Honored and Overwhemed

The South side of the Mercantile. The shingles, which are just scrap pieces of wood from the Shannon Pallet Mill, have been covered with a BioShield oak stain (low VOC, etc.), and the trim and doors painted with two shades of green and a dark indigo. The bales are almost all in - yay!

We have two days left for the Ideablob "sprint," when we'll find out if we'll be going forward to the finals (to win $20,000). It has been an amazing experience. Working so long in my head, with Kurt and a few friends, it has sometimes been hard to hold to vision. I know in my heart what I want to do, what I want to accomplish here at and for Dancing Rabbit, what kind of heart- and earth-centered business I dream of.

Putting it all out there to be voted on was exciting and terrifying. I sent out emails to everyone I could think of. Friends, family, people we've hiked with, former interns and visitors, the women at Eileen Fisher, friends of friends, the people who read Dancing Rabbit's website, the people who have signed up for the Mercantile website...and asked for their help.

And it has poured in. I sit, geek-i-fied to the core, watching the votes scroll by. Many names (and pseudonames) I recognize: Stan Katz (Rachel's dad), Lou Wilkinson (from the Sierra Club), Shining Uni (hi Nicole!), Silicon Valley Rebel (our favorite singer and yoga teacher), FCicela (a friend of DR), SDuffy (my business coach), ZiggyFresh, LatinGrrrl, Tamar, Alyssa, ScratchyDad (Rabbits, all). I am humbled, and grateful, overwhelmed, and weepy. Thank you so much for believing in what we are trying to accomplish. We will work hard to be deserving of your votes!

The Mercantile from the front - love those dormer windows! The porch in front of the bay window (on the right) has been completed, the rest we're working on. The concrete pad on the left is the cistern lid - under it lurks 7,000 gallons of water!

Idea Blob - with your help we can succeed!

Our business here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, the Milkweed Mercantile, is in the running for a $10K award with a website called Ideablob. As incredible as it sounds, the winner is determined each month simply by who gets the most online votes.

It seemed crazy NOT to apply. We are hoping our extended community of friends and supporters will help us get the financing we need to FINALLY open this December.

What we need from you: THREE minutes of your time now (between now and midnight Saturday, Sept. 20) and one minute next week (Sept. 21-27 for the final vote). These four minutes could make an enormous difference in the success of the Milkweed Mercantile. And it will cost you nothing.

To vote for us you will need to go to the Ideablob website, register, confirm the registration in your email, and then go back to the Ideablob website and vote for us. We timed it, and it takes less than 3 minutes.

To register and vote now, click here: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/3233-Strawbale-off-grid-business-ope

This kind of "no-strings attached" grant is ideal for us. If we win we also qualify for an additional $10K (which is donated each month by the Advanta Credit card company if the winner holds an Advanta card. When we decided to enter the contest, I applied and got one). Our goal is to use the $20k towards a windturbine and tower (which will cost approximately $40,000). Being sustainable isn't cheap!

Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your support. If you have friends who might help us we would appreciate it if you would forward this to them. We are available to answer any questions at any time.

We understand that people are often reluctant to register at online sites. I registered at Ideablob 5 months ago and only hear from them once a month when they ask me to vote for the best idea of the month. One could also 'unsubscribe' after the final vote (for us) during the week of 9/21-27.

A bit more about us: In order to remain as ethical as possible we do not accept advertising on our website, nor do we have outside investors. This means that we're operating on a shoestring BUT we don't have to answer to anyone but ourselves - the Mercantile is run cooperatively, and is profit-sharing. Our goal is to be a business incubator for members of Dancing Rabbit, enabling people here to earn a living doing what they believe in most - sustainablilty, caring for the earth, and sharing what we've learned.For even more info see our website: http://milkweedmercantile.com

Thanks again!

P.S It is now 9:23 a.m. Someone named "wutaweirdo" just voted for the Mercantile on Ideablob. Yesterday, among with all of the friends I recognized, was someone named "EspressoMonkey." How ever this ends, it has been a lot of fun along the way!

Oh, how I love Writer's Almanac

It appears each day in my in-box. The Writer's Almanac for September 17, 2008, it will announce. Some days I'm simply too busy to open it - my mind filled with inventory, paying taxes, baking cookies for the potluck and teaching the neighbor kid to crochet. But when I do open it, sometimes I get a treat, a delight, a poem so good I start to speak out loud to myself: "Ohhhh, that is SO good!"

Today is one of those days. My everyday, non-smoking, non-drinking, happily married life is so, well, mundane. Oatmeal for breakfast (oooh! pancakes on Sunday!), laundry, email, meetings, lunch, bla bla bla. How many times, while reading one of the thousands of books I have devoured over the years, have I compared myself to the people within its pages? How I long to be sophisticated, always armed with a snappy come-back. Or dressed so divinely that all conversation stops when I enter a room. Or to be a part of the British upper crust (Brideshead Revisited), or to drink in a smoky Scottish bar (Garnethill by Denise Mina), or watch the tarpon spin off of Sanibel Island (the Doc Ford series by Randy Wayne White), be a fly on the wall in Tony Bordain's kitchen (Kitchen Confidential), hunt for wild grapes with Edna Lewis (The Taste of Country Cooking), or be a wise older woman (Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk).

