I live with seven other people in three houses, commonly known as Green Acres Village. Two of the people (Rebecca and myself) are “old women” (she is 64, I am 74). The others are all beautiful young men in their late 20s! Male millennials, you might say. The group hasn’t always been so skewed in that direction; in fact, two years ago the group was all women — a group which, as you can imagine, Dan then gingerly stepped into as the only male. And now here we are! I tell them to bring their female friends by. They do, at least for our dinners.
No matter what others say about this so-called “snowflake” generation, I for one, deeply appreciate the complexity of what they bring to the table now, and what they will be contributing to the future as time goes on. BTW: every single one of them is a musician! We have three doctoral students at IU in music here (all pianists), plus three singers who play guitar and banjo. I’m pressing them all for a date: when will be our first house concert? Well, we have to get the piano from the garage into the living room, the doctorial students tell me. And then clean it up, get it in tune. Okay. We will accomplish this task soon, perhaps even during our very next work party.
Yesterday, for our usual Tuesday evening work party, we decided to hold a meeting instead. And I said I’d make the soup. Luckily, the soup, which started out way too spicy hot, got fixed with the addition of tomato paste, vinegar and honey (thanks to the internet, googling the question, “how to neutralize too much spicy heat?”)
Here we are, hard at work after eating, about to start our meeting,
which turned out to be a visioning of the sauna in the very back of the second DeKist house property, that we can all see in our minds’ eye: what materials to make it from (cob?), and can we shield it from the yards next door? Why, because, as Rebecca says, she wants to go naked in the sauna, and hopes the young men don’t mind. “We can have an Old Lady Sauna!” I responded, amidst the general merriment. We also determined a short list for who shall be the lead during the next three or so Community Dinners. (Logan this week, Sam next week, then ?). A fun time, and the soup turned out terrific.
The millennials’ reality is complex and multifaceted, as is all of ours. Logan (on the left in the photo above), who has been working on our Green Acres Alchemy logo, and who has agreed to put up a “Green Acres Village Art (GAVA)” page on our village website, told me during the evening that he has just made a compilation of songs that “I think you would appreciate.” Of course, I was intrigued. So we decided to watch and listen to it together, right then. Afterwards, I said, “Okay, this will be the first offering on the new GAVA page!” YES! Here you go.
