Category Archives: Community & Family

We live with people. Community and family are important to us in so many ways. One aspect that I write about in this section of the website is the Transition Town network, which began in the U.K. and has spread widely. It’s composed of people who are active in working to transition to times that are coming when society will be less based on fossil fuels and climate changes will be more than they are now.

There are many community groups oriented this way. For example, where I live, one of the local Facebook groups is about the whole earth. The town (Silver City, NM) has a sustainability department. There is a thriving Food Coop here.

Inevitably, community takes place, even when people don’t think about it in the context of sustainability. For example, neighbors get together for potlucks and the conversation turns deeper for a while. Or someone helps someone else start or maintain a garden.

We happen to live in a town where family roots are deep, certainly far deeper than they are in my own family. And my husband Kelly and I have been taken under the wings of several of our neighbors and included in their family get-togethers. Makes us feel very welcomed here! And we’ve done our bit to help foster connections with those around us.

How is the sense of community and family where you are, and how does it feel to you?

Surprised to Discover that I am Way Happier Now than in 1973

I’m working on my memoirs and recently I read through the bound volume of my 1973 journal. I marked things that caught my eye and am still in the process of making notes from those things for several volumes of my memoirs. All that is taking a lot of time and so I’m writing here a lot less. But I learned something so interesting that I thought it was worth sharing. I am happier now. Way happier. But I always thought of that year as one of the happiest in my life. Well, 1973 did have some very good parts. … Continue reading →

Inspired by Alvin Alexsi Currier and Anastasia Currier

We recently met Alvin Alexsi Currier, as he and his wife Anastasia have been living nearby for a couple of months. Friends of friends, we’ve had several meals and good conversations with them. Soon they will drive back to their home base in Wisconsin and she will stay there (quilting like crazy, no doubt) while he returns to places he often goes to in Europe. So what is inspiring about that? Two things! One: Alexsi, as we call him, will turn 85 this week, and that picture of him was taken a few days ago, in front of one of the … Continue reading →

A Love Letter to My Husband on our 45th Anniversary

Dear Kelly, It’s partly cloudy this summer morning, with a good chance of thunderstorms later. You got up before the sun and before me, let the dogs out, cleaned up where the cat had thrown up, and came back to the bedroom. I was lying awake in bed thinking about writing this blog post and cuddling with the cat. “Happy anniversary!” you said and we smiled at each other. You might have curled back up with me for a sweet moment but the cat had staked her claim and was glowering at you. Besides, you had the teakettle on. Let’s … Continue reading →

The Hippie Who Lived in a Bus: How Loving Kelly Hart Changed Everything

“A little more to the left and an inch higher,” Kelly Hart said to the three other guys who were helping him move a stripped-down upright piano through the back window of the school bus he had fixed up as a home. I watched from inside the bus as the piano slowly slid in. Soon the piano was resting in its place, the others had left, and as we sat with steaming hot tea, Kelly told me, “I’ve wanted to do that for a while. I love to play, and I’ll use it for soundtracks on my animated films.” I already knew … Continue reading →

Making a Digital Scrapbooking Book

I have been taking a delightful online class about how to make a digital scrapbooking book. This particular class is taught by Linda Sattgast, who is an expert on digi-scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements (which I use) and with Photoshop (which I don’t think I will ever use.) Linda’s website is Digitalscrapper.com, and while I paid for this class there are a lot of good digital scrapbooking freebies there too. The class that I am taking began in January and ends in December, and each month we have a different assignment. This afternoon I did a larger version of the image … Continue reading →

Sunshine Camp Revisited Because of the Internet

On the About Us page of this website, I mentioned in passing that my husband Kelly and I had lived at Sunshine Camp in Forestville, CA, in an intentional community with other family members. I don’t know why I happened to mention it, but that brief reference led to a fascinating communication. I do love how the internet brings people together! Here is what happened: a few weeks ago, I got an email from a man named Dan Philipps, who described himself as a genealogist by hobby. He had come to that About Us page while searching for Sunshine Camp … Continue reading →

