We did a big house project, a few weeks ago, painting the big bathroom. The ladies collaborated on the painting project, while I kept them fed, watered, tea-ed, music-ed…a general gopher. The bluegrass playing during the whole evening gave this air of a commune, which was lovely. The next day, another coat was painted by another housemate, with the final one put on that afternoon, by one of the painters from the night before. Cleanup was a shared job.

Transition Towns loosely divide our projects into Head, Heart and Hands emphases, with an overarching theme of building community and the strong foundation of Permaculture ethics and principles, the ethics being Care of the Earth, Care of the People, and Generate and Distribute a Surplus. We’ll probably talk about all of these, at some point, but I’m interested in Hands, in this writing.

Shared work has been a form of bonding and community building since forever, among Humans, but also in the Greater-Than-Human world. Our Transition Initiative has gone in and out of emphasizing Hands projects, versus Head and Heart. Most projects are a mix of emphases, like a bread-making skillshare, where we are using our hands to make bread, our heads and hands to learn the technique, and our hearts and heads in the conversation and bonding with each other, or a Transition Café, which has both head and heart aspects.

What sorts of Hands projects do you find bring folks together? Gardening? Cooking? Helping others? Building? Permablitzes? Protests? Marches? Blockadia? Other projects? Is there a duration that is ideal? Daylong? A couple of hours?

Who do you like to do these projects with? Friends? Family? Folks you’ve just met? Folks you may not see again?

Years ago, a group of Transitioners and other friends got together to help me move to this place. We have had our ups and downs, inside the house and outside of it. This current generation of housemates benefits from the work of generations of housemates before them, nearly four years worth. There have been times when I have had wondered if we would ever be in the place of doing a house project together, as a community, but here we are. Where will our Transition Town be, a few years hence? What will we do, to get it there?

Notes: What We’re Reading

Being Salmon, Being Human, Martin Lee Mueller

Nourishment, Fred Provenza

The World We Used to Live In, Vine deLoria
Lean Logic, David Fleming

The Great Pivot, Justine Burt
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
Watership Down, Richard Adams