August 28, 2010. My first impression upon entering Cecile Andrews’ cheery house is that simplicity doesn’t mean deprivation. The author of Circle of Simplicity, Less is More and Slow is Beautiful, Cecile lives in a spacious Seattle house brightened with colorful dishes and artwork, beaming cut sunflowers, and inviting book-filled walls.

Instead, Cecile said in our conversation, simplicity for her meant having time and freedom to slow down and savor life. For decades her simplicity circles have empowered people to discover and do what really matters to them. She asserts that we need supportive circles when we step outside cultural norms, so we don’t feel all alone.

Cecile is building community wherever she goes. Renters live in the upstairs and downstairs of her house. She’s active in neighborhood groups, where people are encouraged to “stop and chat” with their neighbors rather than avoiding one another. She’s part of SCALLOPS (Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound) and now Transition Seattle.

Cecile notes that good social ties make us feel more secure and happier — in contrast to working harder for more money beyond a level sufficient to meet our needs. Those social connections evoke our caring — for one another and for the whole planet. Celebrating community in ever-widening circles. (www.cecileandrews.com)

Thursday, August 19, 2010. Natural builder Lydia Doleman of Flying Hammer Productions gave us plenty of stories about the urban neighborhood community that’s evolving from two adjoining homes she purchased with friends. And she gave us a tour of the cob studio and recently-completed straw bale home.

When Lydia and a friend bought a Craftsman-style home in a Portland neighborhood, they renovated it  earthen wall surfaces, healthier paints and more. Following permacultural principles, Lydia wanted to keep as many resources on site as possible, like rainwater catchment to keep water in the land rather than diverted into the city sewer system. When she built the cob (clay and straw) studio, she included a living roof so the land taken by the studio is “returned” to growing plants.

Some years ago when an adjoining rental house became available, she contacted the owner and purchased it. She took the fence down between the parcels, and put glass french doors on both house sides facing into the central commons. This “social architecture” was an invitation for residents to interact with one another, evolving into a community that now houses about a dozen people in three homes (see “Fences Down: Creating Community in the City“).

Lydia gave us a tour of the recently-completed third home. It’s architecturally modeled like the others yet far more resource efficient. It has a 500 square foot ground floor with a single kitchen, dining, living room plus an extra room, and 300 square feet in the second story with two bedrooms and bath. The structure is framed like a traditional “stick built” home but boasts thick straw bale insulation, hydroponic heating in the floors, natural cob wall finishes, salvaged wood where possible, and custom-built windows. A metal roof feeds rainwater collectors, and it too has a living roof ready for planting. Solar hot water will be joined by solar electricity soon.

She also gave us a tour of the charming small cob studio. But I’m going to let you wait see it in the video!

Building structures, social structures. Starting with what’s already in place and then…enhancing it, bending it towards shared living, a lighter footprint, sustainability. (www.theflyinghammer.com).

The enticing fragrance of fresh yeasty bread beckoned us into Jen Ownbey’s converted-garage bakeshop in Olympia, Washington. A huge variety of loaves graced her shelves: yeast breads, regular and gluten-free; quick breads with mixtures of grains; sweet treats. While we chatted, she whipped up a batch of quick bread made with locally-grown zucchini — without using a recipe!

As she deftly cracked eggs together and poured them into the mix, Jen said that shareholders in her Eight Arms Bakery CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) get a yeast and quick bread each week plus baked sweet treats. She also brings her fresh baked goods to the local growers markets and natural foods stores.

We happily came away with a loaf of teff and cornmeal bread with molasses and caraway. Jen may not have eight arms, but given the prodigious amount and variety she bakes each week, it sure seems like it! (www.8armsbakery.com)

A conversation with three co-editors of Squat Birth Journal wasn’t on my original taping schedule. But when they contacted me, I thought it’d be a great topic for a show. Natural child birth, birthing without interventions and drugs, is about as sustainable an alternative (to the medical system) as it gets.

I had a dynamic and fascinating conversation with Jaydee Sperry (independent midwife), Meghan Guthrie (student midwife), and Danny Scar (aspiring midwife) (photo, right to left). Squat’s byline is “An Anarchist Birth Journal.” The people in the radical birth movement want to broaden the the conversation about options for families giving birth.

We conversed about “medicalized” midwives working within the medical system; midwives and doulas (who support the mother during labor) outside the medical system; the ability of midwives to facilitate higher-risk births like breech or twins; health insurance limitations and why laws regarding midwifery need changing; educational efforts so families know their options for birth; birthing within a caring community.

