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Mendocino County 15 May 2011


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Caspar Community

One of the best parts of life in Caspar over the past two decades has been the reawakening of Community in Caspar. On the last page we walked on the headlands we all worked so hard to preserve ... but for community life, the crown jewel is the Community Center right across the street.

In 1988, a number of neighbors started meeting informally to talk about the fact that large parts of our town, once belonging to the successor to the Caspar Lumber Company -- a total of 1,100 acres -- went on sale. This included the headlands, Caspar Creek's riparian corridor, parts of Caspar beach, the old schoolhouse, the duck pond. We agreed that we better start generating some community in case we needed it in the future.

Being a part of this project has been one of the most exciting and productive parts of the last 23 years of my life.

<p>Caspar Community Center</p>

Caspar Community Center

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<p>Fourth Sunday Breakfast</p>

Fourth Sunday Breakfast

The second highest point in the Caspar story, after succeeding in getting the State Parks to preserve our headlands and Caspar Creek, was purchasing the old Caspar Schoolhouse and reinventing it as Caspar's Community Center.

Caspar, a little settlement between a company town (Fort Bragg) and a tourist mecca (Mendocino), is a haven for many of the Redwood Coast's most creative spirits, as we have discovered in our near quarter century of community organization ...great cooks in particular. When we moved into the Center early in 2000, we immediately started celebrating with food. Before long, we settled on Fourth Sunday Breakfasts.

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Jerry, we remember youCasparados -- people who love Caspar -- are a very independent group. We sometimes joke that reaching agreement on something is like herding cats. But a large part of our success as a community comes from our insistence on reaching consensus before we take action.

"Reinventing neighborhood" is how we described the first ten years of what came to be called "the Caspar Movement." The movement goes on, even though the work of maintaining the Community Center takes a lot of time. We joke that here in our temperate rain forest, a building is a hole in the rain surrounded by wood into which we pour money.

The truth of the matter is that very few of us are natives in Caspar -- our daughter Sienna is one of the rare ones, born right here on our land. And so we all identify (not always gratefully) with another scourge in the life of Caspar: Gorse, or Ulex europaeus. One of our leading lights, the late Jerry Juhl, invented Gertie the Gorse Monster (and Tommy Brown sculpted her). That's Jerry, in the top hat, beneath Kermit the Frog, whom he invented. 

Jerry left us (presumably to write for the Fraggles in a better place) but his wife Susan continues the Juhl family generosity, making much of Caspar's dreams possible. That's Jerry, memorialized on our postal pavillion, at left, as sculpted by Paul Reiber.

<p>Gertie the Gorse Monster, is reclusive,...

Gertie the Gorse Monster, is reclusive, only appearing at Caspar's annual celebration of community, CasparFest. Wait until August for more about CasparFest ... or visit the website

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<p>Gorse with its predator, the spider mite</p>

Gorse with its predator, the spider mite

Gorse the Invader

Meet gorse. If your Scottish, you'll need no introduction. Gorse came to Caspar when some lazy wise guy, about the turn of the 20th Century, decided importing some from Scotland would provide him with fences that grew by themselves. Caspar turned out to be fertile ground for Ulex europaeus, who hit the ground running and damn near took over. In the Oregon coastal town of Bandon, a similar thing happened, and the town burned to the ground in the famous Bandon Burn of 1936. Caspar nearly followed in 1987.

Most of Caspar's plant life is invasive and exotic, from the Gorse and Himalaya Blackberry to the Pampas Grass and Eucalyptus ... not forgetting the Velvet Grass, Broom, Echia, Yellow Pine, and innumerable others. Until very recently, we have been very sloppy about letting invaders in. The Gorse gets credit for bringing this to our attention strongly enough to do something about it.

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Building Community

As soon as we moved into our Community Center, we started dreaming about a better kitchen to replace the makeshift railroad kitchen that nevertheless has seen thousands of tasty dishes assembled and served in the first ten years in the Center.

In February, 2011, all the plans were done, the County's objections satisfied, the funds raised, the contractor hired, and the new kitchen and solarium started to take shape. On Sunday, May 15th, after a Community Meeting, we got a our first look at the new kitchen. The contractor promises that we'll be able to move in on August 11th -- just in time for the ninth annual CasparFest!

<p>Kitchen Construction Walkabout</p>

Kitchen Construction Walkabout

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Building Community

As soon as we moved into our Community Center, we started dreaming about a better kitchen to replace the makeshift railroad kitchen that nevertheless has seen thousands of tasty dishes assembled and served in the first ten years in the Center.

In February, 2011, all the plans were done, the County's objections satisfied, the funds raised, the contractor hired, and the new kitchen and solarium started to take shape. On Sunday, May 15th, after a Community Meeting, we got a our first look at the new kitchen. The contractor promises that we'll be able to move in on August 11th -- just in time for the ninth annual CasparFest!

<p>Kitchen Construction Walkabout</p>

Kitchen Construction Walkabout

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<p>Southeast elevation, Caspar Community Kitchen and Solarium</p>

Southeast elevation, Caspar Community Kitchen and Solarium

In May, from the outside, the kitchen is shaping up beautifully -- when it's done, we won't be able to tell where the old building (originally built in the 1920s, we think) ends and the new building begins. The half-an-octagon solarium is a copy of a wonderful classroom in Mendocino. I imagine sitting at a table in that gloriously light-struck space, working to achieve consensus about Caspar's future with my neighbors.

The devil, as any builder will tell you, is in the details, and those are mostly inside. Returning to this page in late August, I can report that the kitchen is functional if not quite complete, and the solarium, the space inside the beautiful bow windows, is at once loud and lovely.

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CasparFest: Celebrating Community

Caspar is distinctly rural, and removed by 160 kilometers and a mountain range from what might be called a "cultural center" -- for us, it's The City, San Francisco -- and since we seldom make the trek "down below" (maybe twice a year?) we have to invent our own culture, a pattern that has been going on for a century and a half. So we have gotten pretty good at it.

We are lucky in our community, Caspar. Galvanized by the threat that the old lumber mill land, our sacred headlands, into some sort of splendid gated community, we started building community, leading to the purchase of the Headlands as a state park. We continue to build community at our Community Center every chance we get, especially in our mid-summer CasparFest celebration of community and local sustainability. We celebrate with music and food, a marketplace of crafts and arts by local workers, and a series of lectures and rountable discussions of how to make ourselves more self-sufficient.

<p>CasparFest 2011 was favored with lovely weather and a colorful crowd of locals and visitors</p>

CasparFest 2011 was favored with lovely weather and a colorful crowd of locals and visitors

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