salthouse
aneyeintheworld
bevo82
Robin
lilemily
owlwomb
Filed under: Uncategorized
streams in the air
undulating
falling sideways
in rhythmic pattern
rivers of thought
going where
wandering
lost
with purpose
alone
in togetherness
close overlapping
distant journeying
already there
a lone figure
walking in the night
a beautiful landscape
encroached by a car
ripples in the water
streams in the air
where am I going
where have I traveled
where am I now
Emily made sushi for the first time a couple weeks ago. Thanks to Molly and her sushi-rolling expertise it turned out alright! Summary: we love good, healthy food.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So why do we call ourselves Salt House? Well…
- Jesus encourages his followers to be the ‘salt’ of the Earth… we’re still figuring out what that means, but at least we’d like to be tasty
- SALT can stand for Six Adults Living Together
- or Sustainable Agriculture makes Locals Tight
- or Some Acronym Like This…
- or… YOU come up with an acronym for Salt!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Every Monday night we gather together for a community dinner, worship and meeting. The moderator of the week (one of our six chore positions, so his/her Sabbath) plans the worship time and moderates the meeting afterward. We’ve had a variety of worship styles and all have been quite interesting and brought us closer together as a community.
Tonight’s agenda was particularly amusing:
- May 8th BBQ
- Gardening Update (aka Slug Warfare)
- Wells Fargo Action
- Conspire BBQ
- Bulk Reminder
- Purple Food Book
Not all can be translated with out a really long post… so we’ll leave the rest to your imagination (or guess with a comment below!)
Filed under: Uncategorized
We’ve begun our own little plot in the front yard for gardening. At present, it means that half our yard has been turned over in dirt and half the barrier walls to hold it in have been erected. Yet the plan is not for flowers but for vegetables, so does that make our project a garden or urban farm? I suppose it’s just a matter of scale.
There are many of us in Salthouse who care deeply about sustainable, nutritious, organic living, and urban gardening/farming is just one way to make our communities more sustainable, local, nutritious and organic. A few of us dream of moving to Detriot and being part of the urban revolution there in urban redevelopment and farming, though less on the big scale and more on the small scale.
Our hope is that the garden/farm, especially being in the front yard, will help bring us into closer contact with our neighbors. I ran across on an interesting article about farms in Europe called Care Farms that offer small-scale farming opportunities as a form of rehabilitation to addicts and work opportunity for those impoverished. It’s a very interesting and creative idea, and I hope that the dream continues to fruition: that of community & connection, sustainbility & nutrition.
Filed under: Uncategorized
At last… we share a picture of who currently lives in the SaltHouse. This taken last weekend at our house retreat in Yosemite National Park.
Grant, Robin, Emily, Evans, Ryan, and Molly
Filed under: Individualism, Living Together | Tags: alone, community, Individualism, Living Together, loneliness
On our bookshelf is Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” an interesting if not indicting account of our individualistic culture here in America. We long for community, but oftentimes do not take the necessary steps to get out of our homes, our work, our personal time, our routines to engage with others. More often than not simply socializing is “unproductive”" if not “wasted” time.
One of the reasons we’ve decided to live together is to help counteract this overall trend. We value our time spent together, much like a family. Whether it’s going to a brunch together (where 3 of us are now) or our weekly gatherings to pray, eat and listen to one another, we intentionally make time to be together. The “doing” is less important than the “being.”
To read more about our individualism as a society and how it affects our mindset as a people, I highly recommend this article from Utne.com, “The Lonely American.”
- Evans
Filed under: How We Got Here
Once upon a time there were 3 married couples who lived separately.
One couple invited another couple over for dinner but only one of them was available. It was summer. The three of us talked and dreamed while sitting on our living room floor, wondering what it would be like to raise kids together someday. Living in a house with a nursery full for small children who had many aunts and uncles (plus mom and dad) to love them .
Then the couple moved to Ohio. They promised they’d come back.
One person from one couple met one person from another couple one day after class. It was fall. They ate lunch and talked and came to the conclusion that they both wanted something different in their living situation, some community. They went home and told their partners of this chance meet-up.
One couple invited one couple over for dinner. They ate pizza and salad. It was winter. They talked about their hopes and their fears. How will this work out? Where would we live? For how long? Who else?
Still in the winter, the third couple invited the first couple over for dinner where we stared into a cell phone hoping to see the second couple, but settled for only hearing them. And we talked. And we decided that we would look for a house in the summer. And we would live together and start something new.
And now, we want to share our journey with you.
