![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
NASCO Institute
Nov. 12th, 2005 09:22 pmWe hit the Pennsylvania border at dawn. I nodded off, woke up again in Ohio. Drove through Cleveland and Toledo.
The NASCO staffers couldn't have arranged for better weather here in Ann Arbor. The skies are crisp and clear, sunny in the day, cool yet unusually warm at night. I escaped the confines of the house and slept outside last night, on a couch on a porch, breathing the clean, fresh air. It was excellent.
I wasn't the only one. Walking to the meeting this morning, I passed other co-ops, their porches squirming with sleeping bags. Happy co-opers waved.
The conference here ("Institute") is so packed with events, it is completely overwhelming. Last year I counted 112 distinct events, this year I didn't count. But the main thing is the incredibly energy involved in getting together in a co-op roadtrip to a faraway town and then camping out with 500 other co-opers from all over the country and sharing ideas.
The most thrilling part for me was seeing Amol and Bree and Doug emerge from the first two workshops, ardently discussing how to implement ideas found here back home in Rochester.
Two other guests at Vail arrived late last night. I let them in myself and gave them the tour, showed them a place to sleep. That's sort of indicative of the co-op way. Just hours earlier someone who actually lived here was giving me the same introduction and welcome. We must have appeared almost as thrilled to arrive here as these two new arrivals, after our 400 mile roadtrip from Rochester. But they were esctatic—they'd just arrived here in Ann Arbor from Davis, California, after a train ride of three days. The train ride was described as "amazing." Imagine it: through the Sierras, over the Rocky Mountains, through Grand Canyon territory... The Austin, TX coopers chartered a bus for the twenty-three hour ride to get here.
Far seems beside himself here, completely in his element, sharing ideas, meeting all the incredible people, I would say just swimming through the thick of it, through the energy.
So co-opers come from near and far and it is incredible. Arriving here, they gave us a bike tour of the city. A^2 co-opers had taken up a collection amongst themselves of bikes to loan to us, their guests, for the occassion.
It's so satisfying to be here, one year later. Last year Chris and I were here with the vaguest idea: "we want to start a student housing co-op in Rochester." This year we are back, seven housmates from our 16-member Rochester co-op. I run into organizers I met last year. Chantel from the Great House project in Ontario came here last year with the crazy idea of having their group of Architecture students acquire land and build the house and community of their dreams. Today she reports that they have incorporated, they have acquired land, that their crazy little group of architecture students will start construction on the house of their dreams in May. We smile at each other.
Last year Chris and I attended a session where we were able to ask questions of a panel of people who were involved in these development projects, who were starting nwe co-ops. This year I sat on that panel. I think what I had to say might have been helpful to some people, but I know that their questions and hearing from the other panelists was valuable to me, to remember where we are in this process. How much we have to continue networking, how we have to keep the energy up. The point was driven home again that we can't rest on what we've accomplished, but there is still very much we need to do. And we need to reenergize our dreams! Crazy skill shares, public events, potlucks, ROBOTS!
Last year I attended exclusively the "developing new co-ops" track. This year I have attended a bunch of workhops a little more simlpy fun. But I think at this stage the're just as useful.
For the first workshop, Bree and I attended Jim Jones' lecture on the history of housing co-ops in America which I found extremely interesting, how co-ops grew out of the womens' movement (because women, when they were finally allowed into universities, weren't allowed into the mens' rooming houses), how they grew out of agriculture cooperatives, how they grew with the GI bill and with returning soldiers and with the baby boom ("cultural revolution"), and how when the age of adulthood was lowered from 21 to 18, universities lost the ability to control their students in loco parentis and radical ideas like co-ed student boarding houses became possible.
I attended a workshop on "radical art collectives" where I decided that we need to commit ourselves to regular creative events. That we need the buckets of parts and the crazy projects. I asked about motivating the creative output of housing co-ops, and I think that launched a lot of the dialogue.
In the "bicycle activism" workshop we traded notes on our critical masses ("make it a party!") and heard from a whole bunch of bike cooperatives.
I began to daydream about the world these people would live in if we could have our dream world, all the bicycles and front porches and yummy dinners, people working together. I felt the urge to drop out of school and live the dream, buying buckets of parts and paints and tools and everything to simply build the crazy projects all day long.
The food has been excellent.
I ran into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metamouse and a zillion other people I know, have met, have friends in common with, have heard of, etc.
There's a huge (19 people?) USCA (Berkeley) contingent here today, more from Fort Awesome, too. And all these people from other co-ops who are from Berkeley before wherever they are from now. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone gets irritated with all us Berkeley kids running around. There's a girl starting a housing co-op in New Orleans to house displaced Tulane students. She read off her cellphone number as contact information, starting with the familiar 510-. And so many of these Berkeley people have come up to me asking whether they know me, whether we've met, when we crossed paths. Invariably we were in Berkeley at the same time, even though now my name tag says "Rochester, NY" and his says "Philadelphia, PA".
Some Toronto co-opers remembered me from when Ryan and I visited Kaya at CCRI, the Toronto co-op, last March. And I bumped into so many people I'd met at NASCO last year. It's thrilling to realize that we really do have a nationwide community of co-opers.
