Spirit in Action
Lopez Community Land Trust - Transforming Economics & Society
Sandy Bishop & Rhea Miller were the 2012 Lopez Spirit Award winners for many of their works, including very notably their work with the Lopez Community Land Trust which nurtures the island in myriad ways, like producing net-zero-energy housing developments and the Seed Library. Rhea hosts a home church, drawing on, and continuing beyond, her training in Episcopal seminary.
- Broadcast on:
- 31 Mar 2013
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to one of the places where this program is carried, Lopez Island, part of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State. A part of our effort is to provide local programming on the stations that carry Spirit in Action. And so we invite listeners to contact us with people making a positive change in their lives. And we have too such guests with us here today. Rhea Miller and Sandy Bishop are longtime residents of Lopez Island and were this year's recipients of the Lopez Spirit Award. For many reasons, including their work with the Lopez Community Land Trust and things like Net Zero Energy Housing and the Seed Library. Rhea completed Episcopal Seminary back at a time when her lesbian identity prevented her ordination, though she has for years hosted a home church with a much broader theology. Together, Rhea Miller and Sandy Bishop are the kind of people we love to hold up as great examples of Spirit in Action. And they join us now by phone from Lopez Island, Washington. Rhea and Sandy, it's wonderful to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you. It's good to be here. Thank you, Mark. Good to be on the telephone with you and look forward to the conversation. You both were awarded this past year's Lopez Spirit Award. Could you tell me about that award and how it was that you too had the honor of receiving it? This is Sandy, and the Spirit Award is given by the Lopez Community Center. What they do is their board puts out that there will be nominations accepted for a certain amount of time. And people on Lopez write in. Anyway, what they do is they get a cross-section of locations together. They discuss, they look at all of the letters, then they tally it up, make a vote, and select either one or two people. It's been going on for over a decade. And then there is a notice of that, a newspaper article, lots of all the community potluck, and fun, funny, and humiliating stories told. And it's just a time to get together, to celebrate one another, and to share in our human faults, as well as our accomplishments together. Because they all tend to go hand-in-hand, it seems like. So what are the criteria they use for this? And so you could maybe talk about a couple of the people recently honored beside yourselves. Usually people who have contributed to the betterment of the community as a whole. So, for instance, there was a couple chosen who every year would put on Thanksgiving at our local Grange, and they would supply the turkeys and organize the event, and then people would bring potluck dishes to a company. So that anyone who was going to be alone or didn't have a means of having a Thanksgiving dinner could have Thanksgiving dinner at the Grange with a group of folks, and they'd been doing it for years. So that was one example. So that's really the criteria. It's really looking at their volunteer work and the greater community and their involvement. For instance, there are people that have been honored for their dedication to not just one thing, but over many, many years, a multitude of nonprofits or events or something that has impacted Lopez in such a way that it's marked the island. And one of the couple of the men of the couple would do a lot of volunteer repairs for nonprofit organizations or people in need, and the woman of the couple had served on several boards of nonprofits. And they just were always giving their time for the betterment of the community. Part of the reason I'm asking you this is I'm trying to get an idea of the particular qualities that make Lopez Island apparently, as far as I can tell, very different from most places in the world. Neither of you were born and raised there. How did you end up getting there? How long have you been there? This is Sandy, and I was raised in Eastern Washington, which is a very different, not just physical environment, but also social and cultural environment than Lopez Island. So I came here in 1979 to Lopez, and I got here because a group of us owned a reforestation company. So we worked in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California doing reforestation, primarily with contracts through the U.S. Forest Service. One of the co-owners that we had recently taken on had a farm here on Lopez. And during the winter when forests were primarily under snow, he suggested that a few of us come out here and stay on Lopez with him. And that's how I was introduced to Lopez. And you're right, it was immediately a very different place in many, many ways. There is a softness to the land here, the way that relationships are. It's an unincorporated area, correct? So there is no formal governance except at the county, which is on a different island. So I think people who are attracted here are pretty much self-starters, and also there's an underlying ethic that you want to treat people the way you want to be treated. And if your neighbor needs something, you pretty much want to help them, and you would like help from them when you need it. There's also the practical item. We're pretty remote. And if you make enemies with the plumber, who's the only plumber on the island, you're in a problem. So you're really forced to deal with one another in a way that doesn't burn bridges because we need one another. And the other thing