"ECO" MEANS HOME

Hanover Ecovillage member Arias Beardslee, on fiddle, accompanies dancers Nai Va Saechao, 15, Lai Saechao, 15, and Michael Chuong, 17, who mix cob with their feet. --Tribune photo by Sean Connelley.

Painted by Ecovillage members, the mural at Leaning Tower pizzeria provides a backdrop for many of the group's meetings. Peter Lee (back right) looks on as Cathy Holt (front left) talks to Loren Haralson. -- Tribune photo by Ray Chavez

Eco Means Home: Oakland's Hanover EcoVillage turns strangers into neighbors

By Jennifer Baldwin
TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

In an age when urban living can lead to loneliness and isolation, a community in the heart of Oakland reflects a true sense of "neighborhood."

With Lake Merritt as its epicenter, the Hanover Ecovillage isn't so much a place as it is a growing network of friends who are more like a family than a group of neighbors.

They are artists and authors, teachers and therapists, musicians, builders, activists and more. Most are single, childless and self-employed.

Their only measure of organization is a monthly calendar of events that includes activities such as movie nights, music therapy, peace and justice letter writing and a poker club.

The group's beliefs include conservation in a world of consumerism, and finding happiness in simplicity and togetherness.

Ecovillages exist all over the planet, says Stephen Kelly, one of the most active Hanover members. But while similar communities focus strictly on ecology, he says, this group incorporates all aspects of city life: ecology, technology, art, spirit and economics.

"I like to use the word ecology because the root word of eco is home," Kellv says. "To have a home, you need all kinds of diversity. This is our home village."

Discussion topics include living lightly, spirit and the material world, redesign reality and natural building. The group's goals: working together to make the least possible dent in the environment while developing friendships and having fun.

"We wanted to create a place where people connected," says Marshall Johnson, who helped start the group in 1997.

"We didn't know what we wanted to do. We just wanted to bring people together."

What they're doing is working. The group estimates that hundreds of people during the past three years have participated in at least one of the more than 2,000 activities hosted. The calendar, available at local businesses, is chock full, with one to five activities happening on any given day. In December, the group held 17 potlucks in 31 days. Some events, like the calendar planning potluck, attract up to 40 people or more.

What is it about the ecovillage that has brought together so many neighbors of Lake Merritt?

It's not speed bumps, says Johnson, who uses them as an example for why contemporary neighborhood bonds are made - and then quickly broken once the project ends.

"It's just the idea of community," Johnson says. "Generally people like myself used to want to create community. But by getting involved in issues, we were missing out on friendships...If we put friendship first, that will lead to people finding common interests.

And those bonds naturally lead to projects, he says. "I feel really blessed to be here, says Arias Beardslee, a young man with wild, curly blond hair and an affinity for going barefoot.

Beardslee is one of seven people who live at 468 Hanover Ave., up the hill from Lake Merritt and a center of activity for the ecovillage.

Last summer, Beardslee visited a friend and 468 and mentioned to the homeowner, Kelly, his interest in permaculture. Kelly, also interested in that particular form of organic gardening, invited Beardslee to live at the house rent-free in exchange for his work.

The garden turned into an entire backyard experiment in more than just permaculture. Beardslee had learned in Oregon how to mix clay, sand and straw into a sculptable building material called cob. Ecovillagers were intrigued. In one weekend, they built a cob-and-brick oven in the backyard.

Then they decided to take the leap and build an entire structure to be used as an art studio. In the shape of a giant sea turtle, the studio's round walls are full of windows that allow light to flood the hollow interior.

"I wanted to be able to make art in here without being surrounded by an electric grid," Beardslee says. "And there are no corners in the whole room."

Every Sunday, community members come and dance in the straw and mud with Beardslee. Then they build and sculpt, creating symbols and images on the walls as they go along.

"This is literally handmade," Kelly says one recent morning as the ecovillage hosts a group of environmental science students from Oakland High School.

Pants rolled to their knees, the giggling teenagers mix the clay and sand on tarps with their toes.

"Feel like you're massaging the earth," Beardslee says to them.

"Y'all gotta get into it. Like, feeeeeel the joy of the mud," one student adds.

Beardslee breaks out a fiddle and the students laugh and dance as they mix in the straw.

"Now this is something high school kids could be doing a lot more of, instead of sitting in the classroom," says Kelly, who had invited the class to spend the day.

Meanwhile, fellow housemates get lunch ready. Cathy Holt in the kitchen makes enough pizza dough to feed 30 people, and Bernard McKenna keeps the fire stoked in the cob oven outside. The myriad activity is not uncommon for this household, which just the day before hosted two dozen people for a sushi-rolling marathon.
Outside. ecovillage newcomer, Jessica Rice, kneels on a tarp and pats together cantaloupe-sized balls of cob.

"I just like playing in the mud," says Rice, a 24-year-old student at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland.

"What's neat about cob is there's no waste, really. You put these cobs on, almost like bricks, then mold them. If you don't like something, you saw it off, then wet it down and reuse it."

Rice recently moved to Oakland for school and, not knowing anyone, felt isolated. Then she met an ecovillage member while volunteering for a political campaign. One potluck later, she was hooked.

"It's like an instant social life," Rice says.

Just then, Kelly approaches and the two launch into a discussion about spirituality, art, education and money.

Inside and outside the cob structure, the students use handfuls of the mud to sculpt faces, snakes and celestial symbols. None of the teens has ever sculpted before, but their artwork seems natural.

"It's exciting. It's all just kinda coming out." says Nai Va Saechao, 15, as she mounts a colorful mosaic of chipped stained glass onto her serpentine creation.

