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Ken and Scot

Ken

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where I went to school and eventually earned degrees from Emory U and Georgia State U. I worked part-time jobs at churches, the YMCA and the Juvenile Detention Center until I found my niche as a teacher. That’s where I met Scot – we were both teaching in the same school in Atlanta.

After raising a son, Max, who now lives in Portland, and completing a humanities teaching career in Dallas, Texas, I retired to Asheville, North Carolina, where we have lived for seven years.

We became interested in cohousing about three years ago, when a few friends started talking about how it would be to live together. Then I participated in an intentional community conference at a local college and read the McCamant and Durrett cohousing book, and I was hooked. This is a sensible and meaningful way for people to live. After searching communities in various states, we found Daybreak.  It was meant to be.

I’m an avid cyclist and traveler. Scot and I have taken many cycle tours around the world, most recently in Japan. I enjoy reading and book clubs, spending time with family and friends, volunteer work. I am looking forward to our move to Portland and to helping establish this cohousing community. It will be wonderful.

Teams:  HUB, Community Agreements, Membership, Communication, and Bike

Scot

Yes! I have sold my house, packed up my business, my husband, my dog and  will soon be driving 2,618 miles to join the Daybreak Cohousing community!  It is so exciting to be with like-minded individuals. My first reaction to meeting members of this group was, “Where do I sign?” They were so welcoming and fun.  Their total commitment to the community, the environment, and to each other was enlightening and inspiring to me.

I am an Army brat.  I have lived and traveled all over the world.  The one disadvantage to this life is no home base. Joining Daybreak will be the beginning of planting my roots.  I have been teaching art my entire life. I have also had a successful pottery business in North Carolina. Now, I plan on becoming an Oregonian potter! Of course, there is the ‘crazed’ cyclist part of me, too! I love to ride my bike all over the world. The fact that all of the members of Daybreak are ‘foodies’ was a definite lure for me. I can’t wait to move-in and hang out in the common house!

Denise

I grew up in the big city of New York a long time ago. At the tender age of 18, I moved to Kansas and lost everything in a tornado within 24 hours of arriving in Topeka. After five very long years in the Midwest, I came to Oregon where I knew that my spirit and heart wanted to reside (along with my corporeal self). I had a daughter in 1973 and we lived in a variety of shared households for 14 years. I attended PCC’s Interpreter Training Program and then went back to school in California for four years, returned to Portland with a master’s degree and have been here ever since.

After a variety of different job experiences, including several collectives and cooperatives in the 70s, I settled on a career in sign language. Along with doing freelance interpreting, I also work in the Outreach Department at the Washington School for the Deaf in Vancouver providing consultation and service to school districts (and their interpreters) in Washington state.

My daughter lives in Portland and I have three grand-girls: Madison, age 11;Taylor age 9 (soon to be 10); and Jaden, age 2. My son also lives in Portland as does my foster daughter. Now you know why I drive a van.

I live with a very cranky dachshund, Oscar Wilde, who will be 15 years old in June (that’s 105 in human years).

Co-housing offers an alternative to the idea of “rugged individualism.” We rarely see our neighbors, children don’t play outside, and we scurry between car, house, work and stores, all the while connecting by cell phone. We have play dates for the kids and play dates for ourselves. Putting the brakes on all that, co-housing offers an opportunity to revitalize spontaneity and develop a real community with human connections in a diverse group of people. Woo-hoo, I can’t wait until we move in.

SaRah

When I went to college at the University of Michigan, my father returned to college at the same time, leaving our lovely suburban home for the life of a Ph.D. student after a nervous breakdown caused by trying to become management when he just wanted to remain an engineer. The cohousing design with the walkway passing by everyone's windows reminds me of what my mother hated most about her downward mobility. In a state college I realized the benefits of my private Quaker schooling when I met students with no knowledge of the world beyond their hometown whether it be a rural small town, an urban ghetto, or a rich city. Our high school sent us to MLK’s March on Washington and social activism was in my blood in those days of civil rights and Vietnam protests.

When I moved to Cleveland, I did theater with the black arts center, Karamu House, and sold real estate for a black firm trying to open up the suburbs. I shook my booty in clubs to Funkadelic and got arrested for playing in a fountain. I wandered and ate in the immigrant neighborhoods and supported a levy and the poetry scene.

Loving the old neighborhoods and houses, I decided to learn more about them by going back to school for architecture, which is how I came to Oregon. My friends had a plan to buy abandoned houses around Karamu House and fix them into a neighborhood for local artists. But a great tragedy happened in my "family" in Cleveland while I was in Eugene and all our dreams fell apart. I dropped out of architecture school and bought a fixer house which I shared as a rental for architecture students. So that is how over the next 15 years, I fell into my "career" as a landlord. Finally, I quit my job working for the tax assessor and followed friends to Portland. So I like to joke that  I am in the two most hated professions (maybe worse than lawyers?). But I consider myself a frustrated architect and am sad that I will have no roll in Daybreak's design. There is always landscaping, which I do on all my rentals. I love the impermanence compared to buildings. I have taken several trips to Japan to study their art of gardening.