is, because we are remote, we tend to attract people who are skilled in multiple areas, so that we are able to help one another out. I think we should mention that the population of Lopez Island, part of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State, is about 2,500. It may have grown quite a bit since you've been there, I don't know. When I got here, yeah, there were about 1,200 people. But throughout its history, before the highways came in and the waterways here were considered major shipping, there were probably about 2,500 to 3,000 people living here. So, you know, the population has gone up and down. And so it seems to have a distinctive quality to it. Sometimes I suspect that it might have liberal hippie edge to it, but also when you describe people who aren't dependent on government, I think of tea partiers that they'd really like that. Is there a real mixture? Is there any kind of uniformity or common denominator? Back in 1988, Islanders elected Jesse Jackson as their representative for Democratic presidential candidate. And on the right, we elected one of the fundamentalist evangelical creatures. I think it was Pat Buchanan. And so, yes, we have the full spectrum. And the whole of the islands tend to be progressive. We vote progressive. But we definitely have both elements. And back in the '70s, when the highways started coming in and we became less of a tag center because of the remoteness and the need for the use of fairies rather than cars traveling up and down the interstate, we had a group of people come to the islands that were back to the Landers for what you would call hippies. But we've also always had the older settled population that was here who came in the late 1800s and early 1900s call on the old timers, I guess. So we've had the spectrum of people in the islands. I understand that you were there first, Sandy, right? Yes. I came in '79. And then we were on a peace walk across the United States. And I met Rhea there. That was in 1984. And we walked for 11 months. And in '85, when we finished, we stopped by Tucson, Arizona, which is where Rhea was living. And then we traveled up here to Lopez and ended up staying here. It was a very intimidating for Rhea to make a trip to this island. I'm in a wet place from Arizona. Well, I was actually raised in the Midwest. So there are parts of living on an island, just the rural nature, small town-type attitude and approach to things. That was very familiar. But I'm a bit hydrophobic and the thought of living on an island surrounded by all that water was something that made me step back a moment. But as soon as I arrived on Lopez, it did feel like home. And we left after being here for three weeks to do a walk across Japan in commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And as we were leaving, I cried. I wept as the ferry pulled away from the island. And I'd never had that experience before. I've lived in a lot of places, including all over the United States. And I realized, "Oh, Lopez is definitely home." And I didn't really expect to have a home. One of the things I think that you were recognized for, the two of you, is your participation in your management of the Lopez Community Land Trust. And I think you've got some education to do for me about what a community land trust is. Because when I heard those words, I thought of something else. Could you straighten me out? Well, we can try, but not knowing exactly what you have in mind, you'll have to see if we've actually straightened your out at the end of this. In 1989, here on Lopez, housing prices went up 189% in that one year alone. Several of us looked at each other and said, "You know, if this trend continues, what this place will become instead of a diverse community of people, it will become a rather gated community, not because there will be gates, but because nobody will be able to afford to live here unless they've got wealth from elsewhere." It's hard to make a living here on Lopez. So we started a nationwide search on some of the best models to create affordable housing. And we looked at a lot of them, Habitat for Humanity. I know a lot of people know about that because Jimmy Carter has sort of made that famous. So we looked at that as a model. Anyway, we looked at several, and we found something called the Community Land Trust model. We kind of scratched our heads. We didn't really understand it. There was a fellow by the name of Peter Fisher who had just come back from the East Coast, and he explained this model to us. And they were using it in Vermont and in the South, around Georgia, it had been used. And it combined the Gandhian land reform principles and some of the tenets of civil rights, combined those two thought processes out of it did an overlay on land use. That sounds a little esoteric, perhaps, but really it's quite practical. What people said is that it is fine to have access to civil rights, but if we don't have access to land so that we can actually pursue commerce, pursue long-term housing, build our neighborhoods, have access to the physical ground underneath all of these things that we need in order to live. We will always be at the mercy of those who control the land. And so as a community, the community, through a nonprofit called the Community Land Trust, purchases land, and then leases the land out to be used for farming or affordable housing or small cottage businesses, so that the land forever stays in trust. And all that changes is what's being done on the land by the person doing it, so it takes the land out of the speculative market, which was the major issue up here in the islands. Our land prices going just sky high and they continue to be that way. If the land's not bought and sold, it lowers the price of the housing or other endeavors on the