Tuesday 28 May 2024

The Porcupine Saga, Part 9, When We Met Jack, Part 3

Allan Harper, evening, Wednesday, April 10, 2030

During supper Angie had warned the Porcupiners that they needed to have another meeting, and she was at the front of the room by the time Allan took a seat next to Erika. Jack sat down on the other side of Allan.

Angie cleared her throat and the conservations died down. "Well, here we all are again for another Tuesday night meeting, and it's only Wednesday. I suspect this will happen a lot for the first while. Several of the crews have reports to give, and there are decisions to be made. And on that note, I must say that I'm not up to facilitating and scribing at the same time. We need to keep track of decisions reached and action items assigned."

Gesturing with her clipboard and pen, Angie said, "Andrea, could you join me up here?"

"Sure thing, Angie," replied Andrea, and got up to join Angie at the front. Sitting down, she put pen to paper with a flourish and said, "OK, I'm ready, go for it."

"One small point before we go to the crew reports," said Angie. "I notice Jack has joined us. Does anybody have a problem with that?"

No one did. "What about him taking part in the discussion?"

Again, no one objected.

"OK," said Angie, "Jack, I have to tell you that if you get out of line, I'm going to jump on you a little harder than I would on the rest of these folks, since you don't have as much riding on what we decide."

"All I want to do is listen," said Jack.

"That'll work," said Angie, "Now, it's hard to say who should come first, so I'm going to just go with the order in which the crews approached me. Erika, that means the housing crew is up first."

Erica got up and made her way to the front. With a nod to Tom she said, "Well, I got picked to present what we've found and what we suggest doing about it. Most of what we have is questions—I hope we can answer them tonight."

"Go ahead," said Angie.

"Well, we think that first we need to decide what level of accommodations we are going to provide for people," said Erika. "At one extreme we could have people sleeping on mattresses in one of the pole barns, with essentially no privacy, shared washrooms and a shared kitchen and dining room. Our most basic needs would be met and it wouldn't tax our resources very much at all, since most everybody came with a mattress or two and some bedding.

"At the other extreme, we could commit to providing separate houses for everyone. I suspect that would take more resources than we have available."

"Sounds to me like when you say 'resources', you're talking about money, energy, materials and manpower," said Angie. "But I'd say the most basic resource we're considering here is privacy. I suspect we already have something of a consensus on that. Is anyone willing to accept the minimum privacy option?"

This question met with a chorus of noes from everybody except Tom.

He put up his hand and Angie nodded for him to go ahead. "When I started planning out this place, I was thinking of something pretty much like Erica's minimum privacy option, with the addition of privacy screens between each family's area on the floor of the second pole barn. I know it doesn't sound very pleasant, but I'm not sure that we can afford to spend a whole lot on accommodations this spring, when we should be concentrating on self sufficiency. Later on, sure, using our own materials, once we are set up to produce them, but not just yet."

"Can you stand to wait until we decide what level of accommodations we do want to go with, Tom?" asked Angie.

"Sure," said Tom, "better to know exactly what I'm disagreeing with, eh?"

"Exactly," said Angie, "so, given our common cultural background, it's not surprising we only have one person in favour of the minimum privacy option, and that for financial reasons. OK, now let's talk about the other extreme. Does anyone think we all really need separate houses?"

Again there was a chorus of noes, with just a few people who stayed silent. One of them, Nora MacGregor, put up her hand.

"I guess we really don't need separate houses, however small," said Nora, "Maybe just little apartments—I do value my privacy. Especially in the washroom. At the moment, upstairs in this house, six bedroom are sharing one bath. Takes a lot of co-ordination, and some of us older folks can't stand around waiting for long when we need to..."

"To go?" said Angie.

Nora nodded.

Erica, who was still standing at the front next to Angie, cleared her throat and spoke up, "Nora, I may have a solution for you. It's actually part of what I was going to present tonight anyway. I think we should switch over to composting toilets. The septic system here just won't cope with this many people for much longer, and we urgently need to recycle the nutrients in our waste back into the soil.

"I don't know if any of you are familiar with the sawdust toilet, often called a 'Jenkins toilet' after the guy that came up with the idea and tried to popularize it. It's just a wooden box with a bucket inside, a toilet seat on top and a container of sawdust or similar organic material nearby. You deposit your waste and then cover it with sawdust. When the bucket is full, it gets dumped on a compost pile. A year later it has composted down to nice rich black earth ready to be used on our gardens. And any disease organisms have had lots of time to die off.

"Subject to everyone's approval, of course, I think we need to pull out all our existing flush toilets and replace them with Jenkins toilets. And anyone who needs quick access can have a toilet in their bedroom. The smell is minimum, but ventilation can be arranged if it turns out to be a problem."

