The Vine

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

[ Ellen Goodman ]

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Five years ago, Scott Mueller held an executive level position with a large homebuilding company. He was good at his job, respected by his peers, and well compensated. His wife, Alexandra, is beautiful, bright, artistic and similarly driven. They were the sort of couple that David Brooks likes to lampoon—young, successful, upwardly mobile, effortlessly photogenic, living in a nice house decorated a la Pottery Barn showroom.

But their lifestyle came with a toll: long hours, grueling commutes, mounting stress, and a gnawing sense that this treadmill would never let up, would never take them anywhere satisfying—that they were, in effect, running a race to nowhere.

And so Scott and Alex did something quite odd (by most people’s standards). They got off the treadmill.

“What we wanted was to break our insatiable consumption cycle and begin a new life,” Scott says. “We wanted more freedoms, and we wanted our time back.”

In 2008 they purchased land in a remote, pristine area of Eastern Washington, about an hour’s drive north of Spokane. In 2009 they installed a well and began construction of what would become their multifunction home, barn and workshop. And in 2010 they quit their jobs and moved to the property full-time, camping while they finished the project themselves.

The result is Moosicorn Ranch, what Scott and Alex call their “experiment in sustainable living.” They still work—Scott’s a web design consultant; Alex is pursuing a degree in wildlife biology—but they’re no longer tethered to stressful jobs in order to satisfy a hefty mortgage. They raise chickens, grow their own food, and are trying their hands at beekeeping.

More importantly, Scott and Alex are enjoying a lifestyle that feels purposeful and alive. Pre-Moosicorn, they lived next to a state park but rarely had time to visit it. Now they’re immersed in natural beauty, and the effect is invigorating and—for Scott in particular, who says of his previous work developing tract housing, “it sucked my soul”—cathartic.

It’s a life that seems storybook and yet at the same time ruggedly, determinedly grounded. Even the name derives from this mixture, a playful portmanteau of moose and unicorn. And it strikes me that this is how all creative endeavors are born—when playfulness and industriousness collide.

I asked them what community is like in a place where you can’t see your closest neighbors, and they described it as less densely connected but more deeply engaged. “These are all giving, caring community members,” Alex says. “We just meet our neighbors in a different fashion: they show up slinging guns and kindness instead of pre-packaged cookies and kindness.”

Plus, with its gardens, workshops and ample space for tinkering, Moosicorn itself is becoming a catalyst for community. “We’re slowly making it into our own ‘third place,’” Scott says. “We’re bringing people into our environment and engineering the kinds of stimulating exchanges we want to have.”

As Scott and Alex envision the future of Moosicorn, that’s a trend that will continue. Eventually the couple plans to build additional cottages for hosting eco-retreats, seminars and an artist-in-residence program, providing free room and board to help young creatives pursue their dreams.

I’ve known Scott from when he attended The Vine at our meeting in Napa, and I wanted to write this article for two reasons. To share a story worth celebrating, and to invite the stories of others. So I’ll ask, how have you (or your organization) simplified or reprioritized? What did you let go of? What did you gain? I hope you’ll use the comments below or send me an email.

You don’t have to go as far as homesteading in the wilderness to step off the treadmill.

You just have to question where it’s taking you.

Photos courtesy of Moosicorn’s Flickr photostream

In a recent Sports Illustrated poll, major league baseball players named Jim Joyce (by a wide margin) the best umpire in the sport today.

If Joyce’s name sounds familiar, you may remember him as the guy whose blown call—on what would have been the final out—ruined a perfect game for Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga last summer.

With a year’s hindsight, we now know that this story has a happy ending—from the gracious, heartwarming reconciliation between Joyce and Galarraga, to the subsequent outpouring of support from fans, players, fellow umpires, and even Detroit airport’s baggage handlers. But you can imagine the torturous hours, days and weeks that Joyce endured as the healing process slowly, gradually unfolded.

A lot of businesses (and a lot of us, for that matter) resist openness and transparency for fear of losing control of the narrative—what’s being said about us, and by whom. The futility, of course, is that it’s no longer something we can control, if we ever really could. Amy Levi, one of the smartest marketing thinkers I know, likes to point out that “good marketing is telling the truth…so make sure your truth is worth talking about.”

Joyce’s story is a reminder that you can screw up. In the national spotlight. On the verge of a history-making moment. With ESPN and YouTube replaying your mistake endlessly for the world to see. And in response you can conduct yourself with such humility, dignity and humanity that you become more respected as a result.

