Sewn Together with Creativity and Purpose
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FOR HOME OWNERS, HOME BUYERS, HOME DREAMERS, AND THE BUSINESSES THAT SUPPORT AND SERVE THEM | NOVEMBER 2016 REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE MENDOCINO COAST PROPERTY | LIFESTYLE | COMMUNITY Communityis Like a Quilt Volume 30 • Number 5 • Issue 691 30 • Number 5 Volume Sewn Together with Creativity and Purpose For almost a quarter-century, Mendocino Coast Children's Fund has pieced together an inclusive community "quilt" of concern and responsibility. Its actions stitch together the needs and intentions of many people of unique abilities, beliefs, and political backgrounds. Peaceful "togethering," with love and respect, for the benefit of a common cause—caring for our most vulnerable coastal children— is a model for peaceably and effectively living together. realestatemendocino.com | Find Real Events – Calendar on page 15 Page 2 Real Estate Magazine October 28, 2016 Communityis LikeB y aSara QuiltLiner Sewn Together with with Zida Borcich and Annie Liner Creativity and "Heart of Love," by Sunshine Taylor. Purpose Mixed media/collage. resources don’t stretch quite far enough to meet their needs. RESILIENCE AND COOPERATION “There’s this national narrative in the mainstream media One of the most remarkable things about living in a rural that we are a country divided by our political beliefs: left or community such as the Mendocino Coast, which is hours away right, blue or red. But our community is not defined by political from Big City resources, is that the people here come from rhetoric, it is defined by the goodwill of the people who live here, a long tradition of self-reliance. Many people still grow their and at the heart of this lies what’s most important: doing right own food, chop and stack their own wood, forage, hunt, and by our children and each other. What we are able to accomplish fish off the land—skills handed down by their parents and is a direct result of the generosity, resourcefulness, and kindness grandparents before them. It is this traditional reliance on of the people who live here. Mendocino Coast Children’s Fund natural resources for survival that makes the people here is a 100 percent local nonprofit organization, run on volunteered acutely aware of the unpredictability of Mother Nature. time with a small 'kitchen table' board of directors, and donations One bad harvest, one closed crab or salmon season, a of money and shared resources from the community at large,” says wildfire tearing through a town—can mean privation for not just one, Annie Liner, Executive Director of MCCF. but many families. Or maybe it’s not a natural disaster, but a catastrophic illness of a parent or child, an unexpected layoff, a family car going belly up, that causes a crisis. The THERE WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES demographic spread of Mendocino County runs the gamut from the very wealthy to the working In October of 2012 a wildfire swept through the community of Comptche, seventeen miles inland poor and homeless. Many people work two and three jobs and might still be just one missed from the Mendocino Coast. Comptche is an area dense with redwoods and farmland, which in paycheck away from teetering off the edge. So, while as individuals we are largely self-reliant, comparison to the cool, damp coast, boasts temperatures that can swelter into the triple digits a huge part of our autonomy as a community has to do with taking care of one another, with during summer and fall. That famous Comptche sun, while great for agriculture, bakes the pooling our resources and doing the best we can with what we have. Outsiders and newcomers land into a virtual tinderbox in the dryer months and drought years. There are more than thirty are sometimes taken aback by the openness and generosity of the people here. Many people brave men and women who comprise Comptche’s Volunteer Fire Department, an organization here have lived through times of great prosperity and times of scarcity; they know what it is to that exemplifies the local ethos: take care of your neighbors. Alongside Cal Fire, Comptche Fire have full bellies and a stocked pantry, and what it is to tighten their belts. They believe when fought tirelessly side by side with their brothers and sisters from Mendocino, Albion, Little River, you find yourself in a year of abundance, you build a longer table, not a bigger fence. They know and Fort Bragg’s Volunteer Fire Departments to contain the flames of the Flynn Creek Fire, that the neighbor they are lending a hand to this year, may indeed be the neighbor to come to named for the residential road on which it broke out. When all was said and done, it burned over their aid next year. two hundred acres and destroyed nine structures. Considering that over In small towns, like the ones spread throughout Mendocino County, you seventy homes and structures stood in the line of the fire, it could have see the same faces day in and day out: your children’s classmates and been much worse. Still, among the structures that were destroyed was a school teachers, your grocery store clerks, your favorite server at the local home belonging to a local family of eight, with children and grandchildren taqueria. You come to know them, know their stories, their struggles and ranging from ages two to twenty-three. Everyone was home at the time their triumphs, their hopes for their kids, their concerns about their aging of the fire. “My kids were literally counting the fireballs flying through the parents or the wellbeing of their grandchildren. When hard times befall air as we ran from the home to our car,” the mother recalls. local families, that ripple is felt throughout the community. It is this great “When we were faced with the loss of our home, our pets, and our empathic response, our ability to imagine ourselves in a neighbor’s or histories collectively, I did not have time to panic. Mendocino Coast stranger’s shoes, that compels people to give what they can in times of Children’s Fund was prepared with contacts to help us get started. They need, be it time, money or resources. It’s this response that, for the past were able to get our college aged kids back to school in Washington twenty-five years, has enabled the Mendocino Coast Children’s Fund to LEFT: Santa David with two visitors at last year's Cocoa, Cookies, and Santa event be the thread that stitches together the unique and colorful patchwork at the Mendocino Hotel. With an MCCF Giving Tree, wonderful treats provided by quilt of agencies, resources, and residents of every economic, social, the Hotel, an extremely jolly Santa (who can be found at his day job selling real and political stripe that provides a safety net for hundreds of coastal estate in the off-season), festive music by the Hole In the Wall Gang, and everyone children. Setting aside dissimilarities, they pull together to ensure that dressed in their Sunday best, it was a high point of the season for many coast kids. This year's reprise of the event occurs on Sunday, December 4, from 2:00 to 4:00 children feel the warmth and love of their larger community when family p.m. Photo by Annie Liner. Quilt of Community – Continued on Page 4 men rescuing a family of ducks from a storm drain, just for called “HarmonyUs On Purpose” – Father/daughter team Pe- some relief from it all. ter and Sally Wells made it up out of thin air, and it addressed However, in our coastal community, and I know you know it’s this same theme in glorious song and story: How to get along, no secret that I am in love with it, I see this will to cooperation how to love each other and the world. It was beautiful to have that is rather amazing in the world right now. For instance, I family, community, planet given such enduringly common- see the little village of Caspar, with its population of extremely sense advice: harmony is better than war. Love outplays hate Photo by Zoe Bachelor Sheppard opinionated folk, creating a community based on the concept and fear every time. We need to hear this message all the time. of consensus, something practically impossible to contem- Same thing with MCCF, of course. To take a line out of context Doing this story with Sara and Annie Liner has been good plate in today’s climate of My Way or the Highway. Every- from an essay by Stephen J. Gould called "Counters and Ca- for my soul, and I hope it has a similar effect on yours. To body agrees? Hmm. Maybe not exactly, but everybody gets ble Cars": “…People taking care of each other in small ways me, it proves that having a vision for goodness and acting on heard. Yes, and then they work toward an innovative solution of enduring significance” makes the world better. How lucky that vision is the way the world really can work. Sometimes to every complex issue, one that is good for the whole. It’s we are to be reminded of these truths, and to try, as wobbly I feel like a parody of an old fogy, saying (probably in a can- extraordinary, maybe unique, but I see that they do it and it’s at it as we are, to live them. The holidays are upon us already tankerous voice), “What’s the world coming to? Why, in my working like crazy for them, as that brilliant place thrives and and where did the year go? I love Thanksgiving, though I'm day”…etc.