At the end of May, the City Repair’s Village Building Convergence (VBC) celebrated its fifth year. When I read about it in HopeDance, I decided I needed to check it out. I intuited that it was some very cool pioneers doing some very subversive work. So, some friends and I journeyed to Portland, Oregon to investigate. We of course learned that painting neighborhood intersections or building cob benches were not just simple acts of art and neighborliness but multifaceted layers of art, beauty, fun, political consciousness, personal growth and community building, woven together to form a movement that is spreading all around the country.

Fortunately we were housed near one of the first city repair intersections at Sharritt and 9th SE (whose description is included in this issue; see page 8). Since we brought our bikes on Amtrak, it was easy to travel to various sites. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The 10-day Convergence is a massively orchestrated event where there are natural building/cob work sites throughout Portland, mostly in the SE quadrant of the City, and happening all day long (if you wished to work all day long, or simply work at various sites in your travels). Talking workshops were also happening in the afternoon, whether it was on Gaiaeconomics, peak oil, planting by the stars, dispelling the grid within us, raw food, permaculture, etc.

One goes through the 40-page VBC catalog to see the myriad projects and sites throughout Portland. If you thought attending Green Festival or Bioneers was complicated by having to decide among the exciting workshops, this was massive. Not just a weekend but ten days — and not just workshops but actual sites where they needed your body, energy, muscle, artistic talents and your joy!

The first site Clark and I attended was at the Re-Building Center, the largest indoor recycling building supply store in the country (the largest outside and inside building is in Berkeley). There were rows and rows of doors, windows, gutters, lumber, etc. In the massive buildings it was interesting to see how they used recycled windows of various shapes, colors and sizes into their own building to let light in. The project at the Re-Building center was to create a large cob structure 14 feet high and about 12 feet wide. It was going to be in the foyer of their new section of the Center and was the second commercial cob construction in Portland. To be legal, they had used rebar in its construction. Of the 15 or so volunteers that day, about 90% were women. In fact, the organizer of that site was a woman, Lydia, who is a cob building instructor of workshops throughout Portland and elsewhere. I asked her the obvious question: Why teach something that ordinary people cannot legally do? Well, they can feel what its like to build with cob, and the law has changed that you can in fact build up to 200 square feet on your property which is a nice size for a bedroom/studio/small house. In California the code states that a cob building can’t be more than 100 square feet. Because the current project was such a large operation, this was no time to be creating cob with your feet. They had a John Deere tractor with a rototiller attached, mixing the clay, sand, straw and water.

The next day I was fortunate to get my feet in the cob mixture to help out with building a cob bench near the City Repair Headquarters on Division St. Shannon, from London, Ontario, an activist who realizes that cob in building/community-building is a leading-edge component but finds herself often at odds with her fellow activists back at home, was there to help us create the cob mixture. First we took a bucket-and-a-half of clay, the same amount of sand and started to sift it as we were mixing. Then we added some water, then the straw (all this is happening on a tarp on a regular business street)... And then the dancing began, stomping around squooshing and squooshing with your toes, heels and feet to moosh it all together. This is all very much fun and feels really good in between the toes and all over your ankles and knowing that other feet are dancing as well as yours in circles, back and forth mixing up the ingredients for mud. I won’t get into all the details of the cob mixture and its esoteric recipe-making, especially since we discovered that natural builders often have different recipes. However, the goal is to create a small ball (the size of a soft ball) of cob mixture that is laid down on whatever you are building, massage it into the earlier layer, play with it, stroke it, poke it and form it to whatever design your group has decided on. Since mud is so pliable, it makes for wondrous artistic designs.. This particular bench was to be a gathering place for people on the street. Just down the street, there were two cob benches at a food store. A worker-owned deli-cafe chipped in for the cob supplies since they knew their customers would be using it as well — a cool cooperative venture to include a number of businesses in that specific block. If you want to build community, you need to have spaces for people to hang out.

