Any occasion to have a celebration/party/special meal and associated festivities is welcomed at Great Oak. For the first time, we celebrated Diwali with a catered Indian meal, sparklers for the kids followed by Bhangra dancing (lessons provided). The Common House dining room was decorated for the occasion with silk saris and rangoli. Click on the image below for more pictures of the occasion. Although the proceedings were much more modest than our annual Passover Seder we have grander ambitions for 2008!

(note the hanging saris on the wall along with the rangoli)

Great Oak just celebrated its 5th anniversary with a fabulous talent show and party!

We  had music, dancing, snakes, dragons, grape-hoarding, band-name unveiling, storytelling, stage-shyness, anti-art and much, much more!

Winter has been kind to us this year! Up to mid-January we had temperatures in the high 30s, 40s and low 50s. Then, when it did get cold and gloomy it got icy. I mean EVERYTHING got icy. Here are some picture of OUR FROZEN WORLD…

  click here for more pics…

The game room in the Great Oak Common House has a large wall used as a projection screen;

it is painted with screen-goo which is a

specially formatted, highly reflective acrylic paint, designed specifically for the video projection industry. Screen Goo acrylic paint allows one to transform any smooth paintable surface into a high performance projection screen.

Combined with a LCD projector, DVD player and some speakers, we have a very enjoyable, community, movie experience periodically. The movies have ranged from a “Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.” in Rivers and Tides to The Adventures of Robin Hood with Erol Flynn and Apollo 13 and to a Bollywood favorite, Dil Chahta hai, that was accompanied with popcorn flavored with chat masala and samosas as a snack during intermission as part of a member’s birthday celebration!

Most recently, it was Groundhog Day, albeit a bit early for Spring, but hope springs eternal!

Mary & Carl’s 4th New Year’s Day Euchre Tournament - and the 2nd held at Great Oak.

Twenty-four people including Great Oak family and friends, Touchstoners, (mostly the entire Rolka family, minus Chet who was sleeping) enjoyed four rounds of friendly competition.

Potluck snacks included the generous and delicious left overs from the Epicuria new Year’s Eve party.

The youngest participant was Mary’s 12 year old nephew Jordan, and the oldest was Sarah’s mom, Gail, (who is noticeably older than Jordan).

Almost half the participants were first time players!

Carl Hanna dominated the score board with a perfect 40! Lisa placed a respectable second with 38. Jim Sweeton brought up the rear with a total of 16 points.

Prizes, (and we use the term loosely, here), were distributed in a White Elephant exchange. The low scorer, (that would be Jim Sweeton) was the first to open his mystery gift. Subsequent rounds of gift opening included the option to snatch a gift from anyone with a lower score, (that would be Jim Sweeton).

Thanks to all who participated, especially Sarah and others who helped with set-up and clean up.

To see more photos click here.

Our neighboring community, Touchstone Cohousing, was constructed primarily in 2005. From April 26, 2005 until June 2, 2006 we had a webcam setup which took a picture nearly every day at 2pm. This is the compiled video of those photos:

Maybe this post doesn’t address all that, but it does showcase the talent that drives the Great Oak band.

Once upon a time, several years ago, my friend John & I wrote a little songy. We subsequently made a video which laid dormant, more or less, until the technology of video sharing caught up.

Now it’s on YouTube.

Check it out! Share with your friends! Watch it often!

To do the work required to run the community, Great Oak depends on its members and their labor. Tasks range from maintaing the buildings and infrastructure of 37 units, to facilitating meetings to mowing grass and plowing snow. Unlike many cohousing communities, the tasks required to run the Great Oak meal program is a major part of the general work program. Meal jobs represent around 50% of the work hours.

This being Michigan, the seasonal extremes mean that we have different jobs at different times of year. This winter (2006-7), we have a list of 88 different jobs representing 468 hours. Some jobs have multiple positions, and some people opt to perform multiple shifts of certain jobs. Since the list of tasks vary by season and workers like variety and change, we rotate jobs a few times a year. We also have community work days a few times a year to do those tasks that require many people at once and can be done en masse.
A general description of the Great Oak Work system that was posted to the Cohousing-L mailing list has details about our periodic work surveys and how we allocate work based on the preferences expressed on the survey.

As listed in this other recent Cohousing-L message the most desired jobs for this upcoming work season were (the number represents the weighted “average” preference):

• 42 - meal cleaner once a month
• 27 - weekday meal assistant cook
• 26 - light duty snow shoveller
• 24 - sunday meal assistant cook
• 23 - meal cleaner two times a month
• 23 - Common House sitting and guest room cleaner
• 18 - Common House laundry room cleaner
• 17 - meals billing person
• 16 - weekday meal head cook
• …
• 11 - sunday meal head cook

and the least desired jobs were:

• -88 - community meeting childcare
• -87 - Buildings committee steering rep
• -87 - Buildings committee convener
• -87 - Weekday head cook three times per month
• -87 - Lilacc (Little Lake cohousing committee) committee rep

This system has been in place for almost 3 years, over 600 meals, 2 community meetings per month, many committee meetings and thousands of hours of constructive labor. So far, we haven’t found a better way, but the work committee is always fine tuning and balancing the needs of the community with those of the busy and varied individuals who comprise it. The number of workers has been pretty consistent at around 60 adults, though the load per adult varies, with the goal always to maximize the happiness of all!
Below is the complete list of jobs, sorted by committee. Listed is also the hours per month on average someone doing the job can expect to spend and the number of positions available.

