The Village Building Convergence is like an impossible dream. People from all over come together to create beautiful structures, tasty food, lush gardens, entertaining art projects, and productive communities. How is this possible? The speakers were all trying to answer this question to some extent, or else they came at it the other way around: How is this not possible? What do we do that prevents people from taking care of their own neighbors and their immediate environment? Monday night, Karen Hery talked about her Swap Shop at the Sunnyside School, which started as a little get together with some friends and grew to encompass an old Masonic building and the other groups who co-inhabit the space. In her experience, one group inevitably wants what the another is dying to give, so getting groups together and working through their differences is most fruitful. Working with kids and adolescents, she also suggested giving jobs to the least competent person still able to do it rather than experts — this allows the inexperienced members to grow while the more experienced ones hang back. Other speakers talked about the importance of human labor, which is the most carbon-neutral way to move, build, and repair things — especially when we have an abundance of humans on the planet! There’s no shame in laying down paving stones, especially when the same stones can be used for generations.

A community center in a Canadian neighborhood called Fernwood had a similar story to tell, but they managed to transform a whole community. A big boarded-up building downtown attracted drug-dealers and prostitutes, but the folks at Fernwood NRG bought it and, with the help of the local community, fixed it up into nice apartments. The drug-dealing and trick-turning stopped — not to say these things are inherently bad, but they appear to be symptoms of an unhealthy community — and people became proud of their neighborhood. The speaker talked about acting FAST — sometimes patience is not a virtue, and causes you to miss opportunities! “Get your wiggle on!” Throw yourself out there and let the universe catch you! It reminds me of the Miles Vorkosigan books I’ve been reading, which basically follow this technique to the maximum: time and time again Miles gets himself into a huge mess, but every time has a stroke of brilliance which turns the mess into something amazingly functional — like a mercenary army, for instance.

All this talk of excitement and activity got me practically leaping out of my chair! But it has to be tempered. The woman from Fernwood told a story about trying to rescue her kitten from a tree, only to get clawed on the way down. Her Russian neighbor said helpfully, “Do you see many kitten skeletons hanging in trees?” No, of course not. Sometimes the best strategy is to not get involved, and the trick is to balance how involved you get and the speed at which you try to introduce change into the community. Karen Hery said that some people, like herself, practically live in community, swimming in it, only returning home to do laundry — others surround themselves with their homes and make little forays into community. I love how non-judgemental she framed this difference, because I am definitely towards to latter side of the spectrum. As much as I love the idea of eco-villages and co-ops, I need my own space, especially my own kitchen. This is especially clear to me as a renter — I feel like I’m just visiting, and I’m bursting at the seams to build a house and plant a garden!

Thursday night, the speakers talked about seed-saving and permaculture. Now, being brand new to this gardening business, it seems quite stupid to do things any differently. Why in the world would you destroy your vegetable garden every year only to buy brand new seeds and start from scratch? All the plowing and sewing… and now it takes work to get vegetables to perennialize again. But you can do it, and it’s totally worth it. I finally got out to a site yesterday, and helped plant a food forest. Basically a food forest is a garden made up of multiple layers of (mostly) edible plants, from fruit and nut trees to berry bushes to herbs and ground covers. You group plants into guilds, with plants fixing nitrogen or building up nutrients or attracting beneficial insects, and everything is positioned such that they get enough sun and rain. The way you design the garden allows it to produce hundreds pounds of food a year with almost no maintenance — you just go and eat the deliciousness!

I love how the more sustainable practices can actually be easier and more convenient. Another example is using geothermal to keep your water supply or your house at a constant 50 degrees F, just by digging down a couple feet. This combined with the fact that radiant-floor heating is so comfortable you can get away with heating your house to 65 degrees means you only have to heat everything up by 15 degrees. That’s easily achievable with a passive solar hot water heater, and you can even collect the water from rainfall. Best of all, the same design keeps your house cool in the summer! No heating or cooling bills, just a little electricity for the water pumps, which you can generate with little solar panels.

My favorite speaker of all was Robert Bolman. His talk was “The Elegant Collapse: Toward a Complete Bottom-to-Top Restructuring of Human Civilaztion” — for those of you who know me, this is right up my ally. Bolman is recovering from his indoctrination into this society, and building a new one over at Maitreya Eco-Village. He’s soft-spoken bright-eyed fellow who laughs easily at himself, reminding me of Mister Rogers. He also provided the most optimistic view of human nature that has every rung true to my ears, which is this: humans have the most amazing ability to talk themselves into believing anything when it’s convenient. Cognitive dissonance is not a psychological disorder so much as an ability we have, allowing Bolman to forgive political figures we might dismiss as greedy hypocrites as being confused instead. They’ve managed to convince themselves that running for office is more important than saving the world. Yet he also critiques many aspects of sustainable efforts, such as the coal and petrol used to produce and transport solar panels, or (with a laugh) the prospect of “peak clay” (imagining the day when cob is a scarce resource). I was reminded of this later when a solar-panel installation guy complained about how sick he was of catering to rich people who thought they were saving the world — the only way to keep up with global change is by building local communities. Jan Semenza, talked about how socially isolated people were the most likely to die in heat waves. Similarly, projects like the Common Good Bank, the Sunnyside Swap Shop, and European seed swaps allow people to find resources within their own communities to build a better future. No, I take that back — build a better present. Bolman painted the perfect picture: if you’re on the sinking Titanic and another ship pulls up, made of sustainable materials and powered by solar-panels, full of people dancing and having a blast, which ship are you going to choose?

Right, you’re going to dive head-long onto the ship of awesome. I’ve already met so many amazing people, and I’ve been inspired to help out on a website for a group that works with Indian craftswomen, to cover my street with swirling chalk art (thanks, PLAIN Janes), to set up a tea stand over at Mount Taber (hibiscus mint, anyone?), and to rock out at Burning Man this September. Most of the other Reed alums I know have gotten jaded over time and pretty much hate people, but the VBC has proven to me that people — yes, even non-Reedies! — can do the most wonderful things without money, without inanity, without fighting. Differences are complementary instead of destructive. Is it magic? Or is it design? Simple: sufficiently brilliant design is indistinguishable from magic.

Poof!