land, so it was a way to secure land for working people in the islands. And when we first started, there was some animosity. I had my life threatened by someone who thought we were going to build on the property next to them. We were told to go to the city where they used the end where the real Negroes lived, and it was rather hostile. They thought they accused us of we're going to bring in poor people and have couches on our porches and old beat up cars abandoned. And of course, what happened three years after the first housing was completed, it was put on the garden tour because it was so fabulous. And we've had our houses premiered in coffee table books and written about the New York Times and given many awards. So we did overcome a lot of initial prejudice around what affordable housing meant to this community. Since that time in '89, when we began the community of Entrusts, we've built about 42 units of housing. A couple of those are rental apartments, but primarily we've just built single family homes in neighborhoods. And about 10% of the school population lives in the houses that we've built. Also, we've found out that once people have stable housing, they invest their money in businesses. So several of the businesses that make our community so attractive are actually run by people who live in community land trust homes. So the idea is that the housing here is for people who are committed to the community and want to live in such housing. But they understand that their equity is being built not so much in the home itself because that's limited. They have to find other ways to build equity. And a lot of people have done that by investing in small businesses. So what is your work week like? Are you building new housing units every week or what is the day to day of working for a Lopez community land trust? Yeah, we've kind of gotten into a rhythm. We have worked a lot on the sustainable agriculture part of our operation. And I work more on the renewable energy projects and do project management for any of the building that we do. And we're on a two or three year cycle of building homes. It's about 18 month process that we do. Right now, we're going to build again in 2014. So there are applications that start trickling in about now. So we do a series of interviews with people. We review applications. We do some analysis of the last building project and look at what challenges arose out of that, what we can do to finesse it a little so it works a little better. But we do a lot of other things day to day as well. We can talk about the seed library, but we are both involved in say, I'm involved in the Islands Energy Coalition, the Lopez Solid Waste Disposal District, the housing bank. We're always looking for the opportunities and the needs of this island that fit within the mission of the Lopez community land trust. So on the one hand, we're very practical building housing or a seed library or a mobile processing unit for processing meat. And as well, we look and try and push the envelope a bit and look for where our dreams and other possibilities lie. And although Sandy's talked about the building of the homes, we actually train homeowners. We have potential prospective homeowners meet together to form, in our case, we form cooperatives. And to be trained on the use of tools, safety issues, what it means to become a first time homeowner or how a mortgage works, how you pay your bills, etc. So that's always going on and then we require sweat equity. So each of the homeowners that are getting ready to move into these new homes have to put in around 24 hours a week. Half of that time at least has to be they themselves doing the labor and then they can bring in building partners if they'd like for the other half of that time. We also bring in interns and that's one of the things I do is I work with interns that come to do construction or to work on organic farms on the island. And initially we were getting interns who were college students and now we're getting more and more college graduates. For our construction, sometimes we get as much as we've had architects come to intern with us because we do a lot of alternative type cutting edge type building. Our last two projects have been net zero construction projects. One of the other things that I do is work in the area of sustainable agriculture. So we every year coordinated grain CSA where we grow grain for almost 40 families in the island. We co-founded the farm to school program that's operating at the local school and played a major role in that. And although it wasn't during my term, the program I work with, Lopez Community Land Trust, was part of the program that created the first mobile processing unit that was USDA approved so that the slaughter of animals can be done on the farm much more humanely. And it allows us to buy meat from our neighbors and in the local market rather than having the animals sent on a ferry to some far different area. So that's some of the other work we do. And then as a follow-up, since so many of the people we work with are first time homeowners, there's some basic things they often come to us and ask for help with. Like, well, how do you write an invoice for a business? Some of our people have English as a second language and helping to translate for them. Not so much the words from Spanish to English, but cultural differences. What does it mean when somebody does this or asks me to do that? So that just gives you a broad brush of our day-to-day activities. And what's happening is my head is spinning with all that you do. There's so many facets of the community that I completely see why you were chosen as Lopez Island's Spirit Award winners. Spirit is a word that I use in the name of this program, Spirit in Action, right? And that can be a