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Middlesex Senior Cohousing -- Building the first senior cohousing community in New England!
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It's snowing. It's the tail-end of winter. It's that awkward month called February.
The poet Margaret Atwood ruminates on February and the worrisome state of the world: "February, month of despair, with a skewered heart in the centre. I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries with a splash of vinegar." We can relate.
Weeks of snow and ice can keep us stuck indoors and feeling isolated. Older people especially. That's why this issue includes Jane Brody's recent article from the
NY Times
about the importance of close connections.
Snowdrops help in February. If you know where to look (a sunny patch where a gardener has been), you might find some thrusting up through the snow this week. Also called Fair Maids of Spring (
Galanthus nivalis
means "milk flower of the snow"), snowdrops are one of the only restaurants open to bees this early in the season. Go look for them. Then go get some French fries, with or without vinegar. It's almost spring.
Here's a snapshot of what's in our February issue:
- Upcoming Info Session -- Sunday, February 24 in West Acton
- Updates on Our Project
- "To Counter Loneliness, Find Ways to Connect," NY Times
- Sociocracy is working for us!
Yours in community,
Victoria & Mayhew
Co-founders
P.S. We have nearly 700 people on our list! But if you're not interested in getting our mailings, scroll to the bottom to unsubscribe.
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Upcoming Information Meeting
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Senior Cohousing:
Taking Control of the Rest of Your Life
Sunday, February 24, 2019
2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
New View Cohousing
Half Moon Hill off Central St, West Acton
Middlesex Senior Cohousing invites you to come
learn about senior cohousing -- and our project to build the first senior cohousing neighborhood in New England!
Senior cohousing is an innovative model that started in Denmark and operates on the understanding that
community
is the best insurance for having a fun and fulfilling 3
rd
Act!
And
getting the nurturing care we need as we age.
Program features a slideshow, video, Q&A, and facilitated break-out groups.
We're looking for new members!
Find out how joining early gets you seniority in home selection and a discount on your home price!
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February brought us 5 new members!
Five new people, representing four households, jumped onboard this month! They live in Acton, Arlington, Concord and Lincoln. Our membership now stands at 22 people representing 16 households. Eight households are members of our LLC, and eight are Explorer members.
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The site search continues
In January we expanded our site search beyond Acton and Maynard to Boxborough, Hudson, Littleton, Natick and Stow. Our hard-workng developer Matt is steadily bringing us properties to consider.
Our site criteria are: three to five acres of fairly level, affordable land. Near a robust village hub with amenities and good services. Preferably with water and sewer and also zoned for multi-family housing.
These criteria are pretty basic, but it's challenging to find properties that meet them. Many towns have restrictive zoning for multi-family housing that makes our development more risky and challenging. But we have a developer on our team who knows the ropes and is confident we will succeed. We are too.
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Choosing an architect
We're poised to start looking for an architect. We've got a shortlist of architects and will send a request for proposals soon.
To prepare for that, we've created an architectural vision -- a set of guidelines and images that show not only what we want our neighborhood to look like (the site plan, common house and dwellings), but also how we want these elements to feel and function.
What makes our future neighborhood unique and sets it apart from all other housing development is that we are designing for
community and sustainability
. Few architects in our area have ever been given that brief. Our job is to find one who's up to the challenge.
Our architectural vision takes inspiration from Christopher Alexander's seminal book
A Pattern Language,
as well as Ross Chapin's
Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World,
and McCamant & Durret's
Creating Cohousing
. If you're interested in community-based housing and design, check out these books!
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Cohousing: the Antidote to Loneliness
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To Counter Loneliness, Find Ways to Connect
by Jane Brody
Much of modern life, though seeming to promote connectivity, has had the opposite effect of fostering social isolation and loneliness, experts say.
The authors of
The Lonely American
(Richard Schwartz and Jacqueline Olds, associate professors of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School) reported that 25 percent of the people they interviewed had not talked about matters of importance with anyone in the last six months.
This month a
Boston Globe
article, “
The Science of Love
” by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie (February 10), cited a Cigna survey of 20,000 Americans showing that only 53 percent of us have significant, face-to-face interactions with friends or family every day, and 43 percent of us sometimes or always feel that our relationships are not meaningful.
Chronic loneliness can have dire consequences. A 2018 report from the CDC reveals a staggering 25 percent increase in suicides by Americans from 1999 to 2016, when nearly 45,000 Americans took their own lives. Experts worry that this trajectory reflects a breakdown in social bonds in community.
Click on the link below to read what Jane Brody, personal health columnist for the
NY Times
, has to say about finding ways to connect.
What we think: the perfect antidote to loneliness is cohousing!
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Sociocracy Is Working for Us!
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We've been implementing sociocracy, our chosen form of governance, since September 2018. It's been a big learning curve! But it's also been its own reward, personally and organizationally.
Sociocratic meetings, unlike conventionally run meetings, focus on three things: results, relationship and process. Making sure all three are attended to means that meetings are not only productive, but also make us feel good about ourselves and each other. One reason we've succeeded in attracting and retaining members is that our governance system generates feelings of accomplishment, equality, and connectedness.
So this week, eight of our newer members are taking a basic six-week training given by Sociocracy for All called "Empowered Learning Circles" (ELC). They'll be meeting in a member's home once a week and following a self-guided video curriculum that's fully experiential -- you learn by doing. They'll also have access to real-time coaching from Sociocracy for All.
To learn about sociocracy, go to the
Sociocracy for All
website. Or click on this short video for an introduction.
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About Middlesex Senior Cohousing
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We are 16 households from Metro West Boston aiming to build the first senior cohousing neighborhood in New England. We're looking for three or more acres of land on which to build a collaboratively designed, self-managed neighborhood of 20 - 30 privately-owned, clustered cottage-style homes (duplexes and triplexes) with large porches and private back patios. The site will have abundant open space and gardens. Also a large common house with extensive amenities, including guest suites and a large kitchen and great room for community meals and celebrations. Other activity spaces we may include are woodworking, arts/crafts, home offices, and yoga/exercise.
We're growing our group!
Take our
Survey of Interest
(also on our website) to find out if our future neighborhood might be just what you're looking for.
To learn about cohousing go to The Cohousing Association of America at
www.cohousing.org
.
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