Blogs and the Updating Thereof.

Yeah, I don't know when I'm gonna finish writing about co-housing. There are certainly lots more things to say about it, since I only got halfway through writing up the tour. But July hit, and with it, madness: sorting, discarding, repairing, preparing. So much to get done in one short month, with precious little downtime. Yet somehow* it did get done, or done enough, and after bumping back my deadlines a tad, I got myself packed up and out of town. And that saga is addressed in detail on the New Blog, which you probably know about already but just in case, here it is. That'll be taking first priority over the co-housing posts, and I'm already behind over there, so: yeah. Co-housing can wait.

As previously mentioned, that blog won't replace this blog. That blog is intended to promote my project and my writing, with a view to eventually getting some paid work out of it. It's very self-consciously public and narratively focused; it is a specific thing and not other things. This blog continues to exist, and to be sporadic and amorphous, because we all need a place like that on the internet, or at least I do.

* "Somehow" mostly being "with lots and lots of help from friends."

Cohousing Tour, Part Three: Peninsula Park Commons.

There's a particular type of 1930s apartment design you see a lot of in Portland.  It's single-story, typically brick, laid out in a row that's usually bent into an L or a C in order to squeeze as many units into the lot as possible.  If you've lived here, you know the ones; some of you have even lived in them.  In 2003, local developer and contractor Eli Spevak bought one of these old complexes at the edge of Peninsula Park, not far from I-5 in North Portland.  "We just sort of stumbled into it," he says of the purchase, and thus Peninsula Park Commons was born.  After renovations, he sold 5 of the 7 units, most to young families like his own, for about $80,000 apiece.  The 6th unit became a common area, and he and his wife moved into the 7th, where his daughter was later born.

The apartment courtyard soon bloomed with an ebullient communal garden, a certified wildlife habitat and the scene of many social gatherings for its residents.  Eli, who has met us on the street to welcome us in, explains, "Every cohousing community has its own themes, and our themes are biking and gardening."  Sure enough, the concrete at the base of a nearby bike rack is studded with ceramic tiles, lovingly hand-painted with bikes and tiny poems about riding them.  The residents of the community are having a yard sale in the courtyard today, and many of them stand smiling beside tables and racks of cast-offs.  We smile back, and I deliberately avoid looking at their wares.  (Now is not a good time to bring home more stuff.)

Cohousing Tour, Part Two: Daybreak Cohousing.

At Daybreak Cohousing, the first thing you inevitably notice is the brand-shiny-new, ultra-conscientiously designed architecture: warm bright colors, ample windows, spaces laid out to facilitate eddies and clusters of residents.  A gorgeous old maple towers over a tidy community garden and a circular play area, a perfect peninsula of fresh wood chips on a lake of green lawn.  There's a spacious rooftop deck with a hot tub and a fine view of the humped green spine of Forest Park.  Electronic fobs allow access to elevators and common areas.  The place strikes me as a tad on the posh side, an impression reinforced by the price sheet I pick up off a table in the Common Room: the cheapest unit available, at 665 square feet, is $225,000 (not counting utilities and HOA dues).  To me, that seems like a lot of money for such a little space.

Cohousing Tour: Part One.

Yesterday I went on a day-long guided tour of four of Portland's six established cohousing communities. In a sense, this was Stop Zero on my intentional community research project, so I took copious notes, which I intend to share with you over the next week or so.  I'll devote a post to each of the communities I visited (Daybreak Cohousing, Peninsula Park Commons, Cascadia Commons, and Kailash Ecovillage), and also give you some highlights from the panel discussion we had with members from each of the six communities.

Cohousing is defined by the Cohousing Association of the United States, which organized this event, as "a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods."  All four of the communities we looked at were urban in design, and thus "dense" in the sense that all residences were apartments within larger buildings.  They ranged from shiny new construction to slightly shabby rehabbed apartments, and from heavy membership involvement expectations to more of a laid-back approach.

We met in the common room of Daybreak Cohousing, a spacious multi-purpose area with lots of windows.  Bagels, juice, and coffee were set out for us.  The morning sunlight, which we've gone so long without around these parts, made the clean, warm colors of the walls glow.

Our guides introduced themselves: Terri and Kristin, Daybreak co-founders, and Ken, an early joiner of Cascadia Commons.  Then the 35-odd folks here for the tour made their introductions.  About half the group had carpooled all the way out from Boise, and some had come from farther afield, from Corbett to Ventura to Nashville, and an intrepid couple with a toddler who had come all the way from Australia. (I was intrigued to hear they were just winding up a tour of sustainable commmunities. More about them later, of course.)