non-religious, non-spiritual item. You know, you can have Team Spirit from Wisconsin supporting the Packers. What does Spirit mean in your particular context, the two of you, Ria and Sandy? I think for myself, this is Ria, I've always had this kind of honing with my heart on where to put my energy and what I should be doing with my life. And for me, it's a spiritual centering that happens. So I'm always following my heart, so to speak, in whatever I'm doing. And sometimes people only know me through my work with the Lopez Community Land Trust, but I also have a gathering in our home every Sunday evening that we've been doing since 1994, where I lead a type of worship service, very eclectic. There are people on the island that probably don't even know that I do that. It's just a way for me to continue the practice of having a weekly time of centering territory. I think there's more to that you could add, Ria, because one of the things is you were preparing to be an Episcopal minister. Could you give us a little bit of that background? Yes, I felt called into the formal ministry at one time in my life, and I attended seminary, and I have a masters of divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School. And I was looking towards ordination, but at the time, because I have the orientation of being a lesbian, lesbians were not being ordained at that time. I guess I had the opportunity to be ordained in one diocese in New Jersey, but I had to live there for three years. Frankly, I didn't want to live in New Jersey for three years, so I'd better pursue ministry in a way other than formally through the Episcopal Church. And oddly enough, I entered politics shortly after then, and the public didn't care about my sexual orientation and elected me three times to be county commissioner. That's an impressive statement, both about the island, but what yours was that, because I think that attitudes in the public have grown, I think, more and more sensible about that over the years. I graduated in 1992 from the Episcopal Divinity School, and you're right, there have been many changes, and part of that has been my own spiritual growth, and I would say that I have been able to pursue the journey of the heart and spirit in ways that are much broader than are probably acceptable within the Episcopal Church at this time. So when you say you're eclectic in terms of the kind of service you lead, how many people are we talking, what kind of format are we talking? Is it response, oral readings? Is it singing? Is it dancing in the street? The last was singing. I happened to play guitar and harmonium, so for the first half hour or so, we just sing chants or songs that are more commonly shared or known with people that are positive about our relationship to the earth and to one another. And there have been times when we've had as many as 15, 17 people, and lately we've been having three. It just goes up and down, so I don't really know how many people are going to show up. So the first half hour is singing, and then I give a short reading or speak of a personal experience, and that's followed by five minutes of silence. And then if anything has arisen for people during that silent time, we share that, and then we share gratitude. I find, as an affluent society, we tend not to share gratitude, and one of the greatest signs of spiritual development is that feeling of gratitude. So we go around the room and share gratitude and close with a song in a prayer. And so, Rhea, that's you leading that. Sandy, do you have a, I mean, besides being maybe a follower of Rhea, do you have a particular spiritual orientation and background? Well, let's see, that's an interesting question. I was raised in a Catholic atheist household. Those are two words that don't usually go together, a Catholic atheist. I know, but I am so appreciative of both of those schools, you know, of being sort of dipped in both of them. Because through Catholicism, you know, I was introduced to some of the mystery, because when I was younger, it was still in Latin. It wasn't until I was a little bit older that, you know, there were English words spoken. So I was introduced to the mystery, but it was also introduced to the extreme perversion and violence that was associated with an overpowering church. Then I was also introduced to this atheist agnostic relationship to the world, because my father was that way. And it rose out of a deep, unsettled grief and feeling of being ripped off by anyone that spouted anything about religion. But he also had a very, you know, that was the human emotional side. He was also very curious. He was intellectual about things, and he needed proof. So I thought that was a set of pretty good foundations for me. I stopped attending, I think, Catholic Church when I was about 13 or 14 years old. And then when I was 18, I had a near-death experience. And in that, it just was so clear to me, meeting this source of light that was free of all dogmas. And that was such a liberating experience for me. I think the fact that it happened for me in my very earliest adult experience was really helpful. I'm 56 years old right now, and I'm still absorbing some of that experience and that teaching. It happens to me in layers. So when you ask about my spirituality, I think for me the best way to describe it is a relationship with the light. And it is free of dogmas. You jokingly said, "Do I follow Rhea?" Well, I love her dearly, but no, I'm not a follower per se. So I like to study different sacred writings. But what I found is that none of it really matters very much unless I have a personal experience with it. And I really appreciate how sophisticated some of the wisdom leaders of our time are. Now, we can find examples all over the place where there are religious leaders