Mitt liv som Tobin

3. Buying the house. The co-op is certainly fulfilling a role in (y)our lives. It's a fun place to live, and living there is a significant experience, something every member will remember and learn from and cherish. The co-op is fulfilling its social role. By buying and preparing food in bulk, it is partially fulfilling its financial role.

But the economic realization of the co-op requires that the co-op buy its house. The co-op is supposed to "bring the benefits of home ownership to a transient population". The not-for-profit organization stands in as the owner, while the membership rotates through. The money the co-op saves by not paying rent gets poured into infrastructural improvements. The co-op has a lot of cool stuff now: gardens and hot tubs and a movie theatre. Think of how much more the co-op could accomplish if it had thousands of dollars in development money? It could buy itself double-paned windows and insulation, and then you wouldn't be so cold all winter, and would save even more money on heating. You could build a greenhouse. You could make the third floor habitable. You could start a cafe down the street. You could help new fledgling co-ops get off the ground. You could buy another house! But first you have to buy this one.

There are some well-founded worries, but they can be addressed.

Will the co-op be able to fill the responsibility of home ownership? Of saving enough money to replace the roof when the need arises? Of performing routine maintenance? I think so, but if you have doubts, you can hire NASCO to help you.

The price. It's irrelevant. We've spent $35,000 in rent while quibbling over whether the purchase price of the house should be $50,000 or $75,000. It's a steal at anything less than $100,000 anyway.

The house itself. You don't think the co-op is actually going to move, do you?

Imaginary legal problems. Are just that.

The only reason the co-op exists at all is because Chris & I agreed to rent nine units of housing from Dave and Dave despite only having two other members lined up. And those members lined up based on only our ranting about what an awesome co-op we'd have if they came and built it with us. With this faith, they packed up their moving trucks, and drove to Rochester. The membership began trickling in, and they stepped up to the challenge. (I don't even remember how Far and Heather turned up, but
one day they were there, clip-boards in hand, giving tours and preaching the co-op dream.) Soon we had to turn people away--we had a waiting list! It was a leap in the dark, but it worked. Precisely because of the "damn the torpedoes" attitude. It was a dream and leap and we knew we were going to make it work, and it did.

The co-op needs to make the next leap. Please buy the house.

My former self was kind enough to get an airline ticket departing at nearly 11AM instead of the 6AM flights he usually gets. This was wonderful.

Louisiana is in its balmy, subtropical spring, but patches of snow still dot the countryside around Rochester.

At the airport in Rochester I was met by Elisa, a French girl who recently moved into the co-op, who delivered me there.

The co-op itself looks like its old self, only moreso; it seems to be doing fine. The theatre in the attic is awesome. And the current residents have crafted themselves a new hang-out spot in the most unlikely of locations: the old cistern in the basement of the brick house. Speaking of the brick house, Luke has started a commercial bakery there, "Small World Bakery." The co-op is having a music-and-story night/afternoon on Saturday, which I hope to attend if the qual stuff is under control.

The most surprising change in the neighborhood is that University of Rochester has built a huge housing complex on South Plymouth Avenue, between the foot bridge and the co-op. (It's not occupied yet.) No visible progress has been made at Urban Brew (the coffee shop to-be on Genesee street), but I'm told that the project's been bought out by the Boulder Coffee people--probably for the best.

Unfortunately I'm feeling like I've come down with a cold. Hopefully a good night's sleep will do the trick. Tomorrow I'll go into the University, see people, go to the colloquium, drink free library coffee, and try to study/prepare my talk.

Photo by Graham Saathoff.

It's nice to see the hot tub at Ant Hill co-op is getting good use! Also, it's hilarious how few of these people I know.

The first time I found out about the MentorHouse, a kind of co-op house a block or two from Caltech, I read on their wiki that the house might have been demolished. You see, the owner wanted to build condos in its place. Tragedy!

After getting in touch with the MentorHouse folks, I learned that there was a stay of execution, as it were: the house, more than fifty years old, qualified as an historic structure! Saved! Moreoever, someone was just moving out and, yes, would we like to move in today or tomorrow? But then that person decided not to move out after all. Psyche!

Then we showed up here to visit and learned the bizarre epilogue: The landlord sold the house to a new owner, who promptly served the MentorFolks a 30-day notice of Lease Termination. He wants to live here himself, and in California that's legal grounds to dump your tenants.

But they are festive as ever here in this decadence, lounging eveningly in front of a fire (burning the bits of a palm tree that was just chopped down by the new owner's gardening crew), and sampling from what seems to be an abundance of chocolate. Indeed, we walked in to a massage chain and shortly later a MentorResident burst in the door, returned from a trip to Baja, and handed out what he described as "the cheapest beer in Mexico!" It turned out to be made in Belgium.

