News
Amish Benefit Quilt Raffle
Dec 13, 2005. A drawing during our Community Meeting choose the 1st and 2nd place winners in the quilt raffle to benefit Baby Jake J. Schwartz who was born August 2005 to a young Michigan Amish couple, Jake and Anna. Jake Jr. was born full term with his eyelids fused, a condition "ptsosis" which can be treated with surgery but the Amish do not have health insurance. The first surgery is scheduled for December 13. Some 1500 tickets were sold in the quilt raffle organized by Sunward member Ann, raising a remarkable $50,000. We have heard that Kellogg Eye Center changed their evaluation of Jake's case from elective to critical surgery following the publicity around the raffle. Congratulations to the quilt winners and best wishes to baby Jake and family!
Louisana Evacuee Restoration Tour
Sept 23, 2005.
David and Roselyn
graced our Common House with some musical magic from New Orleans! As a benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina, we enjoyed soaring vocals accompanied by guitars, banjo, mandolin, harmonicas, trumpet, African finger pianos, rhumba box and more. Sunwardians provided a great buffet of food and drinks while we sang, laughed, and danced along with the wonderful musical lead. We raised nearly a thousand dollars!
Joining Hearts
Sept 18, 2005. Love and commitment to one another were celebrated in the sunshine at Elisha and Doug's Hand Fasting ceremony on the lookout over our ponds and prairie. Daughters Zuvuya and Luda attended, spreading flowers and joy. Sunward presented the young family with a beautiful quilt, lovingly made by many Sunward hands, each square creatively unique and personal. Earlier in the weekend a Karaoke dinner party filled the common house with much laughter and song. Amid the demonstrations of vocal prowess and dancing, we enjoyed much mingling between Sunwardians and friends & family of the couple of honor.
New Play Area and Structure
June 2005. After much planning, negotiating, safety research, and design work, we have now created a fabulous new play area next to our common house with an expansive new natural wood play structure and a sturdy swing set. It has been a great hit with kids and adults alike. Come on out for a swing and see the summer's biggest community project and the power of cooperation!
Virginia is Gone
In June we celebrated the life of our dear Virginia who entered home hospice care in the spring. A huge colorful tent canopy shaded the piazza for dinning and dancing, Gemini and the Treetown Swingtet provided musical entertainment, many courses of catered food and drink kept us smiling. Virginia sat throughout the party in an easy chair, festooned with balloons and greeted her 150+ guests. Donations and gifts were all designated to help repair the century old Sunward barn. Bonfires, singing and stories carried on into the night. Her family and Sunward did a wonderful job of carrying out all of her detailed plans for the party, right down to her specific ingredients for the potato salad.
Sunwardians and family were always on hand during these challenging months, providing company and care. It almost seems that many of her family have become part of the community. Virginia joined before our homes were built and was a stalwart participant in the life of the community, preparing lunch for work detail crews, taking care of Sunward records, helping to create a nurturing quilt for each of the babies new to the community, and teaching us about voluntary simplicity. On September 2, she passed from our world in her home as she wished. As her body was born away, our common house bell tolled 83 times for each summer she blessed with her presence.
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Rocks and Robots!
Summer 2005. Sunward has played host to the fabulous new camp,
Rocks and Robots, founded by members George and Mark. For seven one week sessions over the summer, groups of young people gathered at Sunward to explore new skills. On the adventure side, they practiced survival skills in the Sunward Woods - building primitive shelters and starting a fire with a bow drill, along with outdoor team building, orienteering, rock climbing, canoeing, and natural environment stewardship. Technical and computer programming skills were developed using small mobile robots put through a variety of challenges. The balance of indoor and outdoor activities were wrapped in the special focus on good communication and respect that are so integral to life in community.
Birds and More Birds!
Spring 2005. One of the joys of living at Sunward is the large array of birds that live right on the premises, or nearby on our ponds. At our feeders we enjoy orioles, cardinals, hummingbirds, chickadees, and nuthatches; downy, hairy and redbellied woodpeckers; song, tree, and chipping sparrows; house finches and flocks of goldfinches. Indigo buntings, bluebirds, robins, field sparrows, red-eyed and yellow-throated vireos, and yellow warblers are regularly seen and heard. During migration, or in more secluded spots, other warblers can be found.
Great-horned and screech owls, and red-tailed hawks have nested in our woods. On our ponds are great blue herons and green herons, mallards and Canada geese. Half a dozen other species of duck, plus grebes and coots stop by in early spring, joined this year by three rare trumpeter swans. There now are regularly five trumpeters and one or two mute swans on the larger lake across the road.
Community Snapshot
Winter 2005. Snow is beautifully gracing our trees and paths through our woods as we approach the eve of Winter. The big news from the summer is that we finished our piazza project! Many, many weekends were spent leveling ground, moving, cutting, laying tens of thousands of bricks, watching each others kids, making food for, and cheering on the crew. It was a great accomplishment to complete ourselves! The piazza outside the Common House is proving to be a much improved gathering space and the geometric design is a must see on any visit to Sunward. This Fall we've been very engaged in working through our newly adopted budgeting process and developing our most complete financial planning to date. It's nearly done, whew! Our faithful landscaping honchos organized two community work days where we did much clean up for the winter as well as planting eight new 300 lb trees to replace losses of our Ash trees. It's great to see what we can accomplish together!
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“We set out to change our world; now community is changing us.” -Roberta Wilson, Winslow Cohousing
