Team Tinfoil Stands Firm

On Monday we received an e-mail from Susana with the subject line: "CORIX WAS HERE TODAY! BC Hydro will be meeting with the community soon."

Once again Corix was trying to instal smart meters at Pacific Gardens, despite our expressed wishes not to have them in our building. Fortunately our  agreed-upon warning strategy worked.

Here is Susana's report of what happened:

"Kara sounded the alarm....dinner bells....thank you so much Kara!! She managed to give us warning before Corix was out of their vehicles.

There was an installer and a supervisor. They were in marked Corix vehicles and installer in uniform. Several of us met them at the door and refused the meters. Supervisor did all the talking, and assured us they would not install, but wanted to take a photo in the electrical room to prove that they had showed up.

In hindsight, we should have told them to take a photo of the front door, just like the other 3 times Corix has been here. They are more persuasive now, and we let them in just to take a photo of the room. It seemed innocent, as we have letters on all meters showing refusals.

The installer started going through each letter to photograph it, and the individual meters, so they could match up letters with account holders. They wanted to deal with each resident independently. This was NOT OK with us, and not what they had asked to do.  We told them that we are a community, and they must deal with us as a group. A copy of the letter sent on behalf of the Strata was handed to the supervisor.

John asked them 3 times to leave, which they ignored. When we said that we would only deal with BC Hydro and no longer with Corix, the supervisor said he would get a Hydro rep. to meet with us, maybe next week. Finally they left after having photographed several of the letters and meters.

Be prepared for a meeting with BC Hydro. We need to stand firm and not let them bully us. Windsong Cohousing in Langley, speaks as a group. If one Smart Meter is installed, it affects the community, so they are standing together. Let's do the same.

Thank you to everyone who has signed letters. These are very important. If anyone sees any Corix, Hydro or other installers, please ring the dinner bells throughout the building, both floors, as Kara so wonderfully did, which worked like a charm!!"

The members of Team Tinfoil will be on the alert for the sound of dinner bells.  We'll keep you posted as to what happens next in this ongoing saga!

Kathryn

Potluck Karma At Pacific Gardens

As those of you who have been following this blog for a while know, Pacific Gardens has potlucks on a regular basis - usually once a week.

We also have some fabulous cooks, and even a chef, our fabulous Mykl Love, who does amazing feats of cookery with not-so-common ingredients such as nettles and spelt.

So it's always a treat to enter the dining-room on Thursday nights when we have our community potluck and see what's spread out on the table for us to eat.

Our potlucks are truly spontaneous - sort of like us.  We do not plan ahead for what we're going to have, or try to calculate the number of servings. People bring what they feel like.

And that's what makes it so interesting.  We never know what the special dish of the evening is going to be - a super salad, a yummy dessert, a hearty soup, fish, meat or fowl.

I've noticed, though, since we all started eating together, there seems to be some kind of potluck karma operating, as if we were a bunch of collective Jamie Olivers working in the same kitchen.

Some of it I can understand - on warm summer evenings people will naturally want to eat lots of salads and fresh fruits instead of exerting themselves over a hot stove.

But at other times, it's the battle of the borschts, with five different kinds of the tasty beet soup on the table, or yams fried, roasted, mashed and baked, pickles sweet, sour, mustard, dill, crinkly or sliced.

A few weeks ago everyone brought pasta. Clearly, there was a deep carb deficit in the psyche of Pacific Gardens, as it was followed the next week by an excess of desserts, so many there were leftovers - and believe me, that doesn't happen often.

I'm wondering what it's going to be tonight!

Kathryn

Fun with Finances at Pacific Gardens

Pacific Gardens is a cohousing community, but it is also a condominium, so each year we are required to present a budget at our Annual General Meeting outlining our income and expenses and all that tedious financial stuff.

Now in other stratas I've lived in, the hapless owners got the budget delivered to them before the AGM, full of incomprehensible columns of figures, and at the meeting, were given a cursory explanation of what it all meant, before voting on it.

Not so at Pacific Gardens.  We do it differently.  First, we include everyone in discussions about the budget - owners, renters, and children. Second, we explain why we spend what we do in a way that people can understand. And third, we try to make it fun!

So, on Friday afternoon, we had a Fun with Finances table out in the atrium, with pie charts, wall posters, a list of frequently asked questions, quizzes, a draw for a prize, plus tea and ginger cookies.

This all took place amidst the usual bustle of activity in the atrium - children doing cartwheels, Matt replacing burnt-out bulbs in the hallway lights, and me distributing containers of soup left over from the Thursday night potluck.