that say, "Basically, you must give over your mind, your body, and your soul to this religious hierarchy, and they will control everything about you." But there are also multitudes of teachers and people who say, "Look, I have accumulated this wisdom, and it is really important that you accumulate and understand where your own bearing is in this." And I think that is a real sign of majority, and it's happening all over the place. And I really deeply respect people's choices. I don't really appreciate people talking about it very much or trying to encourage others to follow them one way or another. I think my expression of my spirituality is, you know, I grew up in a time where, as a child, the adults around me, the choices they made and the environment that they were building, was extremely dangerous on many, many levels. And I think my spirituality makes itself known because I want to live in a certain world in a certain way. I used to say, "Well, why isn't the world more justice-based, or why don't people have access to food and housing and the basic needs?" And I realized it's because we don't spend our time creating that. We create the world, correct? We all create it. So if we desire certain things in the world, let's create them. Yes, the physical is an outward manifestation of our thought processes. Our interior journey shows up every day in our physical environment on all these levels. So for me, that's where I tend to act out my sense of ethics, my sense of spirituality, my sense of interconnectedness. I learn a lot from doing that. And I have to say on Lopez, there are many, many people who I think are engaged in a similar relationship with themselves. Somebody was saying yesterday at lunch, "Well, isn't it interesting that our self-interest is really met when we serve those around us? That is really needing our deepest self-interest." And yet there is a whole school of thought that thinks, "No, our self-interest really is only met if we hoard and if we have to be power over people." But anyway, I think it's more elegant than that. The way our lives are set up is much more elegant. And I just over the years have invited myself to give up some of the grief and cynicism and things that were pulling me into a more depressed state of being. But I've invited myself out of that state and into risking, "Well, what is it like to enter into a more light-filled world and to allow any gifts that I have to be used in service around me?" And I have found that as a human being, I am much more deeply satisfied now than I was when I thought that I had to protect and hold myself in a certain way to gather things for myself. So anyway, it's all been a fabulous, exciting adventure. It does sound like an adventure. I have to say, Sandy, for someone who doesn't really want to have people talking about religion too much around them, you do a great job of setting forth some really spiritual truths that I hold in common with you. How important is community to you? I think somehow on Lopez Island, most of our society on the mainland, we lack community in so many ways. American society has been more and more broken down away from community. You've got an extra share of it there. I usually think of religious and spiritual communities as being an important supplement to what our society deprives us of. So spiritual community, maybe you've already got it just by living on Lopez Island? Yeah, you know, that's a really, really good question. And again, we were just talking about this at lunch with a couple of people yesterday. I'll just speak for myself, but sometimes I feel here on Lopez a real longing for a greater connection in a quiet way, not a loud haze. We are, we ring our bells in the morning and do all that. But in a quieter way, with people that I can deeply engage with spiritual inquiry. Anyway, I feel a longing in me. I get deep satisfaction from the community that is here. There are just so many people here who walk their talk. And they try and, you know, the name of your show is spirit and action. There are lots of people who do that. They find ways to do that. Whether it's, you know, teaching about beekeeping or doing a farm and garden program or running the fresh food bank or building or creating art somewhere. People have this inner outer relationship that's in action. And so that is deeply satisfying. But I do find, and it's really come up for me lately, that I would like to have a deeper diving in of conversation around the sacred. You're listening today to Spirit and Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. And this is a Northern Spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. On the site, you'll find our almost eight years of programs. You can listen to them and download them. You can post comments on them and find connections to those guests. There's also a place to leave donations. And we deeply appreciate your donations. We also encourage you to donate to your local community radio station. It's such a valuable outlet for music and talk that you just won't get from the mainstream. Like the guests that we have here today. Their names are Rhea Miller and Sandy Bishop. And they are the co-recipients of this year's Lopez Island Spirit Award. In the few decades that they've been on Lopez Island, they've, I think, transformed the face of the island. Particularly with the Lopez Community Land Trust. Sandy is a self-described lover of endless possibilities. And Rhea Miller calls herself a people farmer and social artist. So you have some idea of the immense possibilities these two carry with them. You were just talking, Sandy, about spirituality and your need for it and how you live it out. Did you have comments on that too, Ligria? Well, one of the things you ask about was the importance of community to