We're comfortably set up in a spare bedroom for the denouemont. The electricity's to be cut off on Tuesday, and the eviction is January 8th!

Bread and Puppet came to our house, and their performance on Saturday night was terrific, a "circus" with the Federal Emergency Elephant, the Finger Pointing Procedure, a chorus of turkeys, and Mister Everything Is Fine. If you are perplexed, reading this, what to think a puppetshow might be--I, too, didn't quite know what to expect. The old Bread And Puppet shows featured gigantic puppets held aloft on poles by several people. The touring performance is kind of a circus/dance show with elaborate costumes--puppets, if you will.

As for the name, Peter Schumann explains: "To put bread and puppets together in 1963 seemed like a correct first step in the fight for the immediate elimination of all evil."

They are traveling with a troupe of seven puppeteers/performers but recruit about again that many in volunteers for each show. It was hilarious seeing Jimmy from our house prance on stage during the show—I am amazed that the volunteers were so integrated into the show with only a couple hours rehearsing. Trumpet and drum and saxaphone in a lively circus band made the performance all the more festive.

I learned a little more about the Bread And Puppet Company. It sounds very intense: they live on a largely-self-sufficient farm in vermont, with chickens and goats and a cow, and with a garden, and with milking and cleaning and all that, as a background for the puppeteering.

After the show, I invited everyone in the audience back to our house for a "low key reception." I bought many good beers (Saranac's 12 Beers of Winter; Southern Tier's variety pack; Custom Brewcrafters' Cream Porter and 19th Hole) for the occassion and it was very festive. It pleases me greatly to see the house full of so many folk mingling, to have so many people nestled down in the living room of our second house.

Today Luke and Jimmy and Dan from the co-op, and Dave and Dave, and a couple of the puppeteers really did build a wood-fired brick oven. I didn't quite believe it, but when I woke up there it was in partial construction. When Owen got home he saw it, and, with awe, remarked, "and here all I've done in the last two hours is to see a movie!"

Bread and Puppet is performing this Saturday at the U of R ($1 UR, $5 others, 8:30pm). In fact, we're hosting them and their puppets here at Ant Hill Co-op for the weekend. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Bread and Puppet:

The Theater was founded in 1962-1963 in New York City. It was active during the Vietnam War in anti-war protests, primarily in New York. It is often remembered as a central part of the political spectacle of the time, as its enormous puppets (often ten to fifteen feet tall) were a fixture of many demonstrations. In 1970 the Theater moved to Vermont, where it still resides; there is a Bread & Puppet Museum on its Vermont land, showcasing its decades of work. The Bread & Puppet Theater has received National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Until 1998 the Theater hosted an annual Pageant and Circus (in full, Our Domestic Resurrection Circus), in and around a natural amphitheater on its Glover grounds. In the 1990s the festival became very large, drawing crowds in the tens of thousands of people who camped on nearby farmers' land over the summer weekend of the pageant. The event became unmanageably large and less and less concerned with the theater's performance. In 1998 a man was accidentally killed in a fight while camping overnight for the festival, and director Peter Schumann subsequently cancelled the festival. Since then the theater has instead offered smaller weekend performances all summer long, and travelled around New York and New England performing.

On Friday I am going to Ann Arbor for the "NASCO Institute" co-op extravaganza. It should be great fun roadtripping out there: Jonathan, Owen, Joanna, Bree, Jimmy, and Luke are coming too. We're staying at the Georgia O'Keeffe house, part of the big co-op system at University of Michigan.

Via their couchsurfing profile, I just found out about the Mentor House, which seems to be an awesome little pseudo-coop at Caltech. But it may have been demolished. Enquiries have been sent.

We went to a wedding. I took photos.

I was thinking I would delay the public announcement until everything had fallen into place. But there is no sense in that. Here it is: Bree and I are moving to Los Angeles in December and to Louisiana in July and will remain in Louisiana for at least a year. (Briefly, and in a pun, we are moving to LA.) After Louisiana: Unknown.

To pre-emptively answer a few questions: There will be a big Going Away party. The co-op will persist. In California I will work at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, better known as Caltech. In Louisiana, the LIGO Livingston Observatory. All of this is predicated on various applications being approved and accepted that have not yet been so. Thinking two steps ahead, planning two moves.

What I need from you is a Reading List and a little networking. I need to hit the ground running. What should I read? For Los Angeles, I have City of Quartz. I have "Los Angeles Against The Mountains." I need more. I need to be culturally aware. I need the zeitgeist. I need the Weltanschauung. And Louisiana—I know nothing! Give me a reading list. Who should we know? And, where should we live? I grew up in Los Angeles's shadow, but know nothing of it.