Although considering and choosing a community and then living the reality of Cohousing in one is likely an enriching, complex and difficult process, it might help you to know some of the resources that can help. Living in Cohousing is a learning process and so constant re-evaluation is the norm! To get an overview of the range of intentional communities around the world, ic.org is invaluable, and in particular, if Cohousing interests you, make sure you know about cohousing.org and the Cohousing-L email list.

Of particular interest might be the article, Is cohousing right for you? on the cohousing.org website and the similar list of questions in a Cohousing-L posting entitled People who are considering cohousing may want to ask themselves some questions. A diverse range of people live in cohousing, some are just starting out, some are old-hands, but everyone is learning how to live in community — even some brave introverts!

No, we’re not all gregarious and extroverted, and there is a huge variety of personalities that live in Cohousing, and that is the richness and challenge.

The Great Oak meal program is the “glue” that holds our community together, providing optional, shared meals, five nights a week in our Common House dining room. The meals are served with shared labor and costs for the households at Great Oak and periodically to our neighboring communities of Sunward and Touchstone. We’ve logged over 600 meals and although we’re still working on our technique, it is good enough to be instructional to other communities!

One of the most important and not-often duplicated features of our meal program is that the labor is integrated into the Great Oak work system so those who don’t want to do kitchen jobs can still eat and those who do have snow cleared from their paths or the grass mowed.

To reduce the amount of labor involved in tracking the signups and billing for so many meals and jobs, we’ve invested in a fair amount of automation, including online, web-based meal signup that feeds directly into our billing program. Click on the thumbnail image for more detail on how to signup:

The nitty-gritty about how it all works

1. meals scheduler person works out a schedule for 2 months in advance (can be
   less or more, up to you) and enters in the meal shifts for that period online, including information about meal date, cook, asst cooks, cleaners
2. once (1) happens, cooks can edit their meal online and add their meal name,
   menu, how many diners they will accept and when the online meal signup is
   closed (optional)
3. diners can signup (anyone in their household) for meals anytime after (1)
   but typically will do so after (2) so they know what they can expect to eat
4. ooks will get nag emails if they don’t update the menu 2 weeks before
   the meal date and then 1 week before and every day till they do or the meal is
   past
5. anyone with a meal shift will get email reminders about their shift in
   advance (2 days for cooks and 1 day in advance for everyone else)
6. diners can opt to have email reminders sent to them about when they are
   eating
7. when the meal is closed, the cook has the responsibility of printing out
   the signup sheet, and attached to it is the reimbursement form, and no more
   online signups are allowed
8. the cook takes the numbers from the signup sheet and shops accordingly, and
   brings the sheet to the dinner
9. if there are spaces for late signups, they are recorded on the sheet (there
   is spot), or if there are any drop-outs or other changes, they get recorded on
   the sheet at or right the meal
10. the cook attaches their receipts to the reimbursement form and signup sheet
    and puts it into a meal biller person’s cubby
11. the meal biller person goes online to note any changes to the signups for
    the meal, enters in cost of the meal (we separate out meal purchase and any
    staples purchase, but that is again optional) and the program figures out the
    cost per diner based on the signups — then the meal biller person marks the
    meal as “complete” meaning that it is ready for billing
12. if the cook has requested a check, then the meals biller writes them a reimbrusement check, otherwise records the reimbursement as a credit against
    the cook’s household account
13. at the end of the billing period, the meal biller person simply hits the
    “bill now” button and lineitems are generated for all the meals in the last
    billing period and attributed to the diners’ household accounts
14. at preset times (currently the 6th and 19th of the month), statements are
    generated and emailed to all dining households. The meals biller in some cases
    prints out the statements for those who require them
15. the meals biller collects checks and then records payments and any other
    adjustments online. Once all received payments are entered, we require
    payments to be made by the 20th, the meals biller hits the “charge admin fee”
    button and the program figures out who is in arrears and charges them an admin
    fee (5% currently)

The meals billers record money activity in and out of the bank account in a
check register separately — my program does meal signup and billing, NOT
accounting — so if you are happy with Quickbooks to manage the accounting,
you can continue to use that, but we’ve found that a check register works fine
for the few bank transactions we do.

This is the workflow we’ve now used for over 600 meals at Great Oak and I
think it has worked pretty well.