us. And I would say that community is very important to us. We feel like our job is helping to build community. And Meg Wheatley is one of my great mentors. And she describes the sacred as a feeling that I belong here. And if this is true for others, it would explain why people everywhere are mourning the loss of community. So I think building community is very important to our world today because of that need for a sense of belonging. And it's also the means of empowerment because Meg Wheatley also said there's nothing more powerful than a community discovering what it cares about. And that's part of the work we do here too, is trying to discover, okay, what does the community care about enough that we want to move forward? And then finally, Meg says that the gap between knowing and doing is bridged by the human heart. And for me, that's the spiritual journey. We really end up enacting what we care about through the heart, through our own spiritual journeys. So even though we don't talk about it, particularly in that way, I think that's why community is so important to us. And when I speak to the interns that come here, they tell me three things. They want to have life skills for an unknown future. They want meaningful work. And they want to know a sense of belonging in community. They want to understand community. And that is a special gift that because we're on an island, we're privileged to really develop an experiment in what community means. I am so inspired by the community that the two of you are participating in, and that seems to be indigenous to Lopez Island off the coast of Washington State. You talked, both Ria and Sandy, about a number of the programs that you're active in. Maybe aspects of Lopez community land trust, but also the farming and the alternative energies and the seed library. I'd like to ask you a bit about what those mean. Number one, farming. What kind of climate is it? How much rain? How much could we send you some snow from Wisconsin? Please don't, please don't. I was raised in the holes of the Midwest. I didn't really think anything about the seed library and I should. We're very aware here that there has been an effort to control how food is grown in this country. And it appears that that really is behind a lot of the work that Monsanto as an example is doing. We know that genetically modified organisms and seeds are being sold to farmers and many of these seeds, even if they could be saved from year to year, it's not possible because they're putting Terminator genes in them. Or if you do decide to grow a next crop from the seed that you bought from Monsanto, Monsanto charges you for using that seed. Where in the reality of farmers across the ages, we have always been able to save our own seed every year to plant the following year. I do that in my own garden. I save a multitude as many as 12 different kinds of bean seeds and plant those every year. And I don't ever want to lose that right. Oftentimes, what happens is corporations go to monocultures. And monocultures are very susceptible to disease or variations in the weather. And I think you've noticed, as I've noticed, that our climate is going to extremes in ways that I've not experienced earlier in my lifetime. So we're trying to grow seed that is appropriate to our climate here, and that won't be subjected to payment or being taken over and have a Terminator gene put in it. We want to be able to save the seed so that we can feed ourselves. And then on the remote island, if we ever lose ferry service for whatever reason, it's important that we have the means to support ourselves with food. So we created a seed bank or seed library where people bring their seeds and we take care of them over the winter in a facility that's nice and cool and low humidity. And then they can come check those seeds out the following year and plant. And we just ask that if at all possible, all the seeds that you borrow one year, that you bring back that handful of seeds in the fall so we can keep the seeds going. Our climate is maritime because we're right in the ocean here and our weather, generally speaking, is in the upper 30s and 40s in the winter and then in the 60s and sometimes as high as 80 degrees in the summer. We happen to be in a rain shadow so we don't get all the rain that Seattle gets, for instance. We only get about 27 inches of rain a year. But our winters tend to be overcast and our summers tend to be much, well, they're gorgeous, but I guess I don't want to say that on the radio. And we live in a beautiful spot. We have snow about every three years and we'll have up to two weeks of freezing weather, but otherwise the type of climate where you want to wear wool and you expect to go out in the drizzle. It's not pouring rain like you get in the Midwest. You also mentioned when you were talking earlier about alternative energy work that you're doing on Lopez Island. Is there enough sun? Is it wind? Maybe it's tidal energy that you're using. Well, we are doing solar. We did some metering for wind here. What we discovered where we are and where the community land trust has properties is that it really is not consistent enough wind. We'd have to be out in the bay somewhere unobstructed by trees in order to get good enough wind. It's turbulence here, too turbulent for wind usually. We don't have the nice trade winds. Although if we were out a little bit in the water, we probably would. Tidal is, I think it's promising, but right now they are south of us in a larger county. The utility is exploring it. The biggest issue is getting it from the tidal waters to the land because you have to go through the near shore habitat and up onto the shoreline. There's a lot of environmental concerns about that. Even though it's a viable form of energy using tidal, getting