"Well, that's quite a heap of shit you've dumped in the middle of things here, Erica" said Wilf Janes with a chuckle. "But seriously, there's no doubt in my mind that we do need to do this, and it certainly answers some of Nora's concerns. I'm guessing we could even put a little cubicle in the corner of any bedroom that needs one of these."

"I don't know," said Nora. "It's really kind of a shocking idea."

"I've got a copy of Jenkin's book and a couple of others on the subject in our room upstairs if you want to read up," offered Erica. "And there are some websites you could look at too. Just Google 'humanure'."

Allan's own thoughts on the composting toilet issue were mixed. Like many people in modern western society, "feces" were something he felt should be flushed away behind one and never seen again. Not talked about, and certainly not handled. On the other hand, he'd seen the books Erika was talking about and understood the point about replenishing the soil—turning human waste into a valuable resource rather than something inconvenient to be gotten rid of. He had a hunch that, given a chance, Erika might be able to talk him around.

"I think we need to mull this over for a few days," said Angie. "Andrea, make a note that it should be on the agenda of next Tuesday's meeting. Those with serious doubts should approach Erika and get more information. For now, let's get back to the housing question. So, Erika, do you have a recommendation of where we should fall on the privacy spectrum?"

"Yes, actually," said Erica. "And it is kind of a default option, not much different from what we are doing now. We recommend that couples and single adults get private bedrooms with storage for their personal property. School age kids will share a pair of bunkrooms—4 bunks each, to start—one room for boys, one for girls. Currently, we've get 5 couples, 5 single adults, 2 school age boys and 3 school age girls. There are six bedrooms upstairs in this house and they are occupied by the couples and Jane's girls sharing one room. Some of you are sleeping on couches in the living room and here in the addition. It's a less than ideal situation."

"It is less than ideal," said Jane. "But I'm not sure your solution is an improvement, especially this bunkroom thing. You're talking about taking about taking our kids away from us at age four? What kind of a cult are we running here?"

"No kind at all," said Cindy. "I've got kids and I had as much input into this plan as Erika. The decision as to when to make the move would be up to the parents and the children. And 'away' isn't really the right word for it. The parents' rooms would be in the same building, on the same floor, as the bunkroom their kids would be in. Little different from the average family home."

"That sounds better," said Jane. "But I am guessing kids from different families will be sharing these bunkrooms?

"Initially, as it happens, no," said Cindy, "but eventually, yes."

"So, who's going to be in charge of the kids in the bunk rooms?" asked Jane.

"I don't think we've worked that out yet," said Cindy. "I'd like to say their parents. But I can see cases where disagreements between kids could lead to disagreements among parents. Hmmm... I think that leads to something we haven't addressed as yet, and we really should."

"What's that, Cindy?" asked Angie.

"Well, so far we've all been working really hard to get along," said Erika, "And with some success. But eventually we're going to end up with disagreements that people can't settle among themselves. I though Allan and Tom were pretty close to that yesterday. They sorted it out, but we need to have a mechanism for coping when we can't settle out our differences."

"I think you're talking about having some people trained as mediators," said Angie. "Enough so we can always find a reasonably neutral party to mediate a dispute. Yesterday we talked about facilitator training, which I must admit I haven't got around to arranging yet. But mediator training is similar and could probably be done by the same people. Andrea, make a note for me to get that set up ASAP."

Andrea did so and Angie went on, "Jane, you're OK with this?"

"Yeah," said Jane, "but I'll be keeping a close eye on how it works out."

"Good idea," said Angie. "Erika, where were you?"

"Just about to make a sketch of what we can do with this building," said Erika. "We need a few more bedrooms, the two bunkrooms and at least one more washroom. As we see it, we can have all that by putting in some partitions in the large rooms on the main floor of this house, " said Erika. She turned to the white board and made a quick sketch of the main floor of the house. "The living room could be divided into three rooms, the dining room into two, the kitchen into a bedroom and another bath and there is room in this addition for three bedrooms, two bunkrooms and a bath."

She added the partitions she had just suggested to the diagram. "This gives us 14 bedrooms, and we only need ten, so there is even room for the next few people who arrive. And the materials needed for this shouldn't be very expensive. For now we can still cook in the kitchen and since the weather is warming up, we can eat on the front and back porches."

"Maybe we could hold off on dividing up the dining room until we absolutely need to," said Jim. "That way we can eat inside and give the weather a chance to finish warming up. "

"I think you'll find we want a window in each of those bedrooms," said Don. "So that means we can only get one bedroom out of the living room, at the north end. What's left of the living room would do for a dining room in the short run, especially if we knock out the walls separating it from the hall and entrance way. So partition the dining room and addition first, then the living room and finally the kitchen, once we've got another kitchen set up."

