Profiles of the hip

Miguel is from Puerto Rico. He came to the U.S. to work on and organic farm in the mountains of California. Now he is a chef for a yoga retreat center and works in construction.

“The mountains have a magnetism that teach us ancestral values. When we go into the mountains we are returning to where we come from. If you accept the call, you find yourself expanding your roots and increasing your perspective about who you are. It was like working with the living diversity. Plants create abundance that comes out of the soil. It all comes from one seed that becomes a vegetable that then carry more seeds inside and that fractal itself says so much ideologically, metaphorically, and literally. Working with the Earth, you get away from a constructed identity into a more free identity that is made from nature.  It is hard to put the experience into words.

“I studied psychology in the University in my homeland of Costa Rica. My path was for telecommunication with a minor in psychology with the idea of making movies that shift the mindset of people. But then I realized that everyone was eating weak food, you know just feeding the rat race or something like that. I wondered how we are going to shift people’s mindsets if people keep eating this way.  So, I decided to jump into culinary arts.

“Well, my passion for cooking led me to find out that food could be your medicine. Back then I used to weigh more than £300. So, I needed to start eating differently and understanding how I could heal myself. It began by engaging with that notion of self-love. I know other people with a similar path. I discovered eating things like sprouts, the first shoots. And I was like what is this but when I began soaking in all the watery juices out of the sprout, it shifted my perception leading me to realize that what you put in your body is how you know things. I was developing my new ideology about food. What you're putting in your body is like an investment that you are integrating into your body so if you make the right choices and you are investing the ideal substrate to go into your system, you will be increasing your strength in life and living with more clarity.”

the refined communal ideal

This is an interview with Abo Mussmann. HIs beautiful hand-made house was built as a community space. His merging of conventional with alternative ways has withstood the test of time creating a new paradigm of a communal land lord.

We started with a beautiful piece of property with a few run-down houses. Our vision of a communal community space was a given from the get-go. We bought this land in the late 90s and had four houses on it and we were a hippy family with no money. But one thing that we knew would work was if we rented out the houses, we could carry the mortgage. We always knew our baseline was covered.

It also became evident that a lot of people wanted to live communally; maybe not necessarily in one house with one kitchen and one bathroom, but rather have their own house and their own bathroom and kitchens. So we made all the outside space a shared communal yard and vegetable garden

The original house on this spot got remodeled (so to speak), basically rebuilt. It sits on the same footprint. We have 4 houses here on the land including this one. When we took this house down to rebuild it, the idea was to create a movement space where we could do yoga classes or dance or just have a place to play.

Now it's place to gather for lots of different things; we have men's groups here, women's groups, children's groups, dances classes and yoga retreats. It’s a communal space, except its connected to our house. Because of that, we limit access and have certain times available.

So, having a community dance space and semi-communal living was the vision for this space. We started to build the second story as the dance space but there's two things that didn't really work - the movement space should be on the ground level because of stomping. You wouldn't want that on the second story when you live underneath it. The other part was that we wanted the living situation facing the southwest to heat the house and to have the views.

We started dismantling the house and found that it was completely built old growth redwood. This house was built before plywood, so everything was sheeted with old growth one by- the roof, ceiling, and walls - everything was this amazing material of old growth redwood with 2 by 4 studs and subfloor.  We took the house apart, de-nailed it and stickered it. Hence, we had this amazing stash of this wood. It took a few months to take the house apart and carefully sort out all the materials that we knew we would use that later.  

Then we started from the ground up pouring the foundation and building the house. Later when we were working on finishing the house we used all this old wood for frames baseboards, ceiling, and window frames. We made all our windows and doors here on site.  We created this as an intuitive process.

Even though we drew it up with a 3D program to get on the idea of the spatial relationships and lode points of the house, the decorating was a playful process that just came through with lots of different people adding ideas. We all had different ideas, and I synthesized all these ideas. Many ideas showed up as we created this space. I called this intuitive building.

For example, the position of the windows. Normally you build a wall on the ground and then you erect it and there you go, there is your openings for windows. But I feel you gotta look at the views. I decided to do differently. We put up the walls with a few framing members and a long header across the entire wall, all the way around to give us the ability to move the windows wherever we wanted.

I created a space with just some very minimal framing and then I started to envision what it be like to be in the space and where would I sit, where would I look out, where would I stand, where would I want privacy, where would I want an open space. We let the outside inform us.

 Once the minimal framing was up, we could modify it really easily and by having a continuous header around the top, it enabled us to put the windows literally anywhere. These windows here were to mimic the arc of the moon. We call it our lunar window scape.