the delivery is problematic. So that brings us to solar. And geothermal. Yeah, geothermal is still quite a intensive project to do geothermal. People for a house, you have to tear up an entire part of your yard and lay a lot of tubing in or else you have to go vertical. Yeah, I just didn't want to forget it. It's usually only used by people who want to invest a lot of money. And so we do depend mostly on solar here. And what Sandy's taught me so much about is energy conservation. Do you want to speak about how we reduce our energy use here, Sandy? Yeah, and I also want to just talk briefly about the YR choice of solar photovoltaics. For San Juan County, for Lopez Island, where we are, is a good choice. But first, before we introduce photovoltaics, which are solar panels, as Rhea mentioned, we do everything we can to reduce the overall amount of energy that a house needs. So through just design measures, the way that we design the house, we reduce energy needs by about 45 to 50%, which, statistically, where we are, that's, they say, is about as much as you can get through energy. And then we design smaller houses. So already, from the get-go, the footprint requires a lot less operational energy on a day-to-day basis. And I think that's really where we all want to go. I mean, there's two energy issues facing the US. One is in distribution, but one is in our use of it. And it's said between loss through distribution line and inefficiencies and the way that we tend to just waste energy because we still get it relatively cheap in this country. Half of it is just either wasted through, like I said, inefficiencies or just lack of understanding. So anyway, what we try and do here is reduce the overall need to require lots of inputs of daily energy. And that's really through more elegant attention to design. And then with photovoltaics, if you look here, because our were up north, we're in the rain shadow, our summer days are long and they tend to be clear. And it is said that we get much more solar power access here than, say, the state of New Mexico in the summertime. The Washington state legislature has said that any utility has to allow their customers to have grid-tied solar wind hookup. So we are basically allowed to use the existing grid of our utility as our battery backup. So in the wintertime and this shoulder season that we're in right now, when we have lots of cloudy days and not much solar coming in, we are using our banked energy from the summer. So we're pulling from the grid right now, but in about two months' time, we will be adding lots of power to the grid because our days will be longer, we will have lots of sun, and it's a non-heating time and we don't use cooling. So the use in the buildings is really low in the summertime. And the production is really high. In the winter, the use is high and the production is low. So it's on an annual basis. Close to half of the houses in the neighborhood that we just built are either at net use, net zero energy use, or they're awfully close to it. And one of them, or two of them actually, get some return from the utility. So, Sandy, you're talking about the energy, the alternative energy that you're doing, solar energy as part of the communities that you've built. I mean, the neighborhoods that you've built as part of the Lopez Community Land Trust, are you exemplary in terms of the conservation? Is the island as a whole? Are other people involved in this kind of thing in similar degrees or directions? That is a great question because our utility right now, see, I'm also on the board of the Islands Energy Coalition, and we are trying to work with our utility, so this is a county-wide effort. And yes, there are others in the islands who are either completely energy independent and they are not connected with the grid. I mean, remember we're in a rural area and sometimes to connect to the grid is prohibitively expensive, so they don't do it. Or they just prefer to have their own systems operating and take care of themselves in a very self-sufficient way. So, yes, there are others doing that. And we are also just about ready to launch a multi-year campaign with our local utility, which is called Opelco, and it's a cooperative to really heighten the awareness for all of us in the islands about using energy. The whole energy field in the United States is changing rapidly. What we want to do as a small utility, we don't have very much power, right? But one of the board members of Opelco has this idea that we could create 50% of our energy, either on the island or through buying a share of energy production somewhere in a small hydro or something, so that our local utility has much more control over that. But we also need to reduce our energy needs, you know, somewhere between 30 and 50%, for at least half of the users here, in order to not go into what is called Tier 2, which is an unknown, un-fixed price for energy. So, the more that we can serve, the more that we can, yes, improve our environmental impact, but also it will affect our pocketbooks in a very practical way because we won't be paying exorbitant prices for energy. It sounds fascinating, and I envy you. I think it's probably easier on Lopez Island off the coast of Washington to come to zero, maybe less expensive than it would be to do that in Wisconsin, because we do have a rather cold season compared to what you get. You do indeed. I was also wondering a little bit about the farming that you do there. You know, if you get something from Wisconsin, it's most likely to be cheese because cows seem to grow on trees here. What do you farm there? What do you grow on Lopez Island? Lopez has been known for fruit, so we have apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, berries, lots of berries, wild and