Village 2009 has begun. Of course, it begins for many students in September -- scheming, planning, carefully constructing biographies. But now we've made the peeps who have lived that biography and we'll introduce some of them on Monday morning in our first official town meeting.
We begin every day with town meeting which is moderated by my peep, Gus. We'll use a modified parliamentary procedure to run the meetings. We are a direct democracy -- all citizens (human and peep) vote on all decisions. At least initially...untill many peeps begin to get frustrated with endless meetings and look for a different way to run things.
Tomorrow, we'll get a look at the town land which will be in the western side of the woods. We'll sign a land agreement with Caroline who is lending us the land for the project. Then, our first decision is how to split the land between the citizens and the town and then among the citizens. Until we've done that, we have no way to guarantee a loan from the federal bank.
We've chosen land near our new classrooms (to which we'll be moving on Friday). Our workshop space and tool storage will also be in new locations -- we're going to wait until we're relocated to finalize everything.
There's a wonderful website that has information about the history of Village (it's a project I learned when I apprenticed at the original summer camp in New Hampshire). Cia Iselin is the originator of the "game" and she's written about beautifully http://www.thegameofvillage.com/history.html.
(And, before I get e-mails asking about gender equity, I realized after I got home that I only had pictures of boys sewing. I was so charmed watching them work quietly and contentedly on Friday after our boisterous May Day festivities that I clicked away and then got involved with helping without remembering to get some more pictures. It is Emily's hair, though -- she saved it from her last trim just for her peep. More representative pictures in the next entry, I promise.)
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