We don't have any fences in between houses. We just let it be open and had fun with it. This invites a sense of engagement by being able to not be alone. We've been doing this for 25 years now and people have really been enjoying this. It works. There are no issues around the usual points of contention, which is kitchens and bathrooms. Everybody has their own, but we oftentimes share meals outside, and everybody makes food. It's an easy way to have community and especially with the kids running around.

The kids are actually the ones who draw in the communal aspect more than anybody because it invites the parents to collaborate to watch over each other's children. The kids get different experiences in different households. They don't grow up with the nuclear family, they grow up in multiple households with different rules and even different languages (since we have Spanish on the land as well). I see the kids getting a well-rounded view of possibilities of how to live in a family. It's going to be a natural part of them. They know our rules are a little bit different in this house than that house. I think that's a pretty healthy thing. so they don't grow up with just one thing.

And for the parents it allows them to drop out of the individual nuclear family thing. They say let's do this together. It lets 2 parents watch five or six kids while the other parents actually have space to do other things like do the laundry or clean the house or go shopping or have a date maybe. It becomes a coop, a cooperative to raise kids. There’s an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child. There’s something true to that. For 20 years we have had multiple generations of kids running around going from house to house. Now our kids have stuck around and we have two grandkids living here with other young families to support them. We have a six little kids in the 7th on the way, living on this land. They're all within two or three years of each other so there’s gonna be a second polk of kids again, growing up together and learning from each other.

It gets them away from the screens – Hallelujah. There is too much TV. These kids actually learn how to be outside together by being on the trampoline, sharing tools and toys, and just being outside. They are connected to nature by being in the garden together or digging in the dirt. There are lots of ways to be active. They climb on trees, hide in shrubs, and find so many ways to connect with nature. Because of our country living, the kids open up and relax. I notice that kids get really antsy when they are inside, and the TV becomes the pacifier.  I get it. It works but it also creates its own set of problems but that's a different conversation.

Here, our open shared yard enables them to go out the back door and there will always be somebody to play with. I think it’s probably been like that forever, but we have forgotten because of how living spaces are organized. I’ve noticed in the 20 years have really resorted to helicopter parenting. My opinion is that kid’s activities are way too supervised. They have no sense of freedom anymore. They're constantly being monitored by the parents. Here they have a little bit more freedom around them. It is a little bit looser. it's just a general sense of safety for them.  Like maybe there is an argument, maybe they fall and bonk themselves but that is part of life. They know that they have security of other parents. This is really important because it's not just ohh Mama mama mama or papa papa papa. They can trust this person, or they can trust that person. To me, that's a good aspect to counter this hyper individualism that has been pushed on us just by circumstances.

It's not like everybody's equal and everybody has this shared responsibility because we are always the final say. We are the landlords and in the end we are responsible. We pay the utilities and garbage. But I try to release expectations of other people to live their lives. It's a good exercise for me. People are just being themselves and creating their homes how they want to create their space. We generally ask (but I think everybody gets it pretty quickly) not to have junk lying around. But people have their lives and their stuff and that's OK. It works for the most part, and hopefully, they stick around.

It's a letting go of trying to control.  It’s really easy to feel controlling for this place because we maintain it and have owned it for so long, and we understand what needs to happen. But letting people have their ways and making the gardens has been a great gift to me because people have different rhythms and different ways of doing things. It is constantly showing me that there's not just one way of doing things. So, this is what we offer – a rental house with communal yard and garden that is safe for children. It makes people feel empowered to do their own thing and to come up with different creative solutions and activities while being together. It works.

Protest for Palestine

The protest at Colombia University against the Palestinian massacre has sparked other students to take over campuses. Cal-Poly Humboldt is now occupied by students and closed for the rest of the semester.

When I arrived on the scene, I took in the signs and graffiti, noticing that much of the graffiti was done in chalk. It felt like no one really wanted to do harm but just wanted to be heard. There were small groups milling around discussing politics, people meeting other people, and tents pitched on the laws.  In general, a fairly mellow vibe although benches and school furniture were piled up in access points to prevent easy coming and going.

There was a cute little girl with a big sign. Her father was close by, and upon talking with them, I found that the little girl was very politically aware. With her father, they attended many political rallies. There is hope for the future there.

Food Not Bombs was there feeding people and being run by young adults. It’s nice to see the inspiration of the past being carried into the future. Food Not Bombs was started in 1980 by eight young anti-nuclear activists after their friend was arrested at the rally at Seabrook Nuclear Power Station.