 If you’re hiding from scrutiny, it’s probably because you won’t like what’s revealed.

Congrats to our friend Steve Gross, who in 2008 put a charge into The Vine—first by getting us all dancing onstage, then with his stirring talk about the healing properties of joyfulness and play.

Grossie was recently honored with the 2010 Ruffled Feather Award at the Plymouth Rock Comedy Festival. The award recognizes the achievements of those who have positively “ruffled the feathers” of the world: socially, emotionally and optimistically through the use of humor and creativity.

A social worker by training, Gross founded Project Joy (now Life is good Playmakers) in 1989 as a nonprofit organization using play to strengthen and heal children whose lives have been deeply impacted by trauma. He and his team have just returned from Haiti, where they trained and equipped Haitian community leaders and childcare workers in the art of Playmaking.

“We understand the neurophysiology of trauma, but oftentimes we don’t understand the neurophysiology of joy and love,” Gross said. “Disaster response focuses on the negative. I’m not saying you ignore that. But what you pay attention to grows. If you work with children and all you talk about is fear, loss and sadness, and you don’t try to tap into joy you’re never going to help them heal.”

Kudos to you, Steve. We’re proud to call you our colleague and friend.

When new ventures emerge from connections made at The Vine, we like to celebrate them.

Violinist Rebecca Jackson (top, in 2006) and actress Claytie Mason (below, in 2007) have contributed some of The Vine’s most memorable, soul-stirring moments.

Rebecca opened our hearts with not only the richness of her music, but even more so the deeply personal and moving story of her grandfather’s influence on her life. Claytie (along with Annalisa Derr and Alissa Mortenson) portrayed the poignant, at times haunting, life stories of “The Secret Ruths of Island House,” reminding us how much of our cultural wisdom and heritage is simply bottled up in retirement communities.

These two remarkable talents are now collaborating on a new project — a theatrical adaptation of the ballad “The Wind and Rain.” The official write-up is below.

Performances will run from April 8th through May 1st (Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights) at San Francisco’s EXIT Theatre, famous for its intimate, cabaret atmosphere and cutting-edge experimental works.

Tickets can be purchased here.

Hope I might run into you at one of the shows.

THE WIND AND RAIN

Produced by EXIT Theatre as part of Divafest 2010

“There were two sisters of County Claire, Oh the wind and rain. One was dark and the other was fair. Oh the dreadful wind and rain…”

Two sisters in a small mill town on the brink of extinction, a mysterious stranger with a fiddle made of bones, a river that runs dangerously high. Based on the well known ballad The Wind and Rain, come see this age old tale about sisters, love, jealousy, revenge and the consequence of change. Created in collaboration with acclaimed physical performers Brynna Jourdan and Jenna Bean Veatch, live music and original compositions from renowned concert violinist Rebecca Jackson (Völs String Quartet, San Francisco Opera), visual delights from esteemed illustrator, painter and whimsical engineer Molly Millar (Phantom Galleries L.A.’s Emergence Enchanted, 2009 TED Conference), and award winning playwright Claytie Mason (The Secret Ruths of Island House). This tragic tale comes to life with the humor, whimsy, magic, and terror only live theatre is capable of. Produced by EXIT Theatre, cutting the edge for almost 30 years and still slicing so much tasty theatre on the fringe berry pie.

*Performed by Rebecca Jackson, Brynna Jourdan and Jenna Bean Veatch

I recently had lunch with Vinester Randy Sater, who brought me a really cool gift accompanied by an equally cool story.

Randy is president of StoneBridge Properties, the residential development arm of Teichert, a 125-year-old, family owned and operated construction materials producer here in my hometown of Sacramento. (To most Sacramentans, Teichert is synonymous with rocks. But that may soon change.)

With Teichert’s land nearly depleted of mining resources, Randy and his team are repurposing a 3,800-acre infill site as a new masterplanned community designed around urban farming, a tribute to the area’s early agrarian heritage. “It’s time to knit this land back into the community,” he says. “But in starting this process, we wanted to look to the past before planning for the future.”

To do so, StoneBridge commissioned local historical environmental author Paula Peper to research the history and culture of the region. Her work has now been published as a beautifully crafted, limited print, commemorative book, “Sacramento’s Brighton Township: Stories of the Land.” (I got copy #162 of 300.)

