On the land at Rake Branch VT, Sunday 2005-09-04, a council of seven or eight reached consensus by silence on the following points:
Sunday afternoon three people left. In the dark of night two more arrived.
Monday afternoon a council of six reached consensus that:
As I said before:
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 02:38:27 -0400The trustee came to Rake Branch and showed receipts totaling $$$ to the banker who had left the money. The receipts were reasonable expenses for cleanup. Cleanup is said to be going well and almost complete.
From: Me
Nerf bank left $$$ in small unmarked bills with a Fern-44 trustee who plans to stay in Ithaca through cleanup.
It is still the case that of the people who can write checks on the Nerf bank account, at least one is no longer actively involved with Nerf. The bankers that are left call for others to take over, otherwise the Nerf bank will just muddle through as it has for the past year or two.
J has been cleaning out the Nerf post office box about once per month for years. Very little mail arrives that is worth anything, but the box gets stuffed with advertisements. Unless someone wants to take over the post office box, ey will let it lapse when it comes up for renewal. This is related to the previous item, because the PO box number is on the bank checking account.
There were some who wanted to amend consensus point (2) to specify that the potluck be strictly vegetarian. Others pointed out that there were other possible dietary requirements, such as Kosher, lactose-free, or without peanuts. Also, the seven or eight of us had no power to tell people what they could bring to Woodstock common.
Neverthless, we agreed that we would prefer vegetarian food as less likely to cause problems, and that all dishes should be labeled to indicate any potentially inedible ingredients. (Meat, Milk or Cheese, Peanuts, Sugar, a Calf cooked in its Mother's Milk) I have a book that says that Onions are not an acceptable offering to Krishna; I don't know what his problem is, but maybe we should take note if onions are used.
There is a rumor that Nort recommended Red Mill Brook to some people at the Ithaca camp, and that some of them may be there next week.
As we warned, we did not bring kitchen equipment except for bow saw, shovel, and dish washing tub. J brought the water filter and some other miscellanea. We put the shovel to good use digging a latrine, and used the bow saw to make a fire Saturday and Sunday night.
We did not use the water filter, because everybody had carried in enough water to last the short time they stayed. We did not put up a tarp, the sky was clear the whole time. We did not cook, but shared trail mix, bread and cheese, carrots, hard boiled eggs and dried fruit. Several people seemed disappointed with this procedure, but I think sharing the food is more important than cooking it. We never bothered to carry in the dish washing equipment, because without cooked food there were no dirty dishes.
There was a drum circle of three Sunday night, which I liked better than many larger circles I have been in, because the drummers listened to each other and tended to play on the beat. Almost everyone there froze in the night, but warmed up enough to get wet in the Branch at least once in the morning. The OM circles were close together and vibrant.
We went to the Red Mill Brook campground after we left Rake Branch, but did not have time to blaze a path into the brook and meadow. We just parked the car outside the campground and walked up the trail as far as snomobile rt 7. We stumbled around in the bushes a bit, but could not remember the way in and were not packed to really explore. We are thinking of going back in a week or two, packed light to travel and prepared to get lost.