I have a friend who is a quilter. She says quilting is often about assembling small bits and pieces without necessarily having a complete picture of the finished quilt. Some like more advance planning but many love the free-form. My friend says sometimes a picture emerges and it makes for an exciting, if somewhat unexpected result.

In our present neighbourhood, we continued an Easter tradition, yesterday. The little kids (the under 12ers) came out and went on our neighbourhood Easter egg hunt. About a hundred large, colourful, highly-visible, plastic eggs, containing the ‘real’ treats, had been hidden in plain sight (‘placed’ might be a better word) by the organizing adults who had chosen a combination of sweet goodies, some small, wind-up toys, and jouettes. These latter were designed to teach the kids that it’s not all about sugar. Ha! Good luck with that.

We have done this for the last couple of years and the kids are getting better and better, faster and faster at it. They have become like the guys who change tires in the pits at NASCAR races. Next year, they’ll likely have all the eggs hoovered up in under 9 seconds. This is a function of a few things: first, the kids are two years older now than they were when we did this originally, second, there are more of them -- babies two years back are now up and walking and, most importantly, they have had more practice. Recognizing this, the Egg-Hiding Circle plans to revisit tactics for next year, learning from their shortcomings that, while the unhidden hiding spots were good-enough-for-now, they won’t be good enough for next time. Don’t you love the way sociocracy works, even among those who don’t know what sociocracy is?

One of my concerns in building WRCP is that my family has created a lovely community, in this neighbourhood where we have lived for the last 10 years.What’s going to happen to it if we go? We gave this neighbourhood a kick-start when started holding our potlucks (over 500 weeks in a row, now). but look what’s happened: it may not be cohousing, but some people started an official neighbourhood association, we have street parties, New Year’s Eve gatherings, movie nights, a women’s group, a men’s group, kids who are growing up able to communicate with adults (and vice versa)... in other words, others have picked up the ball and have been running with it. They have seen something they like and are creating their vision of “community”, based on where they want to take that. It happens without overall planning, and a specific long-term goal but, people want community and, piece by piece, a patchwork community is emerging.