It has been our experience that these are some of the solutions
for personal and planetary transformation:
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So who are we?
These are websites I have developed for
communities which we are helping to grow.
I am an intensely passionate person with values to which I am deeply committed. I am involved with sustainable communities including a connection with Cohousing and other forms of Intentional Community. I most relate to the principles of ecovillages, which include aspects of Social/Community, Ecology, and Cultural/Spiritual. I began a community house in San Diego in 1978 which is still functioning and is called the Enchanted Garden. Brian and I got married in 1986. He shares my deep commitment to these values. In 1989, we moved to the Olympic Peninsula in NW Washington and began developing what would be called Dragon Belly Farm. For a variety of reasons that you can read about on our websites, I returned to California in 1993 with my husband joining me in 1996. We are currently involved with developing an urban retrofit mini ecovillage community in San Mateo. We had expected to retire to Dragon Belly and travel a lot....but that is currently more of an unknown. It looks like we will be spending our retirement years at the farm, at our bay area suburban ecovillage, wtih our "family" in Damanhur in Italy, and traveling.
And of course my life also includes dancing, travel, more recently drumming, and .....
My husband, Brian, works for United, and we make very good use of the flight benefits provided by that job. As a teacher I had more holidays than he does so have taken some trips without him. My first trip using the benefits was to Costa Rica in 1997 for a month in an attempt to improve my Spanish followed by a trip to Thailand in 1998. We took a trip together to Europe in 1999. I went to Germany for the World's Fair with my sister in October 2000. In December 2000, Brian and I celebrated the summer solstice in Australia. Some of the highlights of that trip include a visit to Kookaburra Ecovillage We also visited the Osho Mevlana Community near Byron Bay and had an interesting stopover at a beautiful Taoist Temple.In April 2001, we traveled to Thailand. In June, it was amazing South Africa. In October I revisited Damanhur, a spiritual community in Northern Italy and then back to South Africa in January 2002. In April 2002, we went to Cuba with Global Exchange and in October, I returned to Damanhur. In December, Brian and I visited Panama. In April 2003 we both returned to Damanhur to check out the house we had helped purchase, Villa Cornucopia, and to make contact with the Italian family with whom we would share that house and again in the fall of 2004. In December 2004, we went to Beijing, China with a day trip to the Great Wall. We returned to China in April 2005. In October 2005, we traveled closer to home, to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where we became quite enthralled with the art of the Hichol Indians, and purchased pieces from several galleries. In December 2005, we made a last minute decision to go to Egypt.
I will have to think back abouat our travels in 2006 and 2007 as I did not update this portion of my website for awhile. In October of 2008, we enjoyed a week in Austria and then a trip back to Damanhur for a second week.I retired from teaching in July 2009, which opened even more travel possibilities. In Septemer of 2009 we brought one of our oldest friends to Europe with us, her first trip, and we spent a week on the beautiful Dolomites of N. Italy with day trips to Lago de Garda, Venice, and Verona. I will add links soon.
Dancing
Websites that are
significant to us and reflect our values:
Sustainable Building
(a local resource center dedicated to reducing waste)Sustainable Architecture, Building and Culture(a local resource for salvaged materials)
Holistic Health and Natural Food
Beautiful Zapatista Corn Art--see opportunities to support these courageious indigenous people through Schools for Chiapas.
As an active Green, I often encounter the challenge that we are spoilers. I totally disagree. As I said once to a former congressman, a truly progressive Democrat, John Vasconcellos, when he expressed concerns about us leaving the Democrats, I replied that they left us. Though after I read the Avocado Declaration, I was not sure that the Democrats, on a national level, ever truly supported a progressive agenda. Anyway, I wanted to share a few websites that I found that talk about the fallacy of the spoiler effect.
More recently, I have been excited about the potential of sharing information, particularly related to activism. In 2009 I began by using an amazing little application on my iPhone called qik. It enabled me to turn my iPhone3G into a video camera and stream to the net... for instance, this is a video of the Green Party candidate for governor, Laura Wells. I used this technology extensively through 2009 and most of 2010 and shot lots of qik videos. The quality is not the best, but the phone was always in my pocket.
I have since improved my technology. I also have gathered resources about Laura including a video shot mid-August with my new IPhone4.
Spirituality
Any thoughts you want to share with
me....
minimally updated 3/10
though I haven't checked
validity of all the links
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