Mia made sure that everyone who passed by got asked what they would like to see in this year's budget.  Anna, four, asked if there was money for bubbles. Her older brother, Joel, wanted a peach tree in the garden. Soma hoped we could have monkey bars for the kids to play on.

The adults mostly wanted to keep their strata fees the same, but when they saw how big the slices were for our hydro and insurance payments on the big colourful pie chart on the wall, they realized that might not be possible!

I used to be a reporter, and I was always told, "follow the money" when I was trying to figure out what was happening for a story.  If people were trying to hide how money was spent, you knew something wasn't right.

And if leaders of governments and organizations were open and honest about their finances and made a real effort to explain what they were doing, you knew they could be trusted.

Finances and budgets may seem boring, but how they're handled can tell you something about what a community is like to live in - whether it's run democratically, or just for a few, whether everyone's concerns are heard and respected, or ignored.

That's why we try to make finances fun at Pacific Gardens, because we want everybody who lives here to feel included.

Kathryn

Our Cohousing Correspondent in Mexico

Pacific Gardens is spreading its influence far and wide - we now have a cohousing correspondent in Mexico, Roz, the authoress of our Officel Etiquetta and the hostess of our Elderberry dinner.

Roz is escaping the gloom of our rainy clime to soak up the scene on the beach in the approporiately-named La Playa.  She has been sending us regular reports of her days spent eating fabulous food, meeting wonderful people, and enjoying the sunshine.

I'm not saying I'm jealous or anything, but really, when you look at pictures like this (and it's one of many she's e-mailed us), I do get a bit green-eyed, even more than usual!

Roz has a wonderful idea, however. She writes: "I think we have it all wrong...we should live in a country where it is easy to grow food all year long, where we do not need as much electrical power, where musika abounds from early morning till into the evening, where one makes instant friends...and then holiday in the summer months of our winterland!

Let's sell and come here to build a Cohousing development!!! Mucho purchasers for sure!!!"

I think she's on to something, don't you?

Kathryn

Proud Members of Team Tinfoil

The residents of Pacific Gardens are proud members of Team Tinfoil - a term coined by a reporter to describe those beleaguered B.C. citizens opposed to the installation of Smart Meters in their homes.

We are among the 85,000 B.C. Hydro customers who have refused the meters, despite threats, bullying, and scare tactics from the Corix installer who first visited us a little more than a year ago.

If you follow the link below, you can read the news story about our first encounter with Corix (you'll also see a picture of Susana, looking uncharacteristically glum, standing in front of our current meters be-decked with refusal letters).

Nanaimo News Bulletin - Nanaimo co-housing residents block smart-meter installation
http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/137598753.html

I am personally not convinced of all the claims for health risks cited by opponents of the meters, and as a green-weenie, I think it's a good idea for people to pay more for hydro if its gets them to reduce their electricity usage.

But I am concerned about the evidence in peer-reviewed medical journals that there are negative effects on brain development in children from electromagnetic devices. And that's good enough for me, especially as we have several young children living here.

Why not exercise the precautionary principle in the light of this evidence?  And why not take these concerns seriously, instead of castigating those who rightly want to have a choice in the matter?

So, when the Smart Meter installer showed up again at the entrance of Pacific Gardens last week, he was politely turned away by one of our young mothers, and the Tinfoil Team once again swung into action.

We wrote another refusal letter, which we sent to B.C. Hydro, Corix, the leaders of all three political parties, the chief medical officer of health, the health  and energy ministers, and the opposition critics for health and energy.

We also developed a plan for alerting residents if the installer came again, and determined what our best response would be. Team Tinfoil was absolutely determined that these meters would not be installed in our building.

However, it now seems that the B.C. government has bowed to public pressure.  The Minister of Energy has issued a statement saying that home-owners will not be forced to accept Smart Meters.

B.C. Hydro also issued a statement saying it will not install Smart Meters without the customer's permission, but this is just for now, as Hydro wants to take extra time "to work with customers who still have concerns."

So the Tinfoil Team at Pacific Gardens will not be disbanded yet, and when B.C. Hydro comes to call, we will be ready with our questions.

Kathryn

Wet Winter Wonderland

For those of you reading this from outside Canada, there is something you need to know about our Canadian winters.

You have only two choices - to be freeze-dried, like the folks in Winnipeg (or Winterpeg, as it's fondly known), or soaked, like those of us living on the Wet Coast.

It's January and a wet winter wonderland on Vancouver Island.  That means fog, damp, wind, drizzle, showers, downpours, rain, heavy rain and grey skies,  plus all the accoutrements to deal with it.