Throughout the ten-day convergence, not only benches were made, but saunas, walls, and earth ovens. One could visit as well as actually work at a site.

Lunch was provided at each of the sites for the morning workers: pizza or hefty salads and/or veggie rice meals. Some sites had no one there; the Re-Building Center site must have had about 20 people at one time helping make the cob, placing the cob, saving the cob, framing the cob, etc.

At dinner time, everyone would meet at a specific location at 5 pm. At times about 150 people showed up to eat a vegetarian meal of rice or potatoes, salads, bread, veggies and water. I helped one day by cutting up some basil and learned the cooks were all volunteers who came together to chop, cook, serve and clean up. During the serving, sometimes you’d see the servers dancing to their own music as they smilingly serve; sometimes even children were getting into the act, helping them serve. Animated conversations, smiling faces, happy working clothes, outpourings of guffawing all created an atmosphere of joy and festivity that was contagious. We discussed the various sites or workshops, became friends, met people we hadn’t seen before. One guy I was talking to who was hard at work in the kitchen I discovered later was a lover of a contributor to HopeDance. That was certainly bizarre. Perhaps the world is a small place. Also at one dinner I was indeed surprised to see Reo and Cheryl, who had helped us clean our house for years, and their newborn baby Lamar.

At 7 every night there was an event, a mixture of topics, whether it was a permaculture/body-ecologist dancer or urban permaculture for the landless in Chicago (guerrilla gardener) or a short talk on Taking Back Your Time. It was also a time for people to gather to learn more about City Repair, pick up a copy of HopeDance, learn about the farms and intentional communities in Portland and surrounding areas, to hear reports about some of the sites, updates, successes and needs. I have never seen so many open and happy faces in one place before. It was charming (as in the literal sense of that word: to charm all who make contact). Most events ended with a dance, either contact improv, Salsa, square dance or ecstatic dancing. Of course I was thrilled to dance with 70+ other ecstatic dancers flailing and flopping and jumping and careening and boogying down to some global rhythms that seemed to emanate from the earth herself.

One cool event was the display of the T-Horse, the T-Pony and the newly unveiled T-Whale. As it is described on their website (cityrepair.org), the T-Horse is "a mobile tea house, public square and potluck activator that reminds us what we’re missing without local public gathering places, and demonstrates how a space can be transformed into a place. Always free hot tea and homemade chai!" The T-Whale is a permanent structure at an elementary school; (which also now has some cob benches near the front of the school for hanging out, and for beauty). The other two are mobile. These are butterfly-like structures that emanate from a Toyota truck that creates shade. At this event, pillows lay about on the grass under the shaded wings (made with cloth and bamboo) and people drank chai and ate decadent and delicious desserts of all kinds. The T-Pony is a smaller version of the T-Horse and, when they are together, makes for a very large mobile space for gatherings, music and fun. This particular event was not just for us folks involved in the Convergence but for the public. There must have been about 300 people participating in the festivities, and it appeared the chai never ran out until the very end!

The T-Whale is a beautiful structure in the shape of a whale made from bamboo, recycled windows, sailing material (for the body) and painted colorfully. Inside the spirally body were benches and pillows where chai and desserts were served and lively conversations ensued, as a trio played soothing music under the T-Pony. It took awhile to get both these structures up and operating, but with volunteers and continual cooperation, magical things continually happened.

So what do mobile T-Horses, cob benches and city repair intersections have to do with the inevitable global collapse, including such devastating critical issues as peak oil, over-population, species extinction and global warming? Fortunately a board member of City Repair (Daniel Lurch) addressed this at a particular event (when staff members spoke about how they initially fell in love with the vision). He spoke about the need for community building, for spaces to be made into places. I talked with him afterwards and asked if he would contribute material to HopeDance, and he replied he would be delighted. So I look forward to learning from this young graduate student. Bill McKibben had spoken in Portland a few months earlier, and Daniel left us with two quotes from Mr. McKibben which I will include here to give you the feel for the importance of City Repair:

"The most important work to be done towards sustainability right now is to help people realize that they are part of something larger than themselves — that their actions affect the environmental economic, and social welfare of others."

and:

"The only way to subvert people is to have more fun than they do."