One by one, the bubbling pizzas are pulled from the cob oven and gobbled up by students and ecovillagers. Then Beardslee gathers the students for a final discussion. One student says that stomping in mud can be painful when you hit a rock. Beardslee counters with his philosophy on not wearing shoes.

"Have you heard of reflexology?" he asks. "It's the idea that your whole body is integrated with pressure points in your feet. If you walk around barefoot, you'll stay healthy. The earth is massaging your feet."

Power in numbers

"A healthy group nurtures the growth of its members and lets everyone be honest and real," writes ecovillager Holt in her book "The Circle of Healing."

Holt pieced the book together from her thesis on support groups, which she wrote for her master's degree in public health at UC Berkeley. She also pulled from her experiences as an occupational health therapist and as a member of support groups herself.

The first time Holt participated in a group, she found a sharp contrast between it an one-on-one therapy, where she tended to feel like "a helpless, powerless female," she says. The group, on the other hand, was totally empowering for her.

"It made so much sense," she says. "If I had a problem, someone had a solution. Everybody in the group was an equal.

That is why Holt is so attracted to the ecovillage. A year ago, she and her husband split up. Living alone in a cramped Berkeley studio, she felt isolated despite her urban surroundings. Then she read an ad in the East Bay Express for an opening at 468 Hanover. She especially liked the household's focus on the environment and conservation. It was a perfect match.

In April, Holt moved in. In day one, she was being helped by people she had never met before.

"Living as part of a group is much more resource efficient," she says. "And it's more fun. I think a lot of people turn to going to the mall or shopping because they want stimulation. But this group, we make our own entertainment and we don't charge money."

If someone has an activity to share or teach, they put it on the calendar. A car mechanic offers an afternoon of free help. A painter offers free art lessons. There are groups for hiking, singing, dancing, writing, tennis, poetry and spiritual studies, just to name a few.

The idea of sharing and learning from one another is one of the foundations of the ecovillage, says Tony D'Aguanno, a therapist who specializes in relationships with money. He leads a group called "Spirit and the Material World" for the ecovillage.

The ecovillage is almost like a community college campus. Each member is a student and a teacher. Classroom settings include the Leaning Tower pizzeria, the Coffee Mill, the Neighborhood Center on Lake Park, 468 Hanover, and other members' households. All are within walking or biking distance.

"The events - sometimes lots of people come, sometimes a few, and sometimes nobody at all," D'Aguanno says. "But that's OK because you're doing what you like to do."

Many ecovillagers don't have 9-to-5 jobs. Between learning to live more simply, sharing resources, and working for each other, many don't see the need for what they say society has deemed conventional work schedules. Most are either self-employed or work various parttime jobs.

"One big thing everyone talks about is not being caught in oppressive job situations," D'Aguanno says. "Many people I know are in the system and may feel oppressed, but they're not doing anything about it. But here, we don't let that happen."

Ecovillagers create and participate in countless community service projects -- such as teaching Oakland High School students about building with cob. Eco-villagers can be found volunteering in schools, libraries, youth programs and anywhere they can make a difference.

About 20 members recently spent a week painting a mural with direction by fellow ecovillager Peter Lee, across the entire wall at Leaning Tower of Pizza in Oakland. Lee spends his afternoons giving free art classes to youth.

"If we're not working, then we have the time and energy to do other things," says Loren Haralson, who lives frugally on a small endowment from his family and devotes much of his time to volunteering.

By reaching out to the community and handing out activities Calendars left and right, ecovillagers hope to build as large a network of friends as possible.

"This is the first community that I've lived in that has a whole neighborhood as its focus," Kelly says. "It welcomes neighbors instead of separates them."

Living lightly

The potluck is the epitome of living lightly, Holt says. It's a sharing of resources, a contribution to conservation. It's also the center of the monthly meeting of ecovillagers who come together to share tips and learn more about lighter living.

On a recent rainy evening, 17 people leave their shoes at the door as they enter the Crescent Sangha House near the Grand Lake Theater.

The living room table soon is filled up with pots and pans of warm, homemade, aromatic dishes, and ecovillagers enjoy the meal while sitting on mattresses and pillows on the floor.

Four ecovillage members live at the house at Crescent and Santa Clara streets. Laura Wells, one of the housemates, passes out paper on which people wrote living lightly goals at a previous meeting.

"My first goal was to ride my bike more and drive my car less," Holt says. "After I chose that goal, I had some jobs in downtown Oakland and I was able to ride my bike exclusively to them. I felt so good about it. And I saved money on parking."

Ideas fly: buying food in bulk, reading magazines in libraries rather than buying them, building furniture with pieces of throw-away furniture, hanging a clothesline instead of using the dryer.

D'Aguanno says that walking more has kept him healthy and saved on medical bills. Kelly will ask an expert in solar water heaters to give a presentation at his house.

The meeting is a perfect snapshot of the Hanover Ecovillage. There are no rules, only respect. Each person is a student and a pupil. They are concerned about conservation, committed to community and generous in sharing mutual empowerment.

"The network is far more complicated than one can ever explain," Johnson had said at the thought of a newspaper article trying to sum up the entire ecovillage. "There are as many stories here as there are people, and the network continues extending itself."

____________
The Hanover Ecovillage welcomes all members of the public to all of the activities on the calendar. Calendars are available at the Leaning Tower of Pizza, 498 Wesley Ave.; Coffee Mill, 3363 Grand Ave.; on the ecovillage's Web site at www.javamentor.com/eco; and from ecovillage members themselves, who often can be found out and about the neighborhoods around Lake Merritt.

You can e-mail Jennifer Baldwin at jbaldwin@angnewspapers.com or call (925) 416-4814.