Gypsy Electricians in the Community Safety Net

We have some people who are simply generous and wonderful to us.  This post is about what i call our gypsy electricians. These are people who come in, solve all manner of electrical problems of us and refuse to be paid for their work, because they believe in this vision of community and want to support it, even though they don’t currently live there.

Our first gypsy electrician is Milo.  Who is a slightly larger than life Scottish character, who’s exotic life has included upbringing in the African bush with natives, working the hottest jobs in the production of Scotch, a stint with the royal navy, time as a cop, subsequently several altercations with cops, running a natural food store and raising a family with the talented and amazing Susan Posey.   There is more interesting, exotic and controversial stuff about Milo, but this is a family friendly blog so i will stop here with the bio.

Milo has done consulting, wiring and some design for the electrical system in the new seed office at Acorn.  He rewired most of Heartwood after the fire.  He has done dozen of jobs large and small at Twin Oaks as well, and he refuses to have us pay him.  Instead we get him and occasional bottle of Scotch and we help move him around between his home in Norfolk and the central VA communes.

These lights don't just plug themselves in

These lights don’t just plug themselves in

Our other gypsy electrician is Dave.  Dave is a local, who pops in to both Twin Oaks and Acorn and helps get party stuff wired, or pulls cables for new construction, or helps us figure out what size electrical systems we need.  Dave is also dad for one of our newer and younger members, Frolic. And this morning i called him about the new seed packing robot at Acorn.  Our folks followed the instructions and then tried to turn it on and got nothing.  So i called Dave.  Dave is sick and lives by himself.  He will come when he is better.  But in part because he also refuses to be paid by the communes, we decided we would send a small team out with chicken soup to his place in Louisa tonight to break the spell of being sick and alone for several days and have a little party at his place.   When i checked to make sure he was not a vegetarian he said several times “oh you don’t have to do this”.  But really he leaves us very little choice, if you are going to be this generous with us, we have to meet you at least a bit in that place ourselves.

Dont cut the red one

Don’t cut the red one