The NASCO staffers couldn't have arranged for better weather here in Ann Arbor. The skies are crisp and clear, sunny in the day, cool yet unusually warm at night. I escaped the confines of the house and slept outside last night, on a couch on a porch, breathing the clean, fresh air. It was excellent.
I wasn't the only one. Walking to the meeting this morning, I passed other co-ops, their porches squirming with sleeping bags. Happy co-opers waved.
The conference here ("Institute") is so packed with events, it is completely overwhelming. Last year I counted 112 distinct events, this year I didn't count. But the main thing is the incredibly energy involved in getting together in a co-op roadtrip to a faraway town and then camping out with 500 other co-opers from all over the country and sharing ideas.
The most thrilling part for me was seeing Amol and Bree and Doug emerge from the first two workshops, ardently discussing how to implement ideas found here back home in Rochester.
Two other guests at Vail arrived late last night. I let them in myself and gave them the tour, showed them a place to sleep. That's sort of indicative of the co-op way. Just hours earlier someone who actually lived here was giving me the same introduction and welcome. We must have appeared almost as thrilled to arrive here as these two new arrivals, after our 400 mile roadtrip from Rochester. But they were esctatic—they'd just arrived here in Ann Arbor from Davis, California, after a train ride of three days. The train ride was described as "amazing." Imagine it: through the Sierras, over the Rocky Mountains, through Grand Canyon territory... The Austin, TX coopers chartered a bus for the twenty-three hour ride to get here.
Far seems beside himself here, completely in his element, sharing ideas, meeting all the incredible people, I would say just swimming through the thick of it, through the energy.
So co-opers come from near and far and it is incredible. Arriving here, they gave us a bike tour of the city. A^2 co-opers had taken up a collection amongst themselves of bikes to loan to us, their guests, for the occassion.
It's so satisfying to be here, one year later. Last year Chris and I were here with the vaguest idea: "we want to start a student housing co-op in Rochester." This year we are back, seven housmates from our 16-member Rochester co-op. I run into organizers I met last year. Chantel from the Great House project in Ontario came here last year with the crazy idea of having their group of Architecture students acquire land and build the house and community of their dreams. Today she reports that they have incorporated, they have acquired land, that their crazy little group of architecture students will start construction on the house of their dreams in May. We smile at each other.
Last year Chris and I attended a session where we were able to ask questions of a panel of people who were involved in these development projects, who were starting nwe co-ops. This year I sat on that panel. I think what I had to say might have been helpful to some people, but I know that their questions and hearing from the other panelists was valuable to me, to remember where we are in this process. How much we have to continue networking, how we have to keep the energy up. The point was driven home again that we can't rest on what we've accomplished, but there is still very much we need to do. And we need to reenergize our dreams! Crazy skill shares, public events, potlucks, ROBOTS!
Last year I attended exclusively the "developing new co-ops" track. This year I have attended a bunch of workhops a little more simlpy fun. But I think at this stage the're just as useful.
For the first workshop, Bree and I attended Jim Jones' lecture on the history of housing co-ops in America which I found extremely interesting, how co-ops grew out of the womens' movement (because women, when they were finally allowed into universities, weren't allowed into the mens' rooming houses), how they grew out of agriculture cooperatives, how they grew with the GI bill and with returning soldiers and with the baby boom ("cultural revolution"), and how when the age of adulthood was lowered from 21 to 18, universities lost the ability to control their students in loco parentis and radical ideas like co-ed student boarding houses became possible.
I attended a workshop on "radical art collectives" where I decided that we need to commit ourselves to regular creative events. That we need the buckets of parts and the crazy projects. I asked about motivating the creative output of housing co-ops, and I think that launched a lot of the dialogue.
In the "bicycle activism" workshop we traded notes on our critical masses ("make it a party!") and heard from a whole bunch of bike cooperatives.
I began to daydream about the world these people would live in if we could have our dream world, all the bicycles and front porches and yummy dinners, people working together. I felt the urge to drop out of school and live the dream, buying buckets of parts and paints and tools and everything to simply build the crazy projects all day long.
The food has been excellent.
I ran into
metamouse and a zillion other people I know, have met, have friends in common with, have heard of, etc. There's a huge (19 people?) USCA (Berkeley) contingent here today, more from Fort Awesome, too. And all these people from other co-ops who are from Berkeley before wherever they are from now. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone gets irritated with all us Berkeley kids running around. There's a girl starting a housing co-op in New Orleans to house displaced Tulane students. She read off her cellphone number as contact information, starting with the familiar 510-. And so many of these Berkeley people have come up to me asking whether they know me, whether we've met, when we crossed paths. Invariably we were in Berkeley at the same time, even though now my name tag says "Rochester, NY" and his says "Philadelphia, PA".
Some Toronto co-opers remembered me from when Ryan and I visited Kaya at CCRI, the Toronto co-op, last March. And I bumped into so many people I'd met at NASCO last year. It's thrilling to realize that we really do have a nationwide community of co-opers.
