@detroitmechworks
for sharing your good works and if you contact Ashland, explain the staging concept you mentioned a few weeks ago; they have always been into play development even way back n my years and from the grapevine, i think in a larger way today. What a great community, wish i could teleport there for retirement.

Cleaning the room, oh hell, i manage a few feet at the time when so inclined; being a pack rat doen't help in this tiny space.

Yo think "Al" could screw up...hum? Yep!

As you see, i'm back; event rained out, no biggie, i'm tired today anyway.

Thanks for reading, i'll get over to read Calliope a little later; have a great one!

Looks like today is the day I actually have to be an adult and... CLEAN MY ROOM. The horror. (To be fair, I spend almost zero time in there other than sleeping... Funny, I almost never leave my apartment, and almost never leave the main room. Go figure...)

Logos Series continues today, with the final piece of the 1st act, Calliope. Tomorrow we start with the Heroes, Act II. Amazingly, I always write these before checking the OT's and I'm amazed how often I find an echo of what I was just writing in them.

While the Eco-village concept is nice, I would rather lose the computer overseer and build around a communal space. But then, keep in mind I'm a paranoid who trusts computers the same distance I can comfortably throw the programmer.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHa1zTLrXO8]

@Lookout @Lookout
appropriate, i'm lifting a few paras; you know this is morning music to this old hippie's ears.

Let's look a little bit of the history of cohousing in The Netherlands
A new generation of communities started in The Netherlands in the sixties. Many, mostly
younger, people developed new perspectives on society and on personal relationships. This
included:
•
Relationships developing within the community became as important, or even more
important, than family relationships.
•
People were feeling the need for more democracy and less hierarchy, in their politics,
work and in personal situations.
•
Feelings and emotions became just as important as logic in decision-making.
•
Women began claiming fair and equal rights.
•
Men began to express their ‘feminine’ qualities.
•
Adults became more aware of their ‘childlike’ playful sides.
•
Increasingly people believed
that the nuclear family, with its relatively few intimate
contacts, provided a poor environment for raising children. (Perhaps you know the
African saying,
“It takes a village to raise a child”
)
•
There was arowing concern about western consumerism.
•
Greater awareness about nature and the environment.
•
And for many, the unequal distribution of wealth became a big concern.
The wish to do something concrete with these issues led to the creation of the first communal
living groups (
woongroepen
) in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The idea of co-housing (centraal wonen
) first appeared in the early seventies and the MW2 projects ( Environmentally and
People Friendly Living and Working -
Mens- en Milieuvriendelijk Wonen en Werken) came a
few years later. In the 80s, communities for seniors were developed and, around 1990, came
the idea of building an eco-village.
It's unlikely that ‘communes’, where you share everything, still do exist in The Netherlands,
but all the other forms of intentional communities still exist and their number is gradually
increasing. We estimate that the total number of intentional communities is over 10,000.

When university events clog the streets, i stay in or head to the wilderness, know the feeling, Lookout; glad you found something to ponder, Mumford wrote and thought in lofty climes, imo; so much so when i think of community, culture or cities, i think of him.

The opening quote of Mumford's today succinctly describes the thinking of the early days of c99 as i recall the many expressions for creating this space and community: "ours [is] to march out to newly plowed fields, to create fresh patterns of political action, to alter for human purposes the perverse mechanisms of our economic regime, to conceive and to germinate fresh forms of human culture."

An as you allude, it's a long way to Tipperary from here in the US of A; but possible.

Recently, i've grown concerned about "irrational exuberance" driving social media
into sustaining and forwarding poorly sourced, tweet-sourced or trumped-up memes designed to breach, to tarnish, to separate we, the people. I fear this new phenomenon.

Alas, this media, as most things depends upon how one makes use, i suppose, can't filter without becoming censorship on one hand, but best not to deny it's insidious presence, either; necessary to allocate more powder to a fight when powder is needed on the main front in analogy.

Anyways, i'm rambling; thanks for reading and enjoy the fruits of that good mountain!

edit for spelling

We can live in harmony, but it is a swim upstream. The Dutch seem to have a good grasp on sanity. They have over 10,000 intentional communities in their small country.
http://www.lvcw.nl/teksten/Cohousing%20in%20the%20Netherlands%20-%20as%2...

Thanks for the thought provoking OT. I'm home early this AM from Trade Day. It is the weekend of the big yard sale and it is crazy in our normally quiet and calm community. So I'm home hiding from the busy scene. More in tomorrow's WW.

