raines’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  wow! time for my beard trim, methinks

  I didn't realize the camera was quite so zoomed in!

  When I talk about "Sustainable Communities" I'm referring to cohousing and EcoVillages and other forms of Intentional Communities. I've had a lot of fun doing a booth here in Austin at Netroots Nation about those.

  And Gore's Climate Project info is here - there's 1000 of us available to come talk for free to your community group or workplace, adapting the "Inconvenient Truth" slideshow to connect, educate and prepare.

  Note that I was referring to Gore's Thursday talk in D.C., this was before he made his surprise appearance here today!  His new site is at wecandoit.org.On Lessig and Netroots folks on climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 1 Response

• Click here to view comment in original post

  it already exists, and we do call it cohousing

  as documented through the Cohousing Association of the U.S. (Coho/US). In this form of "intentional neighborhood," part of the broader intentional communities movement, future residents band together with a common vision and invest to create homes that start green and get greener over time, in how people live, not just the "sticks and bricks" of green building. Living simply and sustainably in privately-owned smaller spaces (typically condos), with a large shared common house and yards/gardens and operating the home-owners association by consensus. Each with its own kitchen and all the options of privacy you'd expect, with the additional benefits of having the choice of community there when you want it: shared meals a few times a week, no driving for "playdates," supportive neighbors helping each other.

  There's more than 100 established cohousing neighborhoods in the U.S. and even more than that under development. There's quite a few in Oregon (including an EcoVillage out near Portland airport and another in Corvallis), and others down the road in Ashland and Bend. The Northwest Intentional Communities Association (NICA) helps communities in the region start and grow.

  Back to the "independent-living" facility covered in the linked article in the blog entry above, though: I wonder, despite all the lovely language about the open-style kitchen with entertainment provided by chefs (for how many thousands of dollars per month?), how much the residents really are in charge, as opposed to the management, when push comes to shove. In senior cohousing, the resident-owners individually and collectively hire (and share) the caregivers and housekeepers, making for a very different power dynamic.

  The project sounds like a natural market-driven response to the needs of aging Boomers who don't want to give up the illusions of independence and control over their lives, and the nursing-home civil rights revolution brought about over the past few decades by the Pioneer Network with folks like my friends Debby and Barry Barkan at the Live Oak Institute, who are now engaged as part of the on-the-streets Aging In Community movement, co-creating the Elders' Guild.

  Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach and Certified Senior Cohousing Facilitator
  Planning for Sustainable Communities
  at Berkeley (CA) CohousingOn Cool housing for oldsters posted 1 year, 5 months ago 7 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  the discussion on the dKos diary

  is tending towards believing it's an issue of searching-by-tag/category rather than by fulltext. So, pending further data, categorize this one as mild annoyance rather than deep-seated conspiracy.

  R (preferring "Global Climate Crisis" myself)On Search for 'global warming' to no avail posted 2 years, 9 months ago 10 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Diaried on Daily Kos

  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/1/201211/0424

  (with links here, of course, thanks for helping get the word out on it. Anyone grab any screen shots?)On Search for 'global warming' to no avail posted 2 years, 9 months ago 10 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  What's the distribution plan?

  As a Climate Project trainee, I'm one of 1000 people going around presenting slideshows based on An Inconvenient Truth, and we (and our audiences) are hungry for good depictions of solutions. When will we be able to get DVD's or send people to theaters?

  A Somewhat Related topic, newsy enough to post here: A Senate Environment Committtee staffer (and key player in the SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth attack on Kerry in 2004) has continued the taxpayer-funded attack on Grist and this blog as part of an attack on Gore, Global Warming, and The Weather Channel (triggering a conservative blogswarm in comments on the TWC blog). Details in my diary on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/19/84818/7454On On the road as Everything's Cool debuts in film's biggest deal posted 2 years, 9 months ago 1 Response