Two more books are in the works, which will chronicle the influence (environmentally, aesthetically and culturally) of Sacramento’s trees and surrounding park neighborhoods. All three can be viewed here on StoneBridge’s website. A more detailed account of this project is nicely captured here by the Sacramento Bee.

At lunch Randy lamented of the development industry, “We’re good at building houses, but not building experiences people will remember.”

I beg to differ. Some of you are doing it exceptionally well. Keep up the good work.

Here’s a wonderful story about the power of one passionate, dedicated individual to engage a community.

After losing his grandmother to cancer, Joe LaBelle wanted to create better access to cancer-screening equipment for women in rural locations. His initial idea—staging a girls’ high school basketball game—was stifled by bureaucratic red tape. So with the support of his employer, Ashland Health Center, he went bigger.

On October 31st, a who’s who of women’s basketball stars arrived from all over the country to stage a charity hoops event in Ashland, Kansas—a town so small it doesn’t even have a hotel; players and coaches stayed in the homes of local residents.

What began as a fundraiser is now growing bigger still. Five neighboring communities and two hospitals have partnered to form WEPAC Alliance, a non-profit organization that provides resources and education to encourage local women to take active responsibility for their health. The partnership has earned national media attention and is becoming a model for other communities around the country.

“Lack of size and/or resources should not hinder [small communities],” the organization declares on its website. “With the state of the economy, it is easy to find reasons to complain or excuse low performance. These are five rural Kansas communities (totaling approx. 2,500 people) that are finding solutions instead of excuses.”

Allison Arieff writes an interesting article on WeCommune, an online platform that helps micro-communities—neighborhoods, apartment complexes, college dorms, churches, nonprofit organizations, etc.—aggregate and share resources.

And, in the process, builds “deeper, smarter forms of community.”

The site bills itself as social networking with soul. These are virtual communities with a tangible, functional, real world purpose. Sharing doesn’t mean “25 things about me” or “Which US President I’m most like,” but rather “I have a table saw that you can borrow.”

This is more than just an online swap shop, however. The social connections created (and, by extension, the inherent trust) are key.

“You don’t share resources with people you’re not in close community with,” says Stephanie Smith, WeCommune’s founder and CEO. “You can’t have one without the other.”

It is, in essence, the very definition of communing—a community that shares stuff.

For all of us who are weary of the doom and gloom, Walker Smith points out a website created to highlight what’s right in the world.

Reasons for Optimism is an aggregator of stories about individuals and organizations that are making a difference.

They describe it this way: “It’s easy to forget that in today’s not-so-optimistic world, real progress continues, beauty appears, brave new worlds are explored, and creativity flows. We keep seeking—and occasionally finding—our best selves. There are, in fact, reasons for optimism everywhere we look.”

Two examples from this week’s stories:

>>> In Learning From Tijuana, the creativity and individuality of Mexico’s shantytowns inspires a redevelopment plan in Hudson, New York. (If you attended the inaugural Vine conference in Santa Barbara, you’ll recall this very concept from Stewart Brand’s talk on squatter cities.)

>>> I Want You To Want Me is an interactive display that combs the world of online dating sites, scans each individual profile (“modern messages in a bottle”) and creates a composite of human yearning—who we are and what we’re searching for.

The site is co-edited by the architectural design firm Cooper Carry. Good on ya, we say.

Vine alum Doug Makaroff recently wrote to me about his latest endeavor, one that I’m pleased to share with the rest of you.

Living Forest Communities is a conservation model that acquires privately held forestland and preserves 85% of forest by building on just 15% of the land. The short video below tells their story.

The sale of the building sites pays for the initial acquisition of the land, and saves a majority of the privately owned forest in perpetuity. The developed communities are described as “light-on-the-land residential hamlets modeled after traditional European towns,” featuring clustered home sites with emphasis on green building technologies. The group then places protective covenants on the most ecologically sensitive areas of the forest to reduce the environmental impact of development and human activities.

Doug describes it as “Putting real estate to the service of conservation…not the other way around.”

“I’ve had to unlearn an awful lot of what I know about development and urban planning,” he says, “so as to be thinking very much from the perspective of ‘What is the highest conservation value here?’ and not ‘What is the highest real estate value here?’”

Imagine that.

Great to hear from you, Doug. Keep up the important work.

http://blip.tv/file/1578999/