Damn! We hadn’t wanted it to be inside. But given the iffy off-and-on rainy weather, we had prepared for either inside or outside. And so, yes, it ended up inside, just like a winter dinner, in the middle of summer. Oh well!
But first, a bit of reflection.
I see where more people in the U.S. are living alone than ever before!
As of 2018, 28% of all Americans live alone, and that percentage has been rising for at least 50 years.
Me? I’m bucking the trends, as usual. Ever working to balance polarities, all of seem to which veer increasingly, in one direction or other.
So for living arrangements, here I am, sitting in the midst of a group (we call ourselves a pod) of people, young and old, who are undergoing an experiment in “group living,” you might call it, but we wouldn’t. We’d call it “growing community from the ground up,” since Earth herself is our common ground. Earth as Teacher, Healer, Mother. We who gather here have this grounded focus in common; other common concerns grow out of this concentrated little web of life situated within a core, mainly student rental, neighborhood of a midwestern university town. It’s amazing, how full and contented I feel, given this multidimensional, constantly changing focus. How alive. Once again (see last week’s offering) are photos from activities pursued over just the last five days days, in two parts. First, dinner, then work parties.
Community Dinner 8/22/19:
Dinner was inside the Overhill house, and due to our scare the week before — when, thanks to Jim who saved the day with a massive main entree, and Devin with his amazing ice cream dessert — we finally had enough food offerings to make us feel full; so as I said, this week the offerings were massive and varied. We all dug in:
Note the brown bottles: those happen to be Dan’s burdock wine. Incredibly good.
As ever, we used all three rooms, kitchen, den, and living room.
And we even brought out the rest of that extraordinary ice cream cache from last week to share for dessert. And geez! still four left over!
But the real action started after dinner, when Jim pulled out a pack of cards, and once again, the regulars went at it.
This time the game was called, he said, “Buffalo,” and it depends on being the first to call out the name of a famous person that supposedly can be attached to two out of four adjectives. I just asked Camden about it, and he told me they also had meta-rules, whereby they would take whatever name someone called out at face value, agreeing, apparently, to be “buffaloed.”
Well, at the end, Ellie won, hands down. Ellie Camden’s left.
Apparently Ellie knows a lot of famous names, many of which I and others have never heard of. Real? Unreal? Who knows. General hilarity.
Jim, BTW, on left above, last night delivered to us an enormous cache of frozen meat, all locally raised. He says he’s moving, so cleaning out his freezer! Wow! Thank you!
But really, the most important action took place in the kitchen, where, as usual volunteers took over the dish washing. This time Andreas stayed at that sink a long long time —
— after being roped in by Annie, here drying. Hey, what’cha thinkin,’ Annie?
BTW: See next post, coming tomorrow, for a gift Annie arranged for us, from a nearby horse farm. YES!