Returning to natural childbirth seems an essential element for sustainable living. After all, we’re all here because the vast majority of our foremothers practiced natural childbirth, most likely with midwives and within the embrace of community. (squatbirthjournal.blogspot.com).

“Wind up, up, up the road to the tippity top of the hill,” read the directions, “and when it flattens out at the top, my house is a hop, skip and a jump away in the young alder woods.”

What magical place were we coming to, and who would write such directions? As we walked through the alder-shaded path, slender trunks curved like a canopy over the pathway, beckoning us in…to Greg Crawford’s enchanting wattle-and-cob tiny house. Right out of Middle Earth. Or right in it.

We taped a conversation in the second-story open-air balcony / loft about Greg’s intuitive architecture. The process of building from green alder uprights stuck in cement-and-stone foundation. Weaving horizontal alder sticks to create undulating walls. Digging clay onsite to mix with straw, and applying the resulting cob to the wooden structure inside and out.

This summer season house has a dark and cozy spacious downstairs den (perhaps like the den Bear hibernates in?). And our favorite, a nest filled with pillows, the perfect soft womb to fall into. Above it, a two-story tower with inset windows of organic and ornate shapes. Ornamentation adorned nooks, chandeliers, candleholders, windows, niches.

Greg advocates building such intuitive, personal, organic structures…to sustain hearts and souls as well as bodies. And to show that with few tools, common sense, and by listening to our body’s innate wisdom, we can create our own sustainable and totally personal homes rather than make ourselves fit into the boxes built by others.

I hope you’ll be as enchanted visiting this magical place in video as we were taping it! Move over, Bilbo!

Tuesday August 17, 2010. Dignity Village is the most colorful intentional community we’ve visited, not just for the murals and vibrant colors painted on the buildings. But also for its story. It is a community of about sixty homeless people.

Now nearly ten years old, Dignity Village sits on the tarmac of a Portland city-owned lot located near the Columbia River in a mixed industrial and open space region. This non-profit organization has numerous enterprises which enable them to pay for electricity, water, and portable toilet services like any tenant. Except for the fenced parcel, they receive nothing from government funding.

Jonboy Hawkes, outreach coordinator, gave us the grand tour. All of the buildings sit on stilts at least 18″ above the ground, primarily to be above the level where rats can reach. Houses have a 10 ft x 15 ft footprint, and are made from salvaged and donated materials. There’s a lot of green plants everywhere, softening what would otherwise be a stark landscape.

There’s a big greenhouse, showers, portable toilets, community kitchen, large community building (one of only two that have electricity), entry/guard house, container gardens, and a thrift shop. Any person, not just community members, can use the facilities during their open hours.

Dignity Village has its own board, rules for governance, committees. All members must agree to several rules including no violence, no theft, no drugs or alcohol, no constantly disruptive activities. Each member must contribute 10 hours a week to upkeep and maintenance of the village.

They live up to their name, providing dignity and respect for homeless people. I think they may be the wave of the future in many ways, and not just for the homeless. (www.dignityvillage.org).

Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP) is a grassroots gleaning organization with a social conscience. Not only do volunteers share in the harvest, but half of the harvest goes to food banks and other agencies serving low-income people. And half of the harvesting positions are reserved for low-income people (yes, they have waiting lists!).

Executive Director Katy Kolker worked with food justice before founding PFTP, so she built into the organization an ethic of sharing with those in need. Here’s how it works: Landowners register their fruit trees and notify PFTP just before prime harvest time. The organization then coordinates volunteers for a harvest party, and provides all the equipment.

We joined in on an apple-tree harvest party. After carrying equipment to the back yard, about a dozen volunteers circled for introductions and to get guidelines from harvest coordinators Eliza and John. Guidelines like how and where to safely use the ladders, and how to pick fruit (pull up! the stem is more likely to stay on the fruit, and protect microorganisms from entering and accelerating decay.)

The team donned volunteer-made harvesting aprons with big front pockets, and then set off in all directions to work! Several held a tarp under the tree to catch falling apples when tree limbs were shaken. Others climbed ladders, and several tried the long fruit-picking poles for fruit otherwise beyond reach. Others sorted fruit into best (for the food bank) and good (for the volunteers). After weighing the harvest, they cleaned the grounds, divided the good bounty among themselves, and were good to go!