My sense of this seemingly odd sort of activism is that if and when things get pretty bad, it will affect every sector of society, especially food, energy and transportation. Since we have reached an apex of individualism along with the horrors of globalization, one of the best antidotes is community-building where cooperation and localization will be vitally necessary to withstand the onslaught of chaos as well as potential militaristic control over various sectors of society. But the question remains: What does City Repair offer, especially since there are many organizations that also focus on "community building" as in bowling clubs, the wrapping art of Cristo, the Knights of Columbus, and others?

What has grabbed my attention are the renewal resources (cob, bamboo, tires, used concrete, colorful bottles), the creation of gatherings by giving away tea, chai and desserts, the exotic and colorful mobile T-Pony and T-Horse (and a new publicized T-Bike which we hadn’t seen) to gain such a diverse people’s attention (more community building), to legal and careful work with neighbors to create space for themselves and their own needs, and what better place to create this but an intersection which actually is public space anyway. All of this is at the core of community building, and the three ingredients that have made it so effective are Art, Beauty and Fun. Art and Beauty answer our need for self-expression, an invitation into the Mystery and into Life. Fun is quintessential, and with the city repair events I have personally witnessed FUN. It was the overriding ingredient that cobbed everything together.

The other essential aspect of this project/movement is village building. If and when oil prices become prohibitive (and it’s going to cause increases in more than just at the gas pump) what are we going to do? If we cannot drive as much as during cheap oil, where are we going to go? For a mobile, instant-fix culture that has been addicted to cheap oil, automobiles and travel, there are going to be headaches. Creating a village in our own neighborhoods seems a likely place to begin the cure.

Nancy Kheim, a presenter one evening, spoke about her work in Little Village in Chicago where poor immigrants lived and created community. She is a permaculture guerrilla gardener and assists folks in creating gardens in tiny backyards throughout the village. These people are not as mobile as most other Americans. They cannot just get up and jump in a car and leave when things get tuff. They are more bonded to their family. Their ties are stronger. We white folks in the "sustainability" movement are mere infants when it comes to our commitment to tribe, family and place. Another factor Nancy spoke about was the greater time they spend outside in public spaces, walkways and intersections. "They don’t have to reclaim place since they are already USING it!" So it would behoove us to learn much from our neighbors from south of the border and see how they are working this village business out.

If and when City Repair’s message enters more and more neighborhoods, it is only natural it will evolve into something we cannot currently imagine. Of course, we have historical precedents before the automobile forced its technology upon us and when localization, rather than globalization was dominant. Perhaps we need to study about how things were; not necessarily go back into time but to learn how they did it with the available resources we will have at hand. How did people build houses before cheap oil transported building supplies from thousands of miles away. How did we acquire our food before the 3,000-mile salad became so easy?

If we cannot afford to move out and get involved in rural intentional communities, what are we going to do? [Check out Diana Christian’s article in this issue.] I sense we’d better create it where we live. As in the expression, "Wherever you go, there you are," it will be essential we learn that lesson, among others. And what’s more challenging than doing it with our neighbors, right here and now? I know its difficult, but when it comes to neighborly generosity and graciousness, the few tastes I’ve had have been delightful. We can start now in a myriad of ways: growing food, car pooling, transferring to biodiesel, creating social capital as well as supporting local businesses that complement sustainability needs, understanding our simpler needs for energy use, learning who the valuable tradespeople and craftsmen are in our neighborhoods: the plumbers, carpenters, farmers, cooks, builders...

City Repair rocks because it symbolically, magically and realistically combines and fuses all the essential ingredients for a fantastic gourmet meal that just might preface our future of joy and fun rather than dread and despair.

Another world is possible because it has already begun.

Bob Banner works as a window washer in his spare time away from HopeDance.



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