After trying to get into design/development in Kansas City, Missouri, and losing most of my money there, I have a new second home in a poor town in New Mexico in between the rich towns of Santa Fe and Taos. My friends who suggested it to me are back-to-the-land movement people from the 70s and I enjoy their multigenerational community. So I am looking forward to Daybreak's.

Teams: Landscape/Gardening, Communication, and Food Program

Julianne, Matt, Mackenzie & Peyton

(Now I’ll describe everyone in reverse order of how I introduced them, so hold on to your hats.)

Peyton reads a lot – maybe too much, if ya ask me. (Back in MY day, kids delivered newspapers in their spare time, or swept up their grandpap’s general store, or walked six miles back and forth in the snow. Nowadays, they spend all their time with the skateboards and the hula hoops and those durn newfangled transistor radios…)

Sorry. I was reminiscing again. Anyway, we find Peyton delightful, but it’s possible we’re biased. She’s into dinosaurs (if you draw them for her, you’ll be her best friend), Raffi (that space in my head where the Clash’s “London Calling” and the Who’s “Quadrophenia” could be heard at all times is now occupied by a very gentle Canadian bouncily singing “Ha, ha, this-a-way, ha, ha, that-a-way”), Dr. Seuss (if you hear her talking to herself, it’s probably a word-for-word rendition of “Hop on Pop” or “Mr. Brown Can Moo”), throwing spherical objects into the air (if you ever meet her, the phrase “throw air please” is her request that you do same), and, best of all, she LOVES playing computer basketball with dad (okay, maybe not yet, but I’ll not give up…).

Mackenzie – goes to St Mary’s High School in downtown Portland, and seems to enjoy teenage stuff, most notably staring straight down and frantically punching out letters on her cell phone to remain in constant communication with everyone she knows (I think the kids call it “texting.”) Reads lots and lotsa books (I’m envious), watches grisly episodic television about crime scene reenactments involving dead people, does many things involving a computer that I can only guess at. Quite the artist, too – I keep pestering her to show me how I can draw in more than two dimensions, but she won’t do it. Some kind of trade secret, apparently.

Julie – grew up in Portland, Eugene, and various states in the Deep South at different times. Went to and worked at a whole bunch of colleges, ending up at Evergreen in Washington achieving an interdisciplinary degree in music, art, design and philosophy of science. Played different instruments in various weird Portland rock bands. Has done all sorts of jobs, from art director to game designer to her current job as an Apple technical writer. Into Scrabble (her bringing it up in very first email to me kind of clinched the deal). Loves to read; wishes she had more time for it. (Same here.) Plays about eight different instruments; I lost count. I dig her immensely, and I’m glad (and sometimes amazed) that she puts up with me.

Me (Matt) – Born and raised in Los Angeles; escaped in ’94. (Only thing I miss about it is my beloved Lakers.) Love Portland intensely (like most transplants) – had epiphanic (is that a word?) moment during first visit here riding bicycle on a sunny day during some playful light rain – I suddenly knew I had to move here; something about this place just resonated with me on a microcellular level. Have studiously spent most of my life working slacker-type gigs in order to have free time so I could procrastinate writing. (Have experienced undreamt-of success in that department – procrastinating.) Been working for Multnomah County Library as a clerk since 2001; love love love it. (Constantly handling books and DVDs – what could be better?) Currently doing that half-time and giving moral instruction to Peyton the other half (she’s very attentive when I explain why God likes Magic’s Lakers better than Bird’s Celtics).

In the late 80s, Julie was first introduced to the concept of cohousing via a feature article in the Oregonian. It has been a dream ever since to collaborate with like-minded people who want to create a life of shared energy while preserving a sense of individual space at the same time.

Our first experience of cohousing was as part of the OnGoing Cohousing Community in NE Portland, where households in an existing neighborhood (a retrofit community) share in meals, gardening, activities and community action. Cohousing just plain makes sense. After later moving closer to my (Matt’s) parents in Vancouver to be near extended family, we discovered Daybreak as a natural next step in our evolution as a family. We look forward to breaking new ground with such an amazing group of people!

Lorell

I have been living in Portland for two years with my golden retriever, Barney. I am currently going to school to become a midwife. I am passionate about supporting women to give birth outside the hospital. By the time we move into Daybreak, I will be a full-fledged midwife! Moving to Portland was like moving back home for me, because I grew up just an hour outside Portland in a town called McMinnville.

In between living in McMinnville and Portland, I lived in Davis, California, for 17 years. I first moved to Davis to go to college and received my Bachelor’s of Science in civil and environmental engineering from UC Davis. But most of my time in Davis, I lived in the Muir Commons Cohousing community while working as a civil engineer for the county. Even though engineering was interesting, I did not feel passionate about it. After a lot of soul searching and personal growth, I discovered that midwifery was my passion. I loved living in cohousing and have missed living in community since moving to Portland. I love being part of Daybreak and very much looking forward to living in community again.

As if I didn’t have enough things on my plate, I just started an Internet mail order business called Radiant Belly. I am selling home birth kits, supplies for midwives and some organic cotton baby clothes. Owning and operating my own business is very exciting and it is going well.

In addition to midwifery, I am passionate about connecting with people, traveling the world, knitting, good food (eating and cooking it), living sustainably and protecting the environment.

Teams: Membership

Laura