I noticed a group around an elderly gentleman wearing a Yamaka or Jewish hat. He had a quiet voice, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. After he finished talking, I approached him and his wife and asked if he had a message. This is what he said.

The Rabi came with a few other people. One young man stepped forward and offered this.

The Jewish community coming to the protest was an act of bravery, peace, and a desire to heal. It is easy to lump everyone together, and, as the sign says, it becomes an anti-Semitic feeling. It is important to be clear on what is being protested -

It’s not people. It is war.

I challenge people to look deeper. Perhaps the Military Industrial Complex is wrapped up in endorsing this funding, for the money supplied to the three countries in war, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel, is earmarked for weapons. And who is the #1 exporter of weapons? Well, the United States, of course.

Martin Luther King said, despise the action, not the man.

This idea allows people to redeem themselves. People have complex family ties, relations, religions, political ties, and alliances, but that doesn’t mean they endorse killing.

Going even deeper, I found a few signs that remind us not to point the finger unless we ourselves have not condoned genocide.

What I felt at the protest was the pain—so much pain in people’s hearts. The people who really embodied this were a young couple who were crouched down and writing names on the sidewalk—so many names. The couple didn’t even attend Cal Poly but felt called to come. Their act of expression was to write down names on the pavement. This is what they said.

My question is do we need to close down a school when people are expressing political ideas in a creative and forceful way? Maybe listening is what needs to happen instead of ignoring them. I found this to be a ripe atmosphere for other students to be welcomed into. It is an inspiring and educational environment where people are releasing pain, making amends, and creating public art. The protests are a wonderful place to get an education. Perhaps instead of isolating these students and the community expressing themselves, it should be an open campus of student and community activity. I say, give them a microphone, pull up some food trucks, and have classes happen amongst the vibrant, social atmosphere.

Toxic Machismo

The other day I saw a Latino crew painting a building. The guy was spraying paint on the ceiling and his face was in a mist of paint. He was wearing eye gear but no ventilation mask or even dust mask. He was just breathing in all the vaporized paint.

I called out to him, “Yo, dude, wear a mask!”

He said, “I don’t need no stickin’ mask. It don’t bother me. I do this all the time.”

It saddens me to watch this man poison himself and the Earth. It is a disregard for health, a trust in toxic chemicals not to hurt us, and a belief that nothing matters. Toxic chemicals become just a soup we are swimming in. This same sadness overcomes me when I see people spray themselves and their children with mosquito repellent or lather themselves with sunblock. We become a walking poison as these toxic chemicals get into the environment. Frog’s skin is as sensitive as our eyeballs. So, when the oil slick of sunblock pools on top of the water and gets on frogs and fish it feels the same as if we sprayed it in our eyes. If you don’t like mosquitos, eat more garlic and lather yourself in lemon balm because right now, we need mosquitos for the food chain, and we don’t need any more dumbasses.

Do we care? Not if we are a toxo-macho. (This is a new vocab word.) We are walking poison from head to toe over, but whatever. Got to get it done. It will be fine. But now, I’ve noticed an even more extreme Fuck It, mentality. Toxo-macho is killing the planet.

A Ford Bronco blasted past me with a sticker that said So Carbon Tax Me.

Don’t you just love the guy who runs the engine of his jacked-up, double-sized truck in the parking lot while he eats his lunch. Or the mom picking up her kids from school in a SUV who couldn’t turn her engine off and is choking out all the people on the sidewalk waiting for rides.

I feel like getting a sticker that says I killed the Earth for my stupid needs and sticking it on every person or vehicle that unconsciously shortens the life span of the human race and hastens the already speedy extinction we are in. (Just so you know, the rate of species extinctions is tens to hundreds of times faster than the average extinction rate of the last 10 million years.)

Environmentalists are often also humanitarians, so we are just too damn nice. We need to get more edgy and just slap some people up-side the head. Hey! You’re eating out of single use plastic containers! SLAP! Hey you, wearing all that slave labor polyester clothing shipped from overseas – SLAP! Don’t be spraying that deet around me! SLAP!

I bet when people get slapped up-side the head they will think twice about what they are doing. At least if they want to spray themselves down with a faux tan they will hide in their closet to do it.

I’m on the edge of being that crazy person. The counter to toxo-macho is the slap-you-earth-mama. I ain’t waiting around for you to get it. You pull out the aerosol can, and you feel female rath – not later when everything is dead, like now with my hand fucking up your hair.

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