Second Quarter 2011 Report

From SolSeed

It’s been over three months since our last newsletter, so it’s high time to update you on SolSeed’s doings.

As mentioned in the last report, our booth at City Repair’s annual Earth Day festival was even bigger than last year, in a number of ways. In addition to the popular participatory mural painting and galaxy planter, we showed off our backyard cottage concept plans and a test copy of Happy in the Sun (more on those below). Plus we donated some space to three friends we met at last year’s Earth Day, Mathew and Molly representing Cloacina (and face painting), and Gus representing the Silverton Green Grange (and Extraterrestrial Agriculture). We met lots of interesting people and had a great time, and this time the weather was beautiful throughout.

Swift Architecture produced some beautiful concept plans for our backyard cottage. After showing them off at Earth Day, we took a break from architectural planning and started on a process of developing our community vision, values, mission, and goals, following the excellent advice in the book Creating a Life Together by Diana Leafe Christian. To this end, we held a two-day Vision Workshop during Memorial Day weekend, then continued the conversation on our regular weekly “work bee” calls. We’re also still considering other options for the next physical step in building the Seed Village, from remodeling Brandon and Shelley’s basement to buying or renting another house nearby.

After working on it for a year and a half, we’ve finally self-published our first SolSeed book, Happy in the Sun! We have an initial run of twenty copies, several of which are already spoken for (Sequoia is already very attached to his copy). If you’d like a copy, please contact brandon@solseed.org.

To celebrate the Summer Solstice this year, we went on a hike to beautiful Wahclella Falls in the Columbia Gorge, followed by dinner at the Seed Village. The falls was in an impressively large side-canyon to the south of the Columbia, on a stream dotted with huge boulders. Near the falls, we found a cave that looked like it would have been fun to explore, if only anyone had brought a flashlight. The weather was looking questionable for the hike, but the rainclouds politely held off and only sprinkled us a little until after we got back in our cars to head home, at which point the downpour began.

As for the upcoming months: We will of course be celebrating the Equinox on September 23rd. This year we’re joining a massive global event on Equinox weekend, Moving Planet, with a SolSeed bicycle squad—we hope you’ll join us! Other things we’re getting involved in are more cryptic . . . like Meetups, a church survey, and space elevators. Stay tuned for more details!

Thanks for reading!
Ben Sibelman