Capturing Fall at Rocky Corner
Rocky Corner is a very busy place this fall with exciting events offered every weekend as we try to capture every minute of daylight and sunshine.
Part of our Vision http://rockycorner.org/our-vision/ is to encourage continual learning, skill sharing and teaching. In keeping with this goal, our members are sharing their vast knowledge and experience with neighbors and the broader community. Adults and children of varying ages are enjoying our outdoor workshops.
Rocky Corner is a family-centered and multi-generational community. We support people of all ages to enter, stay and participate in the community throughout their lives. We value children as members of the community and encourage their participation and leadership. http://rockycorner.org/family-centered/
Most recently, our GATHER & LEARN series offered workshops on permaculture and planting garlic. For details on Rocky Corner’s vision of sustainability, please click here http://rockycorner.org/sustainability/
HALLOWEEN was extra special this year at Rocky Corner!
Our celebration included a guided tour of Bethany’s oldest cemetery (est. 1755) – just a short walk up the road from Rocky Corner. Bethany’s Historical Society offered tours throughout the afternoon that included short stories about individuals and families buried here. It is fascinating to learn the history of Bethany and its people – how they lived and how they died.
For the first time in 20 years we had a full moon on Halloween. It was the second full moon in October and was therefore called a ‘Blue Moon.’
Bobcat Carruthers, dressed up as a wizard, set up his homemade telescope in our outdoor living room and taught us about the night sky. We viewed the full moon, Mars, Jupiter and its moons, and Saturn and its rings on a cold Halloween evening.
Bobcat is a long-time friend to Rocky Corner and has helped us in many ways over the years. He recently set up solar panels to power lights in our barn and also taught an archery class as part of our GATHER & TEACH series.
Rocky Corner’s GATHER & HIKE series offers weekend hikes to Lake Chamberlain. Our current schedule is available on our website http://rockycorner.org/events/
Rocky Corner has donated a trail easement to the Bethany Land Trust. Our trail connects to the Spykman Preserve and then to Old Mill Road and Lake Chamberlain. Miles of trails and hours of hiking are just down the wooded hill. The beginning of the hike takes moderate ability but then the trail becomes wide, flat and fairly level.
Beth Bradley
has been an integral part of the Rocky Corner community for many years and is actively involved in building our community. She submitted this biography for our newsletter:
I am a musician/artisan: A singer/songwriter who plays finger-style guitar but I have a passion for other string instruments and enjoy a number of musical styles: Sacred music with Anima Schola of the Benedictine Grange in West Redding, Traditional Celtic, Rock, Alternative and Folk. I grew up with extraordinarily talented parents who created beautiful custom cabinetry, fine arts and just about every conceivable craft. My parents, especially my Dad was a bit of a homesteader. He built the house I’m currently living in, we had chickens and ducks for eggs and got the neighborhood involved in composting, we had beautiful gardens and Dad was an early adopter of solar power.
My brilliant brother Jack studied blacksmithing and has created beautiful and intricate designs. He has worked on cool projects like repairing the statue of Liberty, Giant sundials, swords and armor. Between them it seemed that there was nothing that they could not make for themselves.
My steady income currently involves Recreational Therapy at a nursing home and software technical support. (either way I get to work with people and every day is different) I also am a graphic artist and website designer, I teach computer skills and various software.” Prior to this I worked with folks who have had physical and mental challenges.
I continue my parents mission to advocate for the environment and build community. I am Associate of the Congregation of Notre Dame and a Minister with Universal Life church. Being a minister allows me the opportunity to support people at the most important times of their lives marking the passage of birth into a community, unions and passage to the next world. Choosing to be a UL Minister allows me to ask people about their spirituality and assist them in realizing their own beliefs and paths rather than preaching a particular dogma.
I’ve been involved in the local community Grange, board member of: Harmony For Kidz, Earth Day Committee, Organic Teaching Farm which created a seed bank at the local library. I love “playing in the dirt” as a member of the community garden. I am an amateur herbalist who loves wild crafting and foraging (so much to learn) and I love teaching others what I have learned – especially children as these traditions are essential to pass on to the next generation.
I am excited to be one of the neighbors at Rocky Corner. I’m looking forward to living in cohousing. It’s been one of my dreams for many years. We have a great bunch of members who I look forward to sharing wonderful times together cooking great meals in the common house with fresh produce from our garden, playing music around the campfire and walking in the woods next door.
Old Irish Blessings for Thanksgiving
May Love and Laughter light your days
and warm your heart and home
May Good and Faithful friends be yours
wherever you may roam.
May Peace and Plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
Bring the best to you and yours.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
w in the pioneers that started Rocky Corner was contagious, and she thought “here is a group of people that found a way to do what seemed so far out, when I had only been thinking about it. And they even recycle rocks – my kind of folks.”
ns in our large outdoor area.