Katy told us of other PFTP programs that extend their services: a tree stewardship program that prunes and cares for registered trees in wintertime; tree scouts who identify potential trees for the program; and an orchard being planted on city land. With over 500 trees in their registry, and about as many volunteers, they share thousands of pounds of fruit with their community each season — surely a fruitful endeavor on all levels. (www.portlandfruit.org)

P.S. We collected a bag of apples at the harvest party, and made Gleaned Apple Pie in the mobile studio’s tiny oven. Divine!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010. When Daniel Lerch said we just had to get a tour of Free Geek, I wasn’t sure this was Peak Moment show material. After the tour, I was sure. A few days later, Reuse Program Coordinator Alison Briggs gave us a tour of the huge busy facility.

Free Geek is a non-profit organization that accepts donations of used electrical equipment, mainly computers. An army of volunteers tests, refurbishes, reuses and recycles the parts.

In their Adoption program, 24 hours of volunteering enables the volunteer to receive a free computer running open source software (free to the public), 3 hours of training, and a year of free tech support.

In their Build program, volunteers learn how to build a computer. After building five computers for Free Geek, the sixth belongs to the volunteer. Finished computers are sold in the thrift shop, given to volunteers, and provided to other non-profits.

The place just bustled with activity! A huge warehouse full of lots of people getting the job done — sorting, testing, identifying reusable components, pulling apart recyclable materials, building computers, checking software.

I love it that people who might not otherwise be able to afford a computer have a way to get one. They’re empowered to learn for themselves rather than depending on specialists. A lot of waste is recycled responsibly and kept out of the landfills. The non-profit is self-sustaining. It’s run democratically (by committee; there is no Executive Director). What a great organizational model for environmental responsibility and social equity! (www.freegeek.org).

In a city the size of Portland, what are the chances of running into one of the five people you know that live here — and in an off-the-beaten track location? And that person happened to be the ONLY one we’d planned to visit that wasn’t available (he was caring for a friend after emergency surgery). And was our one host and guide for our 2006 taping tour, Daniel Lerch, the central force behind Post Carbon Cities?

Right. Astronomical. It happened today.

After taping a show in a suburban neighborhood village in southeast Portland, we headed miles to the west to investigate foldable bicycles. While out on our test ride along the streets in this industrial/commercial area, Robyn heard someone call her name. She turned.

It was Daniel! We were astonished.  Yes, synchronicities like this DO happen on our journey, which we take as affirmations that we’re on the right track. Still, this was a BIG stretch.

Daniel jumped out of his car for warm hugs and greetings. He asked if we’d visited “Free Geek” two blocks away. We shook our heads: never heard of it. Astonished that no-one in Portland had told us of it, and having only a few minutes, he escorted us there, two blocks away.

When we walked in, the greeter Liane invited us to take a tour, and then took a second look at me. “I know you,” she exclaimed. “You’re on TV! From Peak Moment!”

My jaw dropped.

“My partner is obsessed with your show. We’ve watched the one about your place over and over again.”

Another synchronicity from the Universe, an affirmation. Our show is being watched by more folks than we could ever know, and it is making a difference in their lives.

Daniel grinned, then returned to his busy life. It was like we three met at the convergence of two parallel universes so he could escort us to our next place, and then disappear back into his universe.

Like it was his destiny to appear on just that day while we were out on a street riding bikes - he never would’ve recognized us in our car - even off our planned route. We three all were off our planned route, so the sync-up could happen.

Thank you Universe.

Monday, August 16, 2010. When you turn into the driveway from the busy four-lane thoroughfare, you’re greeted by trees and flowers within the central parking lot and in front of the surrounding warm-colored apartments. It’s an oasis of lush green biodiversity, a rural-feeling village within an urban surround. Permaculture put into practice.

In the four years since we taped Pam and Joe Leitch of the Portland Permaculture Institute, they’ve accomplished the impossible. Their renovated farmhouse in northeastern Portland has expanded to become a 37-unit ecovillage. They purchased an adjoining apartment complex which they upgraded to be as energy efficient and green as reasonably possible. And they worked entirely “the system” to get construction loans and enable mortgage financing as a condominium.

At the same time, they established the ecovillage vision and values, by-laws, and had numerous meetings with potential members to make sure the fit was good both for prospective and existing members. In spite of the economic crash of 2008, the ecovillage was fully bought into by opening day in spring of 2009. And the residents had already begun bonding as a community.

It seemed to us that the community members are comfortable with one another. Like an extended family, perhaps. The eight-year old who greeted us knew right where Joe and Pam live. We taped our conversation not only with Joe and Pam, but also with several community members. You’ll get a flavor for the many working groups, required trainings in conflict resolution and consensus, and what it’s like living there.

It seems this ecovillage didn’t have to wait for years for people to bond into a community: it took the fast track not only for renovation but for community-building. A model for creating intentional community in place, and a good resource for others wishing to do likewise.