Beaver Creek Housing Cooperative

I think it is easy for "community builders" to forget that the primary purpose of our cooperatives is to provide affordable housing by having the members pool their money together. The cooperative principles only include economic participation, and most cooperatives have a very detailed policy for dealing with arrears. Everything else is gravy.

By keeping a good attitude about those who are participating, and by becoming strong community builders, we can foster an environment where more people will see value in the community and thus more likely to become community builders.

See my lists detailing how to participate vs how to help build a community.

Extending over the fence behind Block One and onto the sidewalk is a white mulberry tree which is now covered in fruit. Mulberries are made into jellies, jams, pies and added to baked goods. Mulberries also make a good wine. As far as I can tell, most of our mulberries are left on the tree and no one, except the birds, is taking advantage of its bounty.

Over thousands of years, the mulberry tree has a history completely intertwined with human economies.

Though people commonly refer to all insects as bugs, entomologically the term is reserved for a specific group of insects called “true bugs”. These insects have characteristic needle-like mouthparts that stab and suck the liquefied contents from other organisms like a straw. They form a large order of insects called Hemiptera, which includes a particularly pungent bunch of bugs:

Stink Bugs

Coming in a range of colours and patterns, the shield-shaped stink bugs can be quite an attractive lot of insects. Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for them), they stink!

Here is a word cloud generated by Wordle. It was created by taking some of the copy from the website and feeding it into Wordle. It generated this image by taking the words that appear more frequently and making them larger. It gives a quick way to see what the important issues are at Beaver Creek. (The image as uploaded is small and a little fuzzy, click to see the full version. )

Alberta's Common Wealth Credit Union has created the Young & Free chequing account which offers the following free features for young people aged 17 to 25:

• Withdrawals from your own or other credit union ATMs
• Transfers between accounts
• Point-of-sale transactions
• Global payment card transactions
• Cheques
• Bill payments
• Internet banking and teleservice

To advertise this service, they have created their own website for it, and are advertising via YouTube and Facebook. Click Read More below to see their two very entertaining and informative videos that explain the difference between banks and credit unions.

Rooftops Canada is pleased to announce the beginning of recruitment for the 2008 International Youth Internship Program. This is an excellent opportunity for new and recent graduates aged 19 to 30 who are interested in working overseas. Rooftops is recruiting nine interns for six-month internships in Chile, South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt, and India. The internships will start in July or August 2008. This internship program is part of the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy, facilitated by CIDA's Youth Action Division. Each intern receives a stipend to cover travel and living expenses for the six-month overseas placement.

The deadline for applications has been extended to May 16, 2008.

I use the term “bugs” in the title to encompass all insects, arachnids, and other non-insect arthropods. Bugs pollinate our plants, mix and aerate our soil, dispose of carrion and dung, feed on pests and provide food for other life forms. In return, many of us fear them, swat or squish them, spray them with poisons, or at best ignore them. It must be said that we depend upon bugs far more than they depend on us. Indeed, if they were to suddenly disappear it is doubtful whether the human species would be able to survive as we do, if at all.

There is a group of insects that has colonized almost every terrestrial habitat on the planet, and consequently there are a lot of them here at Beaver Creek. They were the first insect I sighted this spring and are fascinating animals if you take a closer look:

Beaver Creek has three varieties of oak. The oaks along the road are red oaks. The oak between Block Five and Block Six is a white oak. And the oak in the field beside Block Nine is a bur oak. There is also a bur oak near the fire pit and in among the sumac behind Block Two.

In his book, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, William Logan emphasizes the critical relationship humanity has had with oak since the ending of the last ice ages about 15,000 years ago. This is an excellent book and is available from the library, call number 634.9721. Most of the information in this article is extracted from this book.

Over the weekend the Marketing Committee had our Community Centre closed so that they could get started on giving it a makeover. It is now Monday and is open for business. Note that this marks the end of "phase 1" and that work will continue through this week and next weekend to bring a close to "phase 2." Be sure to check out our 2008 Community Centre Makeover gallery to see before, during, and after pictures, or better yet stop in for a visit.

The tenth Sunoco Earth Day will be held on April 19, 2008 at the GRCA conservation area on Westmount Road just off Northfield Drive in Waterloo. The event, sponsored by Sunoco and the Suncor Energy Foundation, runs from 10am to 1pm and is free. Beaver Creek's Green Committee is organizing members who are interested in attending and participating as a group.

Trees and shovels will be provided to those who want to help plant 1,000 native trees such as white pine, sugar maple and red oak. They will replace some of the two hectares worth of red pines which had to be removed last fall because of an infestation of pine shoot beetles.