She yearned for a more quiet and peaceful environment and since her brother has been living in southern CT for twenty years, she is already familiar with the CT experience. When she discovered Rocky Corner Cohousing, she was immediately drawn to everything about it and, after multiple inquiries and visits, she decided to move forward and purchase one of the homes in the community.
The fast-changing climate caused Lori to think seriously about joining a cohousing community where she can have her own garden and also benefit from the communal garden. She looks forward to living in a divers, multi-generational community that offers a balance between independence and interdependence. In Rocky Corner, she found like-minded individuals and families that are devoted to preserving, protecting, nurturing and regenerating the natural environment. In the not too distant future, we may even set up our own food coop at Rocky Corner, but until we do, there is always the Park Slope Food Coop only a short distance away.
Kyla and Kevin found out about Rocky Corner through Kyla’s parents, who thought it would be a great fit for them. So they came for the ride and decided that THIS is what they’ve been looking for.
Born in Manhattan, first generation American on my mother’s side, the youngest of three, with two older brothers, we moved cross country at age three to Tucson AZ followed by Knoxville TN, then on to San Antonio TX and eventually to East Paterson NJ—where I lived until age 19. Moving to NYC, I completed my undergrad degree at St. John’s University with a major in Art Ed but as timing would have it, NYC schools closed most of their music and art programs citywide that year. I applied to McGraw-Hill and was hired as a commercial artist trainee for one of their magazines. Eventually I moved on to freelance work, staying in NYC for a few more years. A short stint in San Miguel, Mexico, to study fine arts, and then an offer to start selling real estate in central CT (don’t ask) led me to a 45-year career in the real estate field.
Shanee: I was born in Boston, MA. My family moved to the suburb of Newton when I was a toddler. Worcester, MA, where I went to college, was an important influence in my life, as was a six-month internship at an ecumenical anti-apartheid center in South Africa in the mid-1980s. I became a clinical psychologist in my mid-30s and worked in several locations in the US (DC, Denver, Boston, and primarily NYC), both in the public sector (schools, clinics, etc.) and private practice. I also worked internationally in contexts of ethnic and political violence, including over 2.5 years as the psychologist for the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone and two years as psychologist/trainer with Center for Victims of Torture (an NGO), first in the refugee camps of Guinea (serving mostly Liberians) and later in a clinic in Jordan (mainly with Iraqis). I am a registered poetry therapist and mentor/supervisor in poetry therapy, and hold a MFA in creative writing from The New School. I have taught at several universities but have not felt drawn toward a mainstream academic career path. In recent years I have reinvented myself as a late-blooming literary scholar: writing (hopefully) original interpretations of classic novels and submitting these for publication in scholarly journals (with some success). I was living and working in Sierra Leone when I met my daughter Yana, who was 7 at that time. I first became her guardian and then legally adopted her. I have been raising her in the US since she was 11, while at the same time doing our best to maintain a soulful connection to her homeland and birth family. After living in a cramped apartment in New York City’s East Village, we moved to a small town in rural western Maine in 2016. Yana entered her first year at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT and I combined teaching and practicing psychology with becoming a student again, immersing myself deeply in English and American literature, and earning a BA in English at the University of Maine (just completed). I love the Great American Songbook (listening, as well as singing), theater (mostly as an audience member, but I have also acted in several community theater productions with the Sandy River Players here in Maine), reading (primarily contemporary poetry and classic novels), and travel (worldwide). I’m excited to move to Rocky Corner because of the warm, friendly, and caring future-neighbors; the proximity to nature; the chance to spend time with new friends without having to drive anywhere; our beautiful newly-built house; and the chance to be less than 2 hours from NYC and only 15 min from New Haven while also having the simple pleasures, peacefulness, and human connections of a small rural town which we’ve learned to cherish in Maine.
and a future cohouser. She first was attracted to cohousing about 25 years ago knowing it would be a safe neighborhood for her gay family that included her partner, Brenda and their daughter, Alani. Today, she is still looking for an accepting community, but more importantly, she wants a way of life that is ecologically sustainable.
The 12 years I have been associated with the Rocky Corner project have been years of tremendous growth for myself. It’s amazing to me that I could grow so much during my 6th decade of life. I am more comfortable with myself, with my ability to be a leader, an active doer. I have learned to respect and listen to others as we have forged ahead with this tremendous new neighborhood that I am so proud of.
I’m deep into reading a biography by Linda Lear titled Rachel Carson, Witness for Nature. Carson’s most acclaimed book prior to Silent Spring was The Sea Around Us which I must admit I have never read. According to the biography, the night in 1952 when she accepted the Burroughs Medal for The Sea Around Us she said,
