The Trout Doctrine

Acorn decided to buy a house for $100K tonight.  It is halfway between Twin Oaks and Acorn and a short walking distance from the 100-acre Lawson land property that Twin Oaks owns and is the center of much of our seed growing business efforts.  This property was listed 4 days ago, and Acorn moved very quickly to make a decision about this before we lost it to 3 other bidders.

This is unusually fast for a major decision like this, but it reflects the desire of Acorn to expand its horizons and fundamentally sign on to what is now being called “The Trout Doctrine.”  In its pithy entirety, the Trout Doctrine is More Beds Under Roofs.  At Acorn this is not a frivolous point, as currently there are perhaps a dozen people living outside in tents.  None of them are actually members of the community, they are interns and visitors and guests and some persons with special poorly defined relationships with the community.

This only looks vaguely like Stardust, i'll get a real picture up shortly.

This only looks vaguely like Stardust, i’ll get a real picture up shortly.

I am doing my part by continuing to push the treehouse agenda.  i am quite pleased with the way Stardust turned out which is the fully enclosed treehouse which Pilgrim honchoed the completion of when he was here most recently (along with a bunch of safety upgrades and several tin roofs being added to the existing tree houses).  Stardust is the name of this treehouse, after Pilgrims visionary Stardust Sustainability Center in Equador

What is interesting about Acorn’s decision process is we know what we can’t do.  We can’t design a total plan for a new community to spring from this property in 100 hours.  We can pull together resources from a bunch of different places and agree that this is close enough to what we are sure of AND that we trust ourselves to all agree on something in the coming few weeks.

Frankly, i am proud of us.  There was an unusually good opportunity and even though the details are still far from completely worked out, there is trust in the process that every voice will get heard; every concern will get some attention (and many of them resolution).  We took 30 voices and created a single song.  And we own a building now.  it opens powerful possibilities and was a bit daring.

or at least a functioning alternative to capitalism

or at least a functioning alternative to capitalism