In The Common House

While visiting Amherst, Massachussetts I enjoyed the hospitality of a member family of the Pioneer Valley Cohousing Community. Thirty-two households live in a cluster of houses on part of their 22 acres of land. In the photo is the dining and living room part of the Common House, which serves as meeting and event space, guest house, root cellar --in short, as everything from children's play room to sauna.

This community reminded me of Arden, Delaware, which was organized in 1900 as a Single-tax village and still thrives today. I have the feeling that a century from now, every inch of this Common House will carry its layers of memory, just as Arden's Gild Hall does now, a few hundred miles to the South.