Casa Robino

Feeling sort of guilty about a recent trip up north, shamelessly flying around like there's no worry of tomorrow. I guess that's just the house affecting me a little bit with ideology and all the casa-connected hitch-hikers awe-strucking my old comfort-craving bones.

Just some examples:
* Slovenia - Amsterdam: 2 days (Aris & Urshka)
* Estonia - Amsterdam: 4 days? (Kadri)
* Morocco Marrakech - Amsterdam: 3 days? 3.5 days(Amylin)
* Amsterdam - Avignon: 11h? 13h30 (Lena)

Hi kids

I've started writing a book about changing the world (boring!) with Jesus (shoking!). Amsterdam will be on my sort-of way next week and I believe Casarobino is a good place to find inspiration and new ideas.

Who's gonna be there ? I'd come on Wednesday or Thursday.

Yipee!

Julien

thanks to everyone who visited the casa within the past few days, especially all of the people that we weren't expecting! we had many new dinner guests tonight, outside of our regulars, and that was great!

i started an "open doorbell policy", that means if you ring the doorbell and i'm home, i'll let you in and give you tea. i think this is a good way to have strangers interrupt my paintings and give me new ideas. also, it's a way of having the city come to the casa, and building a network of warm places to thaw out from the cold.

The Gospel of Non-Possession, as a Commonality between Ghandi, Jesus, Buddha, Nomadic Dumpster Diving Radical Hosting HitchHikers, Free Open Source Programmers and fully p2p/distributed processes?

Ghandi: " I found that, If I kept anything as my own, I had to defend it against the whole world.If they want it and would take it, they do so not from any malicious motive, but they would do it because theirs was a greater need than mine."

How did i feel when i put my arm, for the first time in my life, into a dumpster?
...not to put something in it, but to get something out?
It felt, well, squishy.
Thats right, my hand stumbled right upon a rotted apple.
Now i know, you have to be choosey with what you pick up. Some pieces of fruit may look solid, but they arn't.
The next thing i got out of the aeroplane, i mean, experience, was an appricot.
I like appricots, so i was pretty stoked, or as you non aussies say, "happy", about that.

Somehow many conversation here in Casa Robino lead to local currencies and food cooperatives. So when we were discussing [http://cashwiki.org/en/Madison_Hours local money] and food coops in Madison, [http://casarobino.org/users/louisa-magrics Louisa] (18 yr old, Australia) asked: "what is a food cooperative?".

After some days of casa-rest (with just Robino and Amylin here most of the time), the house has received some new hosts again. Since yesterday and today we have Mathieu, Lousia, Capers and Charlie here, who both arrived with wonderful stories, including Capers fund-raising and building a school in Kenya & Charlie biking around the world.

A Call for the Use of Hallucinogens in the Middle East Peace Process, the 1st sentence that came up in my mind when I woke up in the New Year. And why not? Let's make a call, send it around and have it endorsed by various organisations. Having seen that all means have failed so far to create the right circumstances for peace in Israel/ Palestine it could actually yield much better results than anything else.

Random randomness again, with me being still slightly ill, French people making masks for a masked party somewhere at a big rooftop, a group of Germs who arrived early afternoon to celebrate NY's in the city center, and Amylin who bought (her money!) some food for the house just after she and Rene were too late for Dumpstering. It is a nice last night of the year 2008, with stories we just shared over dinner about the 'craziest place' where you celebrated once New Year... the top 3:

Tikopia is a very small (5 km²) and remote island located in the state of the Salomon Islands. Although the area is mainly inhabited by Melanesian populations, the 1200 Tikopia natives which live almost in autarky are from a polynesian background. This island is one of the finest examples of traditional sustainable development.