July 2010 Newsletter

Here's what SolSeed has been up to in June and July:

We held the Longest Day Party as planned on June 21st, in Brandon and Shelley's lovely backyard, with quite a few friends and neighbors dropping in at various times. There was good food and a low-key celebration of the turning of the seasons, and Charles Radley contributed the space-age aspect by handing out some copies of Ad Astra magazine.

Speaking of Brandon and Shelley's backyard, we've started work on a plan to eventually move Ben from Seattle to the SolSeed Eco-Village (which, as we've mentioned before, is starting out with Brandon and Shelley's property). The backyard cottage is a new model of urban density that allows homeowners to create more living space without modifying their existing houses. We're looking to build a cottage that is both aesthetically pleasing and a model of environmental sustainability, with features like solar panels and rainwater collection. Following the cohousing model, the cottage will not include a kitchen; the central eco-village kitchen will be in the main house to facilitate sharing of meals and daily connection. Here's a very rough visualization of what the cottage might look like, based on photos from the Longest Day Party:

Our visit to the NewSpace 2010 Conference to kick off the new SpaceWiki website was a huge success, with dozens of space-industry folks creating accounts on the site in exchange for free caricatures. Everything worked fairly smoothly despite our caricaturist being in Florida, working on photos as we uploaded them from the Silicon Valley conference location.

In the SolSeed Book Club, we finished reading Parable of the Sower and have moved on to Parable of the Talents. We'll be finishing that book shortly and starting on a third, as yet undetermined book.

Following up on our success at the Earth Day festival, SolSeed will be hosting another mural painting at the August 8 Buckman neighborhood picnic, in Colonel Summers park in Portland. As a sponsor of the picnic, we look forward to growing SolSeed's presence in the neighborhood where Brandon and Shelley live. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading!
Ben Sibelman