Checking in...

Hey there friends!

Last night I dreamed of a second community retreat, so it seemed like today might be a good time to check in.

Membership/Ownership Structures
I have talked with Michael Johnson and others about different legal entity options.  The last issue of GEO Magazine (one of Michael's projects) included a contribution from two lawyers who Michael thinks might be willing and interested in helping us (http://www.geo.coop/node/628).

Tom and I have also been talking about putting together some kind of presentation/document outlining different forms of membership/ownership in community.  I have a friend from Colorado who has set up several cooperatives who will be visiting NYC in September.  Her name is Mac and she will be meeting with Tom to discuss some of these ideas/options.  I am hoping to come down for the weekend she is in the city, but will have to see how school goes before I can commit.  At any rate, I will share whatever comes of this process & hope it may be helpful for us as well.

I am also wondering if Jorge Canada might also be a good person for me to approach on this issue to given his involvement with both the Ganas economy and the FIC.

I am wondering if we might want to start brainstorming a more specific list of questions/thoughts/ideas we'd like to bounce off of all these folks.  Thoughts?

Until we meet again...
We had talked about meeting again in three-ish months.  I'm starting to look at my schedule for the fall and see the following as potential times/places I could be available to head south:

September 23 - 25 NY (the weekend my friend is coming to town)
October 8 - 10     NY or MA (Canadian Thanksgiving)
October 28 - 30   MA (American Translators Association Conference in Boston - I may attend the
                            conference on the 28th and/or the 29th)

There is also a good chance that one or two weekends will work for me in November, but I need to wait and see what my exam schedule is like before getting date-specific.  I'm happy to adapt to the schedules of the rest of the group and will do my best to have some kind of presence (in person, Skype or otherwise) whenever we meet again.

Books
We had talked about creating a reading list/library for group discussion.  Claudia and I talked about composting toilets on our way home from Guilford and The Humanure Handbook is a good resource for this topic :)  Cradle to Cradle: Rethinking the Way We Make Things is a systems-level book that I find really clear and insightful.  It may be useful as we are thinking about things from an overview perspective.  For farming/food, I love the book Farmers for Forty Centuries.  It's a fairly technical overview of agricultural techniques used in China at the turn of the century.  I don't think it's really a handbook we'd want to turn to for growing things ourselves, but it is also good for inspiring systems-level thinking.  Anyways... those are just my thoughts for now.  I'm eager to hear from the rest of you on this one :)

The echo of our last retreat has stayed with me - thank you all for that.

With love,

Katie