interview with Diana Leafe Christian (also includes a full transcript).
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: cohousing, communes, Creating a Life Together, Diana Leafe Christian, ecovillages, Living Green
Posted in Podcasts | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
An interesting article on how communication and community are essential in surviving in a post collapse post peak oil world is being posted on various blogs titled "We Can Survive, But Can We Communicate?"
While I don't personally go in for survivalism, the article is a great piece on how creating a sense of community and building trust with those around us is a key to mutually-dependent survival.
Let's first identify what we are talking about when we talk about community. In this context community does not refer only to individuals or families who own land together or who happen to live in proximity to one another, although proximity will more and more be the rule as fuel becomes scarce and travel is limited. We define community, in this context, to be a congregation of people who have, by the commitment and skills they possess, learned to establish relationships characterized by trust, understanding, mutual respect, and bonding that transcends personality and allows and even embraces differences of background or ideology. Such a group is able to think together effectively and to tap into deep wisdom about challenging issues. They can do this because they trust each other enough to question and suspend the assumptions and core beliefs that limit their insights as individuals. Such a group does not come together, as a therapy group does, for the purpose of healing per se, although insight and healing of isolation, unresolved past conflict, fears, and insecurities often occurs. The purpose of the kind of community we are speaking of is to come together to glean wisdom from listening and speaking with one another and to offer connection, support, comfort, and mutual respect. Such a group of people learns together to find better solutions, wiser actions and more joy together than is possible for them to do as isolated individuals, couples or families.
My question is, "Why wait for collapse?" Let's do it now. It doesn't seem like we should need the motivation of surviving collapse to see the benefits of connection, support, and mutual respect. The article goes on to address one of the most challenging aspects of creating community:
Conflict is inevitable. A community must develop skills to effectively resolve conflict so that people feel cared-for and respected. Its apparent absence is a red flag signaling the likelihood of dysfunction, of unspoken feelings and truths that need to be told, or of a strict authoritarian hierarchy that keeps conflict as well as individual creativity submerged. Indigenous cultures at their high points skillfully navigated conflict, and in fact probably welcomed it. They evolved creative skills for addressing it compassionately and assertively, with elders, both men and women, who carried those skills and wisdom down through generations. Those of us reared in the hierarchies of empire are not so lucky. Most people don't feel fully adult much less secure enough to be considered real elders. We are having to glean the best we can from older cultures and learn from the most innovative practices that have come from psychology and organizational development to find our way in to creative, cooperative relationship.
So whether you think the collapse is near or just want more community in your life, there is no time like the present to start creating or finding community in whatever form it may take for you.
Read the We Can Survive, But Can We Communicate article
Community resources for Peak Oil
Loading ...
Related Posts Tags: collapse, communication, conflict, peak oil, survivalists
Posted in Blog posts | No Comments »
|
del.icio.us
