FIC Meeting April 5-7, 2013

The Fellowship for Intentional Community will be holding its spring organizational meetings at Manzanita Village—the only cohousing community in northern Arizona—and you’re invited!

Please join us for any or all of our three days of conviviality, conversation, and conniving to make the world a more cooperative place.

Highlights of our agenda include:

1. progress on our capital campaign to raise funds for our new Green Office in Missouri
2. roll out of the new capacities on our family of websites
3. early returns on the release of Within Reach movie
4. fine tuning our Events program
5. selection of the 2014 winner of the Kozeny Communitarian Award

If you’re interested in community networking—or have questions about how to handle challenges your group is facing—this is a terrific opportunity to hobnob with community veterans and perhaps figure out how you can join the team. We hope you’ll join us!

Howdy, Y'all!

The theme for our October 8 community dinner was cowboy grub, and a number of the Villagers dressed for the occasion!

New Firewise Grant!

We’ve been awarded $4,000 in Title III money in a 100% grant from Yavapai County. The awards need to be posted for public comment for 45 days so the grant should actually be funded in November with a 9/13 ending date.

We should also be getting an additional $10,000 from the SFA 50/50 grant from the AZ State Foresters Office. In this case we’ll get $5,000 in cash and need to provide $5,000 in in-kind payments (i.e. volunteer work). The actually funding date of this grant is uncertain but hopefully soon.

Both of these grants have come through our work with PAWUIC and are to complete our FireWise efforts.

Gracie and Pal Get Married!

After a long courtship, Gracie and Pal decided to form an everlasting (in dog years) union.  A number of other dogs attended the service, dressed in matrimonial attire.  Villagers also were part of the ceremony.  Here is a video of the marriage:

Nancy designed the following collage of the dogs at the wedding:

Here are a few photographs of the event (thanks to Sulekha):

Our New Trails Have Names!

As part of our FireWise Day, Manzanita Village had a name-the-trails contest. With the opening up of the ravine on the part of our goats and Village workers we have made space for trails through our ravine and other areas. It was time to give those trails a name so the FireWise and Groundskeeping Committees held a name-the-trails contest. Eighteen participants of the FireWise Day submitted names for our six trails. The submissions were voted on at the June Plenary session and the following names were chosen: North Loop Trail, South Loop Trail, Lower Valley Trail, Downtown Trail, Bradshaw Rim Trail and Hummingbird Crest. 

Villagers who submitted winning names were awarded items from the MVC Shop. Congratulations to all!