After some time as a private residence and then, well, kind of sad and empty, the White Owl is once again being used for special events, including a Middle Eastern-themed feast and supper club with chef Carleigh O’Donnell, shown here forming pita bread, with chef’s helper Jenna Payne checking the garbanzos.

This first of a soon-to-be monthly event (next one: Ethiopian on January 24th) was by reservation only and limited to a small, first come-first served group. White Owl resident and host Art Meyers is offering the venue to members for special events like these, as he and his family make plans to expand the space available for them. Here guests are awaiting table service and other royal treatment!

After a sumptuous dinner, topped off with pomegranates and dates for dessert, and toasts to an elegant future, folks retired to the sofas for more intimate conversations.

A few weeks later, Carleigh and Jenna offered a Sunday brunch, and all available seats were quickly taken! Here’s Chuck getting tea while folks worked out the seating.

And here’s Brandon Greenstein, who ran the White Owl years ago, getting a hug from Carmen Lescher, who returned to Earthaven recently and says she’s here to stay!

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Finally, an Earthaven office! And, in addition, an internet and coffee spot with goods from our neighbors, a warm place filled with information and other enticements. This comforting venue now exists and just the thought of it brings some kind of shift in our collective energy, much needed after a challenging year and cold winter. Our creative staffing includes 20 weekly hours of approved community service hours and 20 hours donated by the managers and another community member. Thanks to Jen, Cealleigh, redmoonsong, Jack, River Otter and Kai, and many others who helped with the details of getting set up.

Now, at the end of week four, the work goes on! The possibilities keep expanding for this small and lovely space. Right now, visitors stop at the Trading Post at the end of the tour to chat with members and pick up additional Earthaven literature. Here’s where about-to-become Provisional Member Mana McLeod connects with her courses from Gaia University, and where Suchi, one of the managers, plays Scrabble with a neighbor who stops to drop off her honey, dried shiitakes, and umeboshi plums. At the administrative level, we are also here to have an ongoing update of our database. Meanwhile, members come to pick up eggs from a local farmer, and our gifted craftspeople can showcase their wares. Upcoming events, committee and Council minutes, and other important announcements and information are posted inside and outside. The “News of the Neighborhoods” section is beginning. We hope to increase the amount of information posted to include jobs needed and labor available, housing needed and available, and so on. We post ways people can earn community service hours (LEAPS) and items for sale/barter/giveaway.

In the ideal future, we will double in size so that office and internet space are separate from socializing space. We are open to many other ways to serve the community in the future. As we plan to renew our lease, we have begun to think about bringing our mailroom nearby.  Can we centralize and coordinate rides to town? Post general messages, needs for assistance, interest groups forming, etc.?

Please stop by.  Our spring hours are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 10-6; Saturday 11-4 and Sunday 11-2.  Meetings and small events can be scheduled for times we are not open. Come check us out.

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We’d love to introduce you to our most recent members, with apologies to all who’ve come before and those after that we neglect to feature. There are so many things to write about, to update you on, that it becomes impossible to include it all. But here’s a little vignette or two about the great folks who recently jumped through all the Earthaven hoops to be full members and become official Earthaven siteholders with their own 99-year, transferable sitehodling leases.

First, meet Robert Carran. Robert’s a carpenter, builder, artist and musician whose latest art form began its quiet development at Paul Caron’s wood shop, located below the White Owl on Another Way. The wood shop is the anchor point for the proposed Earthaven College of Natural Building, and at the moment serves to help focus a variety of wood projects.

Robert’s been toying around with the wood lathe, turning out beautiful bowls and tumblers. Since he began working on his homesite in the newly designated Hickory Knob Compact Sites neighborhood, across the road from Village Terraces, he’s been doing his woodworking over there, too. The site was cleared, provided with power from the Village Center hydro station, and with the help of a couple of terrific work exchangers, a work shed and the frame of a future octagonal living space have gone up.

The octagon has posts each made from a different, distinctive wood, most of which were harvested right on site. Two years ago, before taking an extended time away from the community to consider the full impact of making a sincere commitment, Robert was the inspiration behind what was probably Earthaven’s most successful performing arts events, a terrific spoof about life at Earthaven entitled The Waltz of the Ogres. Council Hall was packed to the rafters that night, and the audience was elated by the insight and good humor that permeated the production. Multi-talented and committed to the vision of sustainable community transformation, Robert’s been pitching in at all levels of community endeavor. Welcome, Robert!

After Robert, the next Full Members to take the jump were Martha Harris, a lawyer living in Durham, NC, and her partner, Lee Finks, a retired librarian. Martha became a Full Member in April and Finch, as we call him, jumped in May. Martha’s still works for the State Legislature in Raleigh and so she and Finch commute to Earthaven most weekends, with occasional week-long stays, a schedule that will probably continue at least until the duplex they are planning to build at Village Terraces is ready for them to move into.

Meanwhile, they’ve both taken on a chunk of Earthaven’s administrative work and, as you can imagine, Martha’s familiarity with the law, and NC law in particular, is of immense assistance to us. On top of that, Martha stepped in as our bookkeeper shortly after she became a Provisional Member, agreeing to work for community service credits (leaps) just when we’d finally agreed to raise our annual fees in order to pay one of us to keep our records straight for a few hours a week. Since the fees had already been raised, the funds will be channeled into other, much-needed community management positions.

These days Martha is also helping us reconstruct our various legal entities to better support our vision and address our everyday reality. Stay tuned for exciting news on this subject. Finch, by the way, is waiting patiently for the time when he can help us develop our sustainability reference library for members and the public alike. Welcome, Martha and Finch!

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