Everyone there looked white and solidly middle-class, ranging in age from late 20s to 60s, with a ratio of roughly one single person for every couple.  A lot of them were empty-nesters who were looking to retire into cohousing.  I guessed that this group was a fair representation of local cohousing populations, and based on what I saw later, I wasn't too far off.

When asked why they had come, nearly every single attendee said s/he was there because of an interest in either beginning or joining a cohousing community.  I think I was the only one who didn't state such an interest (I said I was doing research for a book on intentional communities, which led to some interesting conversations later).  I kinda like the idea of cohousing -- it seems like a pretty decent lifestyle for those who can afford it -- but I don't feel a strong pull toward it.  So I didn't go into this expecting to find my dream lifestyle, but I was still intensely curious about these communities and what makes them work.

The Post I Should've Written Months Ago.

I've been sitting on these plans for over a year now.  Got so comfortable with 'em under my bum that it feels weird to have 'em hatch and walk away chirping.  But here they are (peep! peep!):

I quit my job. I'm still working, but my contract's up the end of June, and I'm not renewing it, and my employer knows that.

End of July, I'm leaving town. Renting the house out.  Gonna travel the country by car and bus and train.  Gonna visit some intentional communities (housing co-ops, ecovillages, organic farms, monasteries, boats) and see how people live there.  Gonna have some adventures.  Gonna write about my adventures.

I'd like the adventure-writing to eventually take the form of a book-shaped manuscript, and with a view to promoting such a manuscript, I'll be starting a second, more professional-looking blog in which to record said adventures.*  I don't particularly want to conglomerate everything I've written here and the persona I'll be promoting there, so this one will remain distinct, scruffy and personal (and irregularly updated).  For friends and e-stalkers only.

I have the roughest of timelines in mind: wandering the West Coast for the first several months, then heading eastward; visiting some places briefly, staying in others for a month or so to get something of a feel for life there.  I envision the whole walkabout as lasting maybe two years.  But it's all very flexible.  I'm entirely willing to get sidetracked by interesting possibilities, and if I get sidetracked by less-interesting necessities, well, that is also an acceptable outcome.  And if the book part doesn't happen, that's okay too.  At least I'll have had some interesting adventures.  Which is really the point.  Or one of the points.

(peep!)

So I've been pretty busy lately, working out details of these plans, and also doing the apparently interminable work of downsizing, and also still working full-time and trying to take good care of myself and get in quality time with local friends while I still can.  It feels like I'm trying to live in the future and the past and the present all at the same time, and giving all of them short shrift.  That's what I've been up to, and it's also my excuse for not writing about this sooner, now that my employer knows and there's no reason to keep it under feathers anymore.

* I've been experiencing some inauspicious writer's block in coming up with a name for this travel blog, or even for the project as a whole. Your suggestions are welcomed.

The World Was Never Grayscale.

When I was in college, some of my friends occasionally bought black and white film for their cameras.  It made our pictures look ironically sentimental and remote, like it all happened such a very long time ago.

Nigh twenty years on, that irony has twisted around to bite its own tail.

Losing Everything: Two Stories.

Last weekend I heard some amazing stories, all of them true.  A couple of them had some striking parallels.

George Takei remembered standing at the front window of his home, watching soldiers coming up the driveway to take him and his family away.  It was 1942, and he was five years old.  Carrying only what they had hastily packed the night before, the family of five was transported to a "holding cell" (actually a stall in the stable of a racetrack) on their way to the first of a series of concentration camps, where he and his family spent the next five years of their lives.

Cora Smith* remembered wading in water up to her chest, clinging to her pregnant mother, as they tried to escape their flooded town in 1948.  The single road out was jammed with vehicles.  Cora, then a grade-schooler, was lifted onto the back of a Red Cross truck to be evacuated with a bunch of other children.  It took three days for her mother to find her again.
* I am not certain I have remembered Cora's last name correctly; I apologize if I've gotten it wrong.

George's memory happened in Los Angeles.  Cora's took place in Vanport City, which is now the Delta Park neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

Things Superheroes Might Think About...

...While Skulking Atop Buildings Waiting for the Opportune Moment to Sneak Across Highly Visible Passageways to the Tops of Other Buildings, Like, Say, a Gymnasium.

