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Every morning, all across America people peer into bathroom mirrors searching for signs of age. No line, no blemish is overlooked. We dread the appearance of those little lines at the corner of our mouths and eyes and then we console ourselves with the thought that, really, they are hardly noticeable. Still we know the truth. We are getting older -- every day one day older. William H. Thomas, M.D. What Are Old People For? What are old people for? What ARE they for? When I started my cohousing journey waaay back in 1991, I was 41 years old. Three months before I turned 50, I moved into my cohousing community, Takoma Village Cohousing in Washington, DC — the same year I got my first invitation to join AARP. Just this past November Takoma Village celebrated its 15th year living in our cohousing neighborhood. Now, I’m 65, a card carrying Medicare user Parts A&B, and an AARP Part D insurance plan subscriber. I would tell you my hair is grayer but only my hairdresser knows that for sure. We are all getting older. A veritable tsunami of Americans are turning 65.
These are just a very few of the questions you can explore at the upcoming Aging Better Together - The Power of Community conference co-sponsored by SageHill Cohousing and CohoUS May 20-21, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition to some of the heavier and headier questions about aging in cohousing we will also celebrate the joys and contributions of being a senior living in or planning to live in community. As a group:
I am on the planning team for the conference. I invite you to share your thoughts about aging in community, what you would like to see addressed at the conference, what’s happening in your community. You can leave your comments at the bottom of this blog post on our website. Or, you can write me directly: Ann.Zabaldo@gmail.com And … I invite you to attend this conference. It promises to be the first of many to come. Be a pioneer. Be there!  Hundredfold Farm (Orrtanna, Pennsylvania) is one of the few cohousing communities which has a community owned and operated business: a Christmas tree farm. And as it's the season ... at Seven Springs Tree Farm you can cut your own tree on Fridays (10a-6 p) and Saturdays and Sundays (8a-6p). Heads up: The Farm will be closed on Christmas Eve. After you've lassoed and tied down your tree atop your car stop by their neighbors at Halbrendt Vineyard and Winery. Heathcote Community (Freeland, MD) has scheduled a Visitor Day for Saturday, February 20, 2016. Come have FUN and learn about this innovative community just outside Baltimore, Maryland.  You may remember that last week Alice Alexander was the winner of the First Ever Thanksgiving Quantity Cooking Recipe contest sponsored by Mid Atlantic Cohousing. (Blog post November 24, 2015 Scroll to this blogpost below.) When she's not cooking ... she's busy being the Executive Director for CohoUS. In that role here are two upcoming events with Alice happening in Washington, DC this week. Alice will attend the upcoming tour of Takoma Village Cohousing this coming Sunday, December 6, 2015. As part of its efforts to maintain a healthy pool of interested future residents, the Resale & Rental pod at TVC sponsors a major public tour of the community each quarter. More than 70 people are signed up for the tour this Sunday! Alice will be there as a tour participant. While she is in town Alice will also meet with representatives of Mid Atlantic Cohousing to discuss the upcoming Aging Better Together conference (See above announcement for more detail.) Alice will also update MAC members on the many activities CohoUS has undertaken in the last year under her leadership. About 20 MAC members have committed to meet with Alice. If you are a resident of a MAC member community you can join in this discussion. See the chart to find out if your community is a MAC member. Want your community to become a member of MAC? You can do that here. For details on the MAC meeting with Alice please email Ann for more information: ann.zabaldo@gmail.com Edi-Bits You know that thing that happens when you have a PDF of something that you want to edit? Like a contract? Or print only by-laws? It's either a permanent scowl creasing your face or a sigh of resignation as you realize you're gonna have to type that document all over again ... But wait! Here's the best thing since Moby Dick was a guppy! It's a FREE OCR conversion program! AND ... it's EASY to use! Online OCR recognizes 46 languages and it can handle the following image formats:
O. By the way ... Moby Dick, being a mammal, was never a guppy. But you knew that, right? :-)  Photography by Chris Cooper August 2010 Speaking of conversions ... not everything is bigger in Texas! Luckily, smaller is always bigger in Texas, too. Here is a whimsical guest house-playhouse-gardem retreat converted from an 8x40 shipping container.  Photography by Iwan Baan And you thought concrete was just grey blocks ... Look what can be done with this humble material. When deciding on affordable materials for building you might consider this building block of architecture dating back almost 8,000 years. And those structures are still standing ...  Photography by Ed Butler and Mickey Lee Building your community in a tight urban space? Yearning for a sense of green and open space? Add a parklet! It's portable, too! HUH? What fun contests about "life in cohousing" would you like to see? Send your suggestions to: Ann Zabaldo. Or you can comment right here on our blog. Scroll down. Open to all clean & green, natural, organic, cage & steroid-free contests ... If you received this newsletter from a third party ... you can subscribe yourself! Look for FREE downloads just for signing up! We don't trade names, we don't spam and we're all around lovely people!
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AuthorAnn Zabaldo is a passionate promoter of cohousing. She was on the develoment team for Eastern Village in Silver Spring, MD and Takoma Village in Washington, DC where she lives. She serves on the Board for MAC. Archives
February 2017
See cool blog for Emerson Commons.
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