A Sense of Community from a Small Town Music Festival

This weekend the town where I live in Colorado had its annual music festival. Going to the festival is one of my favorite ways to visit with people in the community that I may not see much of. When I first got to the festival on Saturday morning, I had a nice long chat with a man I know, about how happy he and his wife are to be raising their two young daughters in our peaceful small-town atmosphere, even though making a living here isn’t easy. Later, a woman I had met when we first came here in 1996 … Continue reading →

Weddings Can Be Eco-Friendly and Low Cost

You can have a wonderful wedding, full of joy and love, for very low cost and in a very eco-friendly manner. I know, because my husband Kelly and I did it. It takes some planning, but it’s well worth it. First, decide how many people you want to have at the actual ceremony. One way to save is to have a small wedding. You could have the ceremony privately and have a big party or reception that evening or a few days later. We wanted to have many family members and friends with us when we exchanged vows, and we … Continue reading →

Community Currencies

Some communities have created local currencies that can be used for a wide variety of goods and services in that region. A book that describes how to do this, with examples from Ithaca, NY, and other places, is , by Edgar Cahn and Jonathan Rowe. Since the book came out, many more communities have begun the process. There’s a song that goes, “From you I receive, to you I give. Together we share, and by this we live.” Community currencies offer a tangible way of doing this. Local currencies are perfectly legal; in fact, some local government agencies take part in … Continue reading →

Barter

In recent years, barter has become more and more popular in our society. It’s a great way to save money and interact with people in a different way. Think about goods and skills that you can barter. One woman on an internet forum commented that she had stored fifty pounds of chocolate chips for barter. I couldn’t do that myself – I’d be too tempted to eat my money! Barter systems are widespread now in Russia, China, Africa, and many other places. This is often direct trading, with no currency, gold, or silver involved. In Russia, many teachers are paid … Continue reading →

An Inspiring Intentional Community in Mexico

We visited an intentional community in Mexico,when we lived there. Some Mexican friends of ours from Guadalajara had been looking for the right place to move to, and this place was it. It has over twenty families, living in regular houses. Each family seems to own its own place; our friends were renting a rather simple and very nice house, and had just purchased land within the community to build their own. This couple invited us to visit one Sunday, and I’m so glad we went. “To live ecologically is important,” said our friend Sandro over lunch. (We spoke mostly … Continue reading →

An Empowering Baby Shower

Tess and Chris, to be parents within a month or so, were festooned with marigold wreaths, as we all sat in a circle that kept changing as the young children ran about and adults sometimes hopped up to tend to the kids’ needs. The drummers held the beat at we sang chants in English and Spanish. Other musicians improvised on various instruments; my husband’s digital horn elicited curiosity and smiles. Garb was eclectic, ethnic, and free-box. We took turns washing the very pregnant woman’s feet. We had just had a healthy potluck dinner, and after a while, women moved onto … Continue reading →

A Sense of Community: Do You Have It?

Do you have a sense of community in your life? It could take many forms. It could be knowing your neighbors and stopping to chat while walking the dog. It could be through a church or other faith-based connection. It could be through knowing other parents if you have kids. It could be… fill in your own ways. Of course, people vary in how important community is to them. It’s very important to me, partly because of my particular personality and also because I think community is an important element of living well in this world. We certainly live in … Continue reading →

Transition Towns and Survivalists: Two Overlapping Responses to Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Other Crises

You may not have heard of the Transition Towns movement, but chances are you’ve heard of survivalists. What really are these two groups and how might it matter to your life? Transition Towns are spreading throughout the world. In a nutshell, transition towns (or cities, or islands, or whatever) come about when a group of people in a community get together to explore what can be done there as preparation for a world with less oil and different climates. This is a new but very vital movement and clearly one whose time has come! I’ve been reading some about this movement, … Continue reading →

Transition Towns

A friend emailed information about transition towns to us. I think it’s a really exciting concept. Here are some excerpts from http://www.transitionnetwork.org/: What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)? It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges and opportunities of Peak Oil and Climate Change? … [They embark upon] a process of: awareness raising around Peak Oil, Climate Change and the need to undertake a community-led process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon emissions connecting … Continue reading →

Simple Green Living

With Rosana Hart