domesticated berries, blackberries, raspberries. So, that's grown. We're a good garlic growing area. Bulbs, flower bulbs are grown well here, tulips, that kind of thing, but we're also working towards supplying more of our own diet. So, we have sheep and cattle growing on the island, and people have chickens, of course. We have a chicken farm and eggs. And, like I said, we have the grain CSA, so we're trying to grow more of our own wheat for flower here on the island. And then we have several community-supported agriculture operations known as CSA's, where people grow vegetables, and someone will sign up at the beginning of the year, pay a fee, and then they get a bag of vegetables every week from a local farmer. Yeah, and I think to be fair about this, we understand that we've gotten away from supporting agriculture in these islands, because Eastern Washington was irrigated, and using the waterways for shipping became rather obsolete, and the highways came in. Gas was cheap. So, the islands got out of the habit of providing a lot of food for the people who live here, and it's said right now, maybe, maybe we provide five to ten percent of what we need. So, like many things, there's an awakening to that, and people seriously looking at, well, let's, again, use this 50/50 rule. How can we create about half of our food locally and depend on, you know, outside sources for, say, the other 50 percent? So, like energy, we're looking at that in terms of food as well, and we're seeing renaissance in that, but we have very high land costs here, and traditionally very poor soils that need a lot of input. So, like Wisconsin, you said, has a lot of snow and is rather bleak and has some challenges, we have our own set of challenges that are very real here that we'll have to, you know, jump and cross as we can. I have to say, I would never have called Wisconsin bleak. In fact, it's one of the most beautiful areas, and I've traveled a lot of the world. There are many beautiful areas in the world, but I live in one of them. Bleak is only the case if you don't like the color white half the year. Okay, I'm going to withdraw that statement because my relatives live in Wisconsin, and I have to say, I biked through Wisconsin at one point to visit them, and I thought it was an extraordinarily beautiful place, but it was all green. There was no hint of white except in the blossom falling year in there. So, I'm guessing that you were not biking during January, but in any case, Lopez Island sounds like a wonderful place, and your role in that, the Lopez Community Land Trust, the way that you have a house church there, the way that you work with energy, sandy, and there's so many ways that I can see that you are perhaps operationalizing the transition town movement right on your island, and it's perhaps the perfect package size community to be able to do that. So, I'm amazed at your transformation. There's one other transformation that happened in the state of Washington recently that I wondered if you'd availed yourself of, or perhaps will avail yourself of, and that is Washington State in the recent election finally approved marriage that did not discriminate against gay couples. So, have the two of you been married in one form or another, or it's clear to me that you formed that kind of committed relationship? What about celebrating that with the community? Well, that's great. You've asked that because, yes, marriage equality was passed. People thought, "Oh, we could never pass in the state of Washington. There's too many conservative people." But, as you mentioned earlier, we're seeing people are, I think, more and more setting their sights on what's important and not getting so hung up on what is not important, such as prejudices. So, marriage equality passed, and we and I set a date for our wedding on September 21st, which is the autumnal equinox because, well, I wanted that date in particular because I tend to need more balance in my life, and I wanted to be married on a day that was perfectly balanced. And I had some practical considerations. We know it has to be an outdoor wedding because we don't have a building big enough for it. And September is a beautiful month here in the islands, so we went with that date. The reason for the wedding really is we want to celebrate our relationship in community, which we've not been allowed to do. Well, it's wonderful that you'll be doing that. I'm thinking that you, Rhea, you officiate for many weddings, and the two of you know that I'm a Quaker, so I'm used to not having an officiant, if you will, that the couple marries each other. So, Rhea, are you going to take an equal billing with Sandy in this, or are you going to step out to the front and say, I now pronounce us? No, no, I'm not performing. I'm not officiating for this ceremony. We have a couple of dear friends who are going to do it for us. Well, you're obviously doing miraculous and wonderful and spirit-led things there on Lopez Island. Again, we've been talking with Rhea Miller and Sandy Bishop of Lopez Island. They were this past year's Lopez Spirit Award co-winners. They are the force behind the Lopez Community Land Trust, which is just such an amazing thing, inspirational, bringing together all of these threads, Habitat for Humanity and Gondion Land Reform. It sounds just so much like the two of you are these endless founts of spirit working there on Lopez Island. I'm so thankful to get to know you, and I'm hoping to receive in the mail my invite to your September 21st wedding. Thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. It's been great talking with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. We've enjoyed listening to some of the interviews you've done on your show. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You