"Actually, Don, that's a pretty good idea," said Erika, and adjusted her sketch to reflect Don's suggestion.

"I think there are a few more things we need to discuss," said Angie, "but first, how does everybody feel about just having rooms instead of houses or apartments?"

Allan was cool with it, but he expected to hear some push back. Surprisingly, everyone agreed with the idea.

"OK. So, at this point, the loose ends are replacing the kitchen, dining and meeting areas" said Angie. "Any ideas, Erika?"

"Yes indeed," said Erika. "Let me just add another sketch and then I'll explain what we are thinking about."

She took a moment to roughly outline the two pole barns, and then went on. "The kitchen here is really too small for this group, much less a significantly larger one. We'd recommend cleaning up both pole barns. Put the kitchen at the north end of the nearest barn, with processing and storage areas for the food we'll be producing, and a buffet counter to divide the kitchen from the dining area. Set up tables next to the kitchen for people to eat at. Maybe a stage for entertainment at the other end of the building, with chairs in front of it for the audience. That would work for these meetings, as well. In the other pole barn we can add more bedrooms as more people arrive, plus bathrooms, and also a 'maker space' with the tools and equipment we'll need to build all those things we aren't going to buy."

"That would seem to just about wrap it up," said Angie. "What do we think people?"

"Just a couple of things I'd like to add," said Karen. "First, if we set up a big kitchen in the pole barn and feed everyone from there, am I still going to get stuck doing all the cooking? I pretty much have so far. I mean, I don't mind cooking, and thanks to those who have helped, but as we get more people it's going to become a big deal. More than I can handle.

"Maybe we could take Tom's 'crew' idea and have several 'cooking crews' rotating through the kitchen or sharing the work some other way. Spread the work around and have more of a variety of food than I can provide. And maybe we can try to scare up some actual professional cooks when we are hunting for new people."

"Sounds good to me, Karen," said Angie. "People?"

This time there was unanimous agreement.

"You had a second point, Karen?" asked Angie.

"I do," answered Karen. "I know that some folks, like my husband Tom here, will want access to the kitchen for a snack now and then. Maybe not the whole kitchen, but at least a small area of it, set up with just enough supplies and equipment for those who feel the need to nosh. Or for people who have missed a meal."

A few chuckled at this but no one disagreed. Allan noticed his parents lean together and have a quick whispered discussion.

"When we first moved in here back in February, I claimed the master bedroom upstairs," said Karen. But we've been feeling more and more guilty about hogging the biggest room. If we get a family with a baby or children too small for the bunkrooms, that would be, of all the rooms we currently have, the best place for them. We think that's likely to happen soon, so we are offering to move to one of the new rooms, so the master bedroom can be readied for that use."

"The other thing is storage for personal property. So far, Tom's had us dump everything in heaps in the pole barns, but it's going to have to come out of there if we follow the current plan. The existing bedrooms have closets, and room for a chest of drawers or two. I'd suggest we add closets when we put those partitions in. There's room in the basement here to put in lockers for what won't fit in the bedrooms. When we start building more rooms out in the pole barn they should be big enough to include storage as well as sleeping space. And talking about storage space for personal property gives me the idea that we should really keep that property to a minimum. Something to be decided when we are actually doing the sorting, I guess."

"Well, what do we think of that, folks?" asked Angie."Speak up if you disagree with any of these ideas."

There seemed to be general agreement. "OK," said Angie. "You got that all down, Andrea?"

Andrea, who'd been writing furiously, stopped. "I think so."

"OK. Now Tom, let's get back to your original objections," said Angie. "Would you be satisfied if we agreed to put together a 'Finance Crew' to take a closer at what we can afford?

"I think we should do that in any case," said Tom. "And as long as I get a spot on that crew, I'll be happy. Perhaps we also need to morph today's Housing Crew into a 'Building Crew' to firm up their plans and cost them out. I still think we may have a bunch of new people show up with little warning— after all we are a 'refuge co-operative'—and we might have to do something like that minimum privacy option on a temporary basis. We should be sure to make whatever preparations are necessary to do that. Mattresses and bedding set aside, privacy screens built and so forth."

"Yeah, I think we can take that on," said Erika.

"Andrea, did you get Tom's suggestions down with all the others?" asked Angie.

"Sure did," said Andrea. "Just remember that Terry and I are still working on the new sign tomorrow and Jack has agreed to help us with getting a couple of big cedar posts out of the bush."

"OK, I think that just means you won't initially be on either the finance or building crew," said Angie. "We still have a couple of crew reports to hear, does anyone besides me think it might be time for a 15 minute break?"

Coming soon, Part 10 of the Porcupine Saga.


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

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