• Wow, the sky's really pretty tonight.  Is that a star? ...Nope. Airplane. 
• Geez, lady, how long does it take to get two kids into the car?
• I wonder how long I can crouch like this before my leg completely stops working.
• You can totally see why this roof leaks all the time.  Whoever designed this building clearly had no concept of how rain works.
• Maybe if I slide over here I can stand up without being seen... oh.  Crap.  There's people on that side of the building, too. 
• Don't all of you nice people want to go home and watch TV now?
• How 'bout... now?
• This is the worst flashlight.  This is worse than no flashlight.  I had no idea this flashlight was so terrible. 
• Are those air conditioning units?  They get air conditioning here now?  Daaang!
• Are these people leaving in shifts, or what?
• Okay, nose.  I get it.  It's cold.  You can stop dripping now.
• Wouldn't it be funny if I called ___ from up here?  "Hey, ___, it's me!  A Superhero!  On top of the ___ building!  Verbal high five!"
• ...Maybe that's not such a good idea.
• I probably shouldn't sit on this rooftop; who knows what kind of gunk it might leave on my superhero costume.
• Are they still standing there talking?  Holy crap.  They're still standing there talking.  
• Screw it, I'm sitting down.
• Is that Mt. Tabor?  Wait, no, Mt. Tabor's that way.  Which one is that then?
• Uhhh...
• Why do I still not know the names of all the buttes in this part of town?
• I really hope whoever's cleaning this building right now can't hear me sneaking around up here, because if I was them, that would totally weird me out. 
• Aaand more people in the parking lot.  Does this place ever shut down? 
• Aww, those ol' trees.  Why are those trees so amazing.  Seriously, they're like... ptschhh!  Art!  Wow.
  
• Actually, they probably grow that way because they're straining for sunlight between two buildings.
• Still, though!  So awesome.
• Hey, I can totally see in the window of this other building!  Which... has... an awful lot of people in it.
• Who are all also presumably going home at some point.
• Erg.
• No way am I sitting up here all night.  I got places to go, supervillains to catch.
• Also, my nose is still dripping.
• Is the coast clear?  Let's say the coast is clear.  Who's gonna be looking this way anyway, right?

Note: This list is purely theoretical in nature, and has absolutely nothing to do with the previous post.

On Ghosts, and the Haunting of College Campuses.

This evening, for the first time since it closed for good, I returned to The Campus Formerly Known As Cascade College.  My current employer is renting space there for commuter classes.  Sooner or later, it was inevitable that I would get invited over there to teach a room full of students how to use their library's electronic resources....

How Much Do I Spend on My Car?

As you may be aware, I've been interested in the simplicity/minimalist/low impact lifestyle movement(s) for a while now.  These folks, as you might guess, tend to be really down on automobiles.  Aside from the obvious stuff about environmental impact, they point at crazy-big numbers that the average American spends on cars: $8604? $9519?!

I've always scoffed (with insufferable smugness!) at numbers like these, especially now that I live close enough to my workplace to commute on foot.  My car is, as of this year, old enough to take into bars with me, so it's all paid for, and insurance is cheap.  I tend to stick to my own corner of town, and my occasional road trips rarely take me more than 3 hours away.  But recently, as I contemplated cleaning out my filebox to make room for 2011's paperwork, I started wondering exactly how much my car does cost me.

Three for the New Year.

Some comics for your 3rd:

 Still wondering, actually.

 Maybe I was, though. Hard to say!

Sometimes I just need to waste some time before I can get anything done.

It's the Year of the Rabbit now, though, for reals. Gung hay fat choy! The intermission between New Year celebrations is over; time to get on with the show.  The days are finally getting longer and we've even got a touch of Fake Spring around these parts. 2011 is drumming its fingers on my doorframe, sneaking glimpses at its pocketwatch: Are you ready yet? We've got so many things to do.

2010 in Movies, and Some Books I Forgot.

I found some more books I read last year!  My record-keeping has been terrible, apparently.  (I wonder if I left anything else out...?)  Below the Forgotten Books of 2010 list, I'm also including a very short list of the very few movies I saw in 2010.

2010 in Books.

I read some books in 2010, and here is an annotated list of them, or at least all of them I remembered to write down.  This time I'm separating nonfiction from fiction, just because; but I'm not separating comics/graphic novels from books-without-many-pictures, also just because.  Numerical ratings appear in parentheses after the author's name, corresponding to the following:

(1) - I hated it. * 
(2) - I'm not sure I liked it.
(3) - I definitely liked it.
(4) - I straight-up loved it.
(5) - It crawled inside my head and moved things around, or burrowed inside my heart and made a little nest there.

* This is only a list of books I actually finished reading, so none of them got the (1) rating.  If I were including unfinished books, I would certainly give it to M. John Harrison's Viriconium. I barely made it through the first story in this fantasy/sci-fi collection. It was a heavy, humorless, and interminable tale of war-wearied men doing manly deeds of manliness in <Mr. Voice> a time of war </Mr. Voice>, and wearily philosophizing about it all in a manly fashion.  Harrison's good with words, but the tedium, I can't even describe it (this from a huge LOTR fan), and let's not even talk about how he deals with the female "characters."  Anyway, enough of that; on to the good stuff!