Dripping jackets hanging in the hall closet, heaps of muddy boots at the door, and umbrellas everywhere - drying in the living-room, hanging from a railing, left on the bus, or abandoned in a flower-bed after a particularly gusty day.

It also means every day after school there's a roaring horde of energetic children running up and down our inner atriums safe and dry while the usual winter monsoons pelt down rain by the bucketful outside.

Now you would think that living in this soggy, sunless climate would tend to make us gloomy at this time of year.  It does, a bit, but not for long.

That's because we know it will soon change.  Unlike the rest of Canada, here spring starts showing itself early, and in anticipation of that, our Seedy Saturday events are usually held the first weekend of February.

In another four weeks we will see  the wild violets growing on the hillside leading down to the river at the bottom of the Pacific Gardens property, with snowdrops and crocuses in our gardens.

By  mid-March it could be warm enough - and certainly windy enough - to start hanging the wash on the umbrella clothesline outside my window, although I may need extra clothespins to keep everything firmly fastened.

So, eat your heart out, the rest of Canada - it may be soggy out here, but at least it ain't snowing, and pretty soon we may even see some sunshine!

Kathryn

Inspired by Kathryn's post, I (Judy) wanted to jump in and share some photos of past springs on the "Wet Coast."  As Kathryn said, we know this is all just around the corner for Coastal British Columbians.

Here is a photo of daffodils, taken in a friend's yard on Thetis Island in February 2010:

Next is a photo of my husband, Greg, with our kayaks on Pylades Island in February 2012:

Below, our kayaks are JUST visible on the beach on Penelakut (formerly Kuper) Island in March 2012 -- with a broad-leafed evergreen green tree, the ubiquitous Arbutus, in the foreground.  After 27 years in Calgary, the broad-leafed evergreens are one of my joys on the BC Coast.  Spectacular as the Rocky Mountains are, they have no broad-leafed evergreens or vines.

The next photo shows our windbreak on that beach on Penelakut Island in March.  It was a bright, but breezy, day.  Yet, behind the shelter of our windbreak, we were able to strip down to our T-shirts and soak up the sun.

Greg went beach combing on the Penelakut shore.  Not only did he return with a bunch of daffodils that he'd picked from the edge of the forest, but he'd also found a "vase" in which to arrange them -- an empty pop can.  

While our temporary windbreak suited our immediate needs on the beach, Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community has a permanent windbreak (and rain shelter!) in the form of the glass-covered atriums to which Kathryn referred.  You can see the North Atrium being put to good use in Myriam's photos of the 2012 Winter Solstice celebrations   .

Mouse in da house

Eeek - we have mice at Pacific Gardens!  Actually, we've always had mice at Pacific Gardens, so you can get off the kitchen chair now.

It's only that we have just become aware as a community that we have several of the little critters living with us.

Folks here were happily - or unhappily as the case may be - dealing with them on an individual basis, before they found out that this was a collective problem.

As usual, we were alerted to it by an e-mail from our intrepid Mia. "I have the distinct feeling that our building is over run with mice. Mice getting ready for a mating spring ritual with babies, " she wrote.

"We need an all out response to get rid of those lovely little creatures and send some to heaven, wherever that may be."

And as usual, that resulted in a flood of e-mail responses.  It seems the mice had infiltrated almost everywhere, all the way to the top floor and down again.

I learned more about mice demise than I had ever learned before.  With traps - wood, dollar store or sticky?  (Wood not good; dollar store effective; sticky effective but icky.)

Peanut butter or cheese?  And when and where to place the tempting tidbits?  One strategy was to place them on a trap a couple of nights in a row before setting them.

Others swore by the mousing ability of cats.  Michelle offered the loan of her feline friend, whose favourite nighttime pastime was capturing the pesky rodents.

Then the heavy-hitters from the Building and Maintenance (known as BAM) weighed in.  People should clean more, keep food in containers, block off all holes where they may enter.

Chad pointed out that while preventative measures were good, they obviously hadn't worked. And since we believed in shared resources, we should buy good traps and loan them out.

The debate raged on while the mice played and people at PGCC borrowed cats, filled holes, bought containers for food, and became fanatic crumb-sweeper-uppers.

The final words of wisdom came from our elder Doris. "I think that mice are a fact of life, at least when you have all the close to nature features that we are so proud to show to prospective residents.

"People who live in the country have always had to use both prevention and control.  But all control measures have their limitations and neither prevention nor control can ever succeed completely.

"We just have to be watchful and use all reasonable measures in their proper context."

And my view of the solution to the mice conundrum? I'm not sure. I don't have any mice in my unit - yet!

Kathryn