More Market

So here, at last, is our room, all painted and (mostly) arranged. We still have some stuff to arrange, most notably my huge sack of ironing, but the house iron was located during our 7-hour workday on Saturday.

We all went to town on the common area / basement, transforming it from a dungeon for cardboard boxes into a livable (if not quite all-the-way painted) basement dining room, food storage area, and meeting space for our co-op.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of co-op-ing, but it is safe to say that co-op and intentional community designate two different approaches to "lots of hippies people living in the same house."

Whereas the intentional community derives its common living scenario from an intent, the co-op makes the common living experience its focus.

For example, we had a dinner guest who was, in the near future, moving to an intentional community. "It's a group of people who want to live together to discuss spirituality," he said, "and since I'm an atheist, I found that really interesting and wanted to live there."

Such a cognitive dissonance would not occur at Haymarket House. While this co-op has its own culture/style (more on that in later posts, perhaps) it does not have a mission beyond providing a livable, co-governed, safe space for people.

Granted, such things as vegetarian cooking and consensus/vote based decision making will self-select for people with certain commonalities, but those commonalities do not constitute a mission.

Anyway, I've taken on the chore of inventorying and ordering our bulk food, which I am learning from one of the house members. I was also informed (at what was an otherwise-serious meeting) that I must select (or be selected as) a nemesis. I am keeping my guard up.