Some things in books I am thrilled NOT to experience: finding a murdered man in my living room (more Denise Mina), particpate in the horrors of war (Pat Barker's Regeneration, Robert Graves' Good Bye to All That), feel the total disorientation of the after effects of a lightening strike (A Match to the Heart by Gretel Erlich), the grinding poverty of Ireland during the famine (too many to mention)...

ronald Wallace captures this disconnect perfectly. So here is today's poem. Enjoy.

Literature in the 21st Century
by Ronald Wallace

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
in its thick, manly wrapping,
the flash of the match between
worn matchbook and stained forefinger,
the cup of the palm at the tip,
the intake of air, and the slow and
luxuriant, potent and pleasurable
exhale. Shall we say also a glass
of claret? Or some sherry with its
dark star, the smoke blown into the bowl
of the glass, like fog on portentous
morning, the rich man-smell of gabardine
and wool, of money it its gold clip?

Sometimes I wish I had habits
a man wouldn't kick, faults a good man could
be proud of. I'd be an expatriate from
myself, all ink-pen and paper in a Paris café
where the waiters were elegant and surly,
the women relaxed and extravagant
with their bobbed hair and bonbons, their
perfumed Galoises, their oysters and canapés,
and I'd be writing about war and old losses—
man things-and not where I am, in this
pristine and sensitive vessel, all
fizzy water, reticence, and care, all reduced
fat and purified air, behind my deprived
computer, where I can't manage even
a decaf cap, a mild Tiparillo, a glass of
great-taste-less-filling light beer.

"Literature in the 21st Century" by Ronald Wallace from Long for This World: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.

(Michael) Palin for President

I think I'll join the Silly Party. Although Kurt, quoting our favorite Ministry of Silly Walks, just told me that "it's not silly enough!"

We're doing well on IdeaBlob - thank you so much, everyone.
More later!

Idea Blob - the joy of community

Hi friends. This morning around 8:00 the Milkweed Mercantile blurb on Ideablob went live. I don't know how it will all end, but so far it has been phenomenal.

The support and encouragement from folks we know and those we don't (yet) know has been incredibly touching. Wow. Thank you all so much for your support and willingness to register on this website.

(Here's the link, just in case you missed it: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/3233-Strawbale-off-grid-business-ope )

Daily results are posted at midnight. Oooooh! Can't wait!

The Milkweed Mercantile needs your help!

Our business here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, the Milkweed Mercantile, is in the running for a $10K award with a website called Ideablob. As incredible as it sounds, the winner is determined each month simply by who gets the most online votes.

It seemed crazy NOT to apply. We are hoping our extended community of friends and supporters will help us get the financing we need to FINALLY open this December.

What we need from you: THREE minutes of your time now (between Sept. 15-20) and one minute next week (Sept. 21-27 for the final vote). This four minutes could make an enormous difference in the success of the Milkweed Mercantile. And it will cost you nothing.

To vote for us you will need to go to the Ideablob website, register, confirm the registration in your email, and then go back to the Ideablob website and vote for us. We timed it, and it takes less than 3 minutes.

To register and vote now, click here: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/3233-Strawbale-off-grid-business-ope

A bit more about us: In order to remain as ethical as possible we do not accept advertising on our website, nor do we have outside investors. This means that we're operating on a shoestring BUT we don't have to answer to anyone but ourselves - the Mercantile is run cooperatively, and is profit-sharing. Our goal is to be a business incubator for members of Dancing Rabbit, enabling people here to earn a living doing what they believe in most - sustainablilty, caring for the earth, and sharing what we've learned.For even more info see our website: http://milkweedmercantile.com

This kind of "no-strings attached" grant is ideal for us. If we win we also qualify for an additional $10K (which is donated each month by the Advanta Credit card company if the winner holds an Advanta card. When we decided to enter the contest, I applied and got one).

Our goal is to use the $20k towards a windturbine and tower (which will cost approximately $40,000). Being sustainable isn't cheap!

Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your support. If you have friends who might help us we would appreciate it if you would forward this to them. We are available to answer any questions at any time.

We understand that people are often reluctant to register at online sites. I registered at Ideablob 5 months ago and only hear from them once a month when they ask me to vote for the best idea of the month. One could also 'unsubscribe' after the final vote (for us) during the week of 9/21-27.

Thanks again!

A Good Year for Frogs

It's been raining, raining, raining. The other night we got 3 inches. And still it kept coming. Yesterday was the annual Dancing Rabbit Open House. Scotland County was under a flood watch, and highways A, MM and 15 were closed. We had six (count 'em, SIX!) intrepid guests. We spent most of the afternoon sitting on the Mercantile porch with a revolving group of Rabbits, watching the kids race through the mud puddles.

Eleven years ago today Kurt and I were married in our garden in Berkeley. Saying "yes" on Valentine's Day 1997 when he got down on one knee in a restaurant was probably the smartest decision I've ever made. At dinner tonight we were talking about how much we love our lives. He made me laugh when he said "you know, living in community can be a great big pain in the ass, with consensus, and neighbors, and getting along. But all in all it is just great. The two of us get to spend almost every day together (instead of the few hours after a long day of work when we lived in the city) and every day with you feels like a celebration." Yep. I love that man.

That's it for now. I think I'll go kiss him on the top of his bald little head.