Transforming Communities

Be They Families, Neighborhoods, Towns or Cities.... or Countries

  Community change consultant Peter Block states the case that

“The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.”

Peter Block's website name should tell you all you need to know about what he represents. His website is titled ABUNDANT COMMUNITY: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.  

I first came across Peter in an article about building community in international schools. I loved what he had to say, including the above stand-out quote. 

Found an Eagle

Remember that song, "Found A Peanut"?

We were at the tail end of a winter solstice walk

tinged with snow on the ground and lots of cold air - Noah, Ken and Sarah came across an eagle on the ground at Walker Creek. It was frozen, perfect condition. Just the tiniest pin-prick blood spots on its white tail feathers.

What do you do with a dead eagle? Aside from keep your dog away - you are to call the National Eagle Repository.

Before we knew this, Noah was so excited about the eagle's talons: keeping them, tallying how many they were and who of his friends and family would be given one of these incredible power-packed claws. We didn't know what the National Eagle Repository was, or what it did. But Noah was feeling a bit deflated about this foiled eagle talon plans.

Sarah called to report the eagle - and passed on to Noah what she found out. If the bird is in good condition, like ours was, feathers and talons and sometimes the head are given to tribes for use in their ceremonies.

Noah's first words, when he heard the news about how the eagle parts would be used was, "Oh! That makes me feel so much better!" His reaction makes me think - we've taught him well.

From the wise collective of Wiki:

The National Eagle Repository is operated and managed under the Office of Law Enforcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside of Denver, Colorado. It serves as central location for the receipt, storage, and distribution of bald and golden eagles that have been found dead. Eagles and eagle parts are available only to Native Americans enrolled in federally recognized tribes for use in religious and cultural ceremonies.

After the legal protection of the bald eagle, Native Americans had no access to feathers and other parts of the birds they need for certain religious and cultural activities. The best known use is in war bonnets and other feathered headdresses. Some continued hunting and considered it legal on reservation grounds as hunting and their cultural self-determination was guaranteed in treaties. In the early 1970s the National Eagle Repository was operated out of Pocatello, Idaho and in the 1980s distribution was out of the USFWS Forensic Lab in Ashland, Oregon. The office collected birds and distributed them further. But the process was slow and the numbers of birds low.

President Bill Clinton signed an executive memorandum on April 29, 1994, after meeting with 300 tribal leaders at the White House. He reformed the National Eagle Repository and obliged all federal agencies to send dead eagles to the repository.^[4] Following this memorandum, in 1995 the repository moved to the Denver area and got its own offices at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

Former Walker Creeker Publishes Memoir

Congratulations to Joshua Safran, whose forthcoming book Free Spirit: Growing Up on the Road and Off the Grid will be available September 2013 in all the usual places (you know, your local bookstore! support them!) Hyperion, $24.99, (288 p.) ISBN 978-1-4013-2460-5.

Publishers Weekly already has given the book a big fat red star "of note," and a rock solid review. Here's what they have to say:

Raised by a woman (Claudia, never mom, whose quest to flee modern society survived long after hippie idealism became passé), Safran spent the 1970s and 1980s in communes, cabins, and the occasional bus. The author didn’t regularly attend school until he was 11, when his bucolic upbringing made him a target for bullies. Adding to the misery was Claudia’s big heart and idealism, which allowed for a series of bad relationships, culminating in a tumultuous marriage to an alcoholic ex-Salvadoran revolutionary named Leopoldo. The young Safran can only sit helplessly as this sporadically employed thug regularly beats Claudia, apologizes, and starts the cycle anew. As he gets older, Safran recognizes that education is his way out—and that he can confront Leopoldo. Safran, an attorney, has written a beautiful, powerful memoir that shows how a son and his mother both grew up and survived amid chaos. Even better, he recalls events without condemnation or condescension. This assured debut is reminiscent of David Sedaris’s and Augusten Burroughs’s best work: introspective, hilarious, and heartbreaking. B&W photos throughout.

What's Going On

"Humans have a long genetic heritage of belonging to a tribe, a clan, a village, a group. In today’s modern societies, people meet this need in many ways such as church congregations, clubs, extended family, etc. Intentional community is one way to meet some of our human needs as well as benefit economically."

Here here, Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski.

Michael wrote this introduction in a call for people interested in exploring the forming of a permaculture community in northwestern Montana. He also inlcuded an intriguing and informative link to a well-established and thriving permaculture intentional community in Australia, Crystal Waters Ecovillage.

Skeeter was instrumental in founding the Northwest Herbal Fair, which Walker Creek Community helped host at a property adjacent to the land trust.

Here's to amazing people doing amazing things --- together.

Summer in the Garden

Wordle the Turtle

Here is a Wordle created from the text of an essay I wrote on living at Walker Creek. (I love how it randomly created the Wordle in the shape of a footprint. Walking on earth.)

Watch for the essay in an upcoming Communities magazine issue. Meanwhile, read between the lines......!!

We Have Chickens!

Talk over the fences between us 'neighbors' at Walker Creek, if there were any fences, has been about chickens recently.

After a bit of ongoing banter, one community meeting, the transformation of an abandoned sheep shed, and the offer of five free hens -- we Creekers are in doing a happy-egg dance.

The kids named them the minute they met them. "Rootbeer!" and "Sawdust!" for the brown hens, says Noah. Fluffy for the big white one and Cotton for the smaller one. Katey chimes in, "And... Lolipop!" (go figure, her favorite food) is offered up as a name for one of them. Hannon deliberates over the rooster. "I think it should be 'Flame'." I say, how about Lolipop? Hannon grimaces. No way. Later, it gets established. The rooster henceforth shall be named: Flame Sword.

Teresa and Claire are busy turning brown paper egg cartons into custom works of art in gilded tones. Creeker Eggs, coming soon to a fridge near you (if you are so lucky!)