The crowd-funding campaign wrapped up in July. We raised $2300, with which we were able to hire a small crew for a week (gotta love a developing economy!), to do some much needed repairs & painting at Terra Nova. Thanks to all of you who purchased private aerial lessons from her, RaRa also raised funds towards building a small treehouse from which to launch her Circus Arts school on the grounds. Who wants to learn how to swing from the tropical trees?!
From the campaign updates:
To give you an idea of how far your money goes down in Ecuador, with the funds we have raised so far we have been able to: repair our plumbing, install a simple hot water heater in the shower (no more cold showers!), screen in the windows & patch up the yoga loft (let's keep our neighborhood critters outside), and paint the roof white (reducing heat absorption in the loft). It took a crew of three men nearly a week, but they got it all done, for under $1000! Some pictures on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TerraNovaDeCorazon (Please "like" us, if you haven't already.)
Some of the things we plan to be up to at Terra Nova: yoga, meditation, spiritual growth, personal development, hospice, death midwifery, home funerals, green burial, aerial lessons, circus arts, clowning, organic gardening, raising chickens and goats, building bicycles, custom-made clothing, voice over, natural home & body products, etc.! Your support is so greatly appreciated.
I spent July touring the upper midwest, visiting friends and family in Minneapolis, Duluth, and the north woods of Wisconsin - enjoying the moisture and the green.*
Work-wise, August was great for me. I did 5 spots for CVS, after which, the client made a comment about wanting to use me, "for everything." Oh, do not tease about such things. I did a series of spots for SuperCuts where, in addition to talking, I got to voice a bunch of sound effects. What fun! Also, I believe my United Health, Subaru & Yellow Pages ads are still running, as the residuals are still coming in. (Y'all let me know if you hear my voice. I never watch TV nor listen to commercial radio, so I rarely hear my own work!)
September, I had plans to tour Eastern Europe by bike & train with a girlfriend, but she landed a full-time gig just before our tour was to begin. Instead, I spent the weekends with her, in Warsaw, and spent weekdays using BlaBlaCar to get around the country (Gdansk, Płock, Plonsk, Grudziadz). I'm not much of a picture-taker when I travel, but here is a snap of my ($10/night, barely post-communist) hotel lobby:
I had the good fortune to miss three of the four heat waves we experienced in SoCal this year: in May (I was in Ecuador); July (MN/WI); Sept (Poland); Oct (I suffered a few 100-degree days in my A/C-free Hollywood cottage). *Did you know we are in a bit of a drought here?
Before you get too smug in your moist little easy chair there...do you know where the majority of food is produced in the US? You got it. We have used up over 80% of our groundwater, and aquifers take thousands of years to replenish. In other words, Cali isn't going to be friendly to large mammals much longer. I wonder where I should move...
Speaking of Ecuador, the Rastafari family has left Terra Nova and returned to The States. I guess things didn't work out the way they imagined. Life in a new (less developed) land, with a different language, and three children to mind has got to be quite a challenge. If anyone is interested in living on the land and being some of the first members of our intentional community, please drop me a line. I would especially love to find community-minded folks with gardening/building/repairing/maintaining skills, as well as some Spanish fluency.
I was planning to spend this winter down there, overseeing construction on a simple cottage I would like to build for myself on the land. However, since this is likely my final year in LA, I realized it is much more prudent of me to stay here and drum up as much work as possible. Once I am living in the Southern Hemisphere, my income will drop substantially. I intend to live a much simpler life (I know - I'm already such a bad American Consumer!), requiring much less funding. But, the more I can invest in Terra Nova before then, the better life will be for all of our guests, and the more charity/donation-based work I'll be able to do.
I'll try to be better about updating at least monthly, to keep you abreast of our goings-on at Terra Nova. Thank you all, for your continued support.
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