@Citizen Of Earth
Took them on in the press for years here in NC; making a little progress about 18 years ago outing state legislators in the koch pocketbooks, but they won, especially in 2010. Today, legislators not directly under their thumb are hard to come by.

You may enjoy this clip by Velshi of MSNBC, Jane and the Kochs, Meet Jane:

Thanks for reading; hoping you've a great day!

She was a guest on Bill Maher last night. I know, I know, Maher yuck. But she was very convincing about her analysis of what the Koch Brothers are up to -- and it is scary shit.

Koch's hand picked judge for SCOTUS (Kavanaugh) is close to being seated on the court.
Kavanaugh will enable the Koch's "Constitutional Revolution" to gut/revise the US Constitution in their favor.
Koch's Plan: End Social Security and Medicare, Add voter-id requirement to the Constitution (aka make voting harder), revoke the 17th amendment which allows voters elect US senators rather than being appointed by state governments (because state governments are so easily bribed).

Duration: 4:49

She had a lot more great insights beyond this 4 min clip.
Her book is 'Democracy in Chains' details the Koch Brothers strategy. (which I have not read)

And, Good morning all.

@Raggedy Ann @Raggedy Ann
Glad you are on the mend, does take the patience of waiting for the rain to come or end doesn't it?

In reading your poem, my thoughts went to an old scene planted in my brain long ago, the scene of an old man and young boy siting by the river and the old man answering the child's questions, guiding the little one in knowledge, spirit of the life-giving river; was that Hermann Hesse, can't recall?

Do take care and cheers for the poem!
Sending a little music...

I’m working hard to heal my body. A friend once told me to be the water, which I’m clinging to.

Be the water.
flow downstream.
Rush around the obstacles,
stay calm over the waterfalls.

Be the water,
take life as it comes.
There will always be challenges
as we journey down our path.

Have a beautiful Saturday, everyone!

@mhagle
proud of; in northwest Georgia, his glory was serving a watermelon to family at xmas.

About the biggest man living at the time, successful in his immaculate three piece suits, hats cigars and pipes; mostly pipes, pipes of magic design everywhere, a hard working man, gentle underneath.

Grandmother, French, was five foot tall.

Please forgive my belated reply; i've been under the weather, not wanting to move, bed mostly since the weekend. Another whatever; feeling some better today. Anyways, thanks for reading and sharing in hopes of seeing you this weekend.

Posting a bit late. I enjoyed the OT and the amiable conversation that followed.

On a bright happy note, I picked this over 20 lb. watermelon from my garden last week. We were so delighted to discover it was absolutely delicious. First time ever to grow a great watermelon, and hope it won't be the last.

No rain for a month now and very hot. Watering to keep things alive and replanting. Froze 25 quarts of fresh peaches from our trees last week - never done that before.

Your fish sounds wonderful. Hmmm . . . yum.

I am glad someone is working on creating sustainable living spaces. Hopefully it will gain momentum and someday overtake places like Detroit.

And this paragraph touched me . . .

If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day’s newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds." ~ Mumford

To make our lives into manifestations of love. Been thinking about that quite a bit lately. To counter the darkness out there, it seems like we need to be bright bright light.

How can I be a bright light today, in words and deeds and presence?

Thanks Smiley!

@mhagle @mhagle
often overlooked by time; a good man possessing a marvelous talent in deeply understanding community, technology, humans, the history of ideas and love with an eloquent writing style, challenging thinking, creativity and criticism; a voice of the 20th Century.

One of my favorite memories of him was his opposition to the Twin Towers in New York: he said "they were dinosaurs," before construction.

Wiki says this: "Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford."

In his book The Condition of Man, published in 1944, Mumford characterized his orientation toward the study of humanity as "organic humanism". The term is an important one because it sets limits on human possibilities, limits that are aligned with the nature of the human body. Mumford never forgot the importance of air quality, of food availability, of the quality of water, or the comfort of spaces, because all these things had to be respected if people were to thrive. Technology and progress could never become a runaway train in his reasoning, so long as organic humanism was there to act as a brake."

Modern technology has its roots in the Middle Ages rather than in the Industrial Revolution. It is the moral, economic, and political choices we make, not the machines we use, Mumford argues, that have produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits serve the majority so imperfectly." Technics and Civilization, 1934

Happy in conversation and fruits; thank you again for being here.

edit for spelling!!!

Several people quote him/her here. I like the quotes.