With so many new people, we felt that we needed something that would establish a feeling of community rather quickly, and that’s where we came up with the idea of a retreat. It’s easy to get caught up in one’s own day-to-day life even in a co-op house, but we felt that if we could create a place where people could step away, connect, and openly put out on the table what they hope to get out of their co-op experience, we could have a much stronger community than we otherwise would.

And one by one the rooms here at the co-op are emptying. August 15^th is the big day when old leases (and co-op contracts) terminate and new ones begin. I am seeing a lot of moving vans in the neighborhood as students in other buildings begin moving out, soon to be moving in. The hallways on the second and third floor are unusually brightly lit because doors to empty rooms are open, and the sunlight is coming in.

But the difference is that while you can ask a smoker to extinguish a cigarette, you can’t ask a cat owner to extinguish their cat. Even if my body regards a cat as the equivalent of a constantly lit cigarette that eats and poops.

Madison Community Co-op, a network of eleven co-op houses here in Madison played host this past weekend to the Fellowship for Intentional Community, a resource and networking organization for the intentional communities movement. It marks the first time that a co-op house or network of co-op houses served as host for FIC’s semi-annual meeting, and in many ways represents a coming together of the housing co-op and intentional community movements.

I related a story of how we celebrated a housemate’s 20^th birthday at the end of last August. I calculated that right at about the point she was taking her first breaths as a newborn to the chorus of “It’s a girl!” I was in an Urbana, Illinois bar in my first week as a freshman away at college testing the enforcement of the underage drinking laws.

I named this website "The Different Drummer Soundtrack" because I think all of our lives can be set to music and expressed in song. A life sung and not whispered takes on a certain beauty and power it might not have otherwise taken. Certain pieces of music have a way of attaching themselves to memories so that hearing the music again triggers the memory.