Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Running into Debbie Winsten and Ann Zabaldo at the Green Festival in Washington DC a few weeks earlier brought to mind the shoot at which we brought our cameras to Takoma Village Cohousing earlier that year. That particular shoot—January 20 through 23—is a famous one in this office. We shot a lot of
wonderful people for the show. Les Blomberg, representing the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Vermont, drove down to DC to appear on the segment on noise pollution; we met John Moyers, also an advocate of quiet in this noisy world; we shot the dynamic and articulate Washington Post “Color of Money” columnist Michelle Singletary on several topics, including the benefits of
“paying as you go” and the “power of giving.” We shot Steve Dryden at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Bethesda, a wonderful 40-acre nature preserve that is now host to numerous classes, events and nature walks. It was there in Bethesda, in mid-morning, that the snow started falling. The upside is that we were able to capture the beauty and majesty of falling snow

on our video. The downside is that we had an ambitious agenda that day of traveling through the city, following our videographer in our trusty Subaru through snowy, icy streets. As the day progressed, the streets got icier and more treacherous. At one intersection, we came within inches of crashing into our videographer’s swanky new SUV when he slammed the brakes
at a light rather than going on through. Luckily, this did not happen. We never told him how close to disaster we had come.

The last shoot of that day was at Takoma Village Cohousing where we were set up to shoot a group of folks of varying age groups testifying to the benefits of living in a co-housing community. There, just inside the District of Columbia line, was a wonderful community of caring individuals who come together to eat meals, exercise, party, throw snowballs and generally look
out for each other. Ann Zabaldo—who is a professional advocate of cohousing—explained the many benefits of the arrangement. You own property individually but also in common. Debbie Winston told us that it was like living in a village. You know the names of everyone who lives there; what they do; where they
work; and their pets’ names, as well. We had planned to stay in Maryland in the new house of an old high school friend of mine, but the roads had become impassable. So true to the spirit of “cohousing,” the good folks at Takoma Village took us in
and put us up for the night. We shouldn’t have worried about finding a bed and a bite to eat. Even though we were newcomers there, the “village” kicked into motion.