Читать книгу My House Our House - Karen M. Bush - Страница 10

The company, the conversation, the sharing, the communication, the knowledge that someone is there. It must be psychological, because life seems easier if you have someone going through it with you.

ERIC KLINENBERG, FROM GOING SOLO

At the time we launched our “Golden Girls” household, we didn’t know anyone who had a similar arrangement in real life, only on TV. For that matter, we knew absolutely nothing about the intentional community movement and very little about the smorgasbord of shared living models that already existed in 2004 and have been skyrocketing in number since then. National and international, big and small, established and experimental, thriving or failing – they reflect visionary efforts to create meaningful community in diverse forms. In the universe of shared living/shared community, cooperative householding is a tiny niche.

We think it’s odd that we didn’t know about the spectrum of shared living alternatives until we created one ourselves. Oz Ragland, the Seattle-based Cohousing Project researcher and intentional community veteran, chalked it up to geography: “Well, of course – you live in Pittsburgh. People in progressive hotbeds all over the country have been exploring alternative living options forever.”

Now, even Pittsburgh is starting to show its progressive colors, with three cohousing communities in varying stages of existence. It appears we aren’t “making it up as we go along” in isolation anymore. We’ve become part of an emerging network of people who are helping to further define and promote cooperative householding (a.k.a. cohouseholding), as well as other viable and valuable ways to live in community. See, for example, The Cohouseholding Project, www.cohouseholding.com.

But we knew none of this when we began our journey.