FRIDAY
4am – Kris is up all night nauseous with a high fever.
5:30am – Six bikes are locked up at the dog park in Hillcrest. Six SDHC members set off together on their early morning run.
8am – Kris calls SDHC. He talks with Jorge who is volunteering to be on call this morning. Jorge bikes over to Kris’s apartment (bringing the SDHC cell phone with so he can take other calls) with hot soup, crackers, and soda, which are kept stocked in the coop pantry. He brings the first aid kit which has a digital thermometer.
8:45am – Jorge heads back to the SDHC house. Kris’s fever was under control, but he was grateful to be able to stay in bed.
12noon – Yoga Lunch is starting. Jacob (who doesn’t like Yoga, but likes to cook) is making indian burritos. A dozen other folks are breathing in all six directions in the activity room at SDHC house.
12:30pm – Sandra-Dee drops off fresh zucchini from her garden for tonight’s dinner. She eats at SDHC almost every day, but her donations are always in the form of food.
1pm – Most of the Yoga lunchers head back to work with their burritos wrapped to go. Inya writes a check for her membership dues for that month, plus a donation for the yoga lunch, which she comes to two or three times a week. The donation is small, because she’s a student, but she thinks she’ll donate more when she graduates. A handful of other yogis take their burritos to the lunch room, talk about their favorite inversions and munch.
1:45pm – The lingering yogis wash their own dishes and leave.
2pm – Chin-Hwa, who is volunteering at SDHC house for the anfternoon calls Kris to see how he’s doing. Kris says he’s feeling a little better but still not great. Andy asks if he wants someone to bring some Veggie Paella over from the cooperative dinner that evening. Kris says he’d love it.
3:45pm – Jess goes to a local doctor to have a rash looked at. The visit is paid for by the coop, which provides members with health insurance. Because the cooperative puts so much effort into preventative health practices, premiums are very low.
4:30pm – Maria and David pick up the SDHC credit card and grocery cart from the SDHC house. They walk four blocks to Whole Foods to buy provisions for dinner.
7:00pm – People start wandering in to the SDHC house for dinner. They put a few dollars in the donation jar to cover the cost of food. Paella is shared. Chin-Hwa announces that they need someone to bring Kris his food, and asks if anyone lives near him. David volunteers, and says he has to eat and run anyway and is headed in that direction.
8:30pm – Jesse and Abe are washing dishes. People start to file out, leaving donations of a few dollars.
SATURDAY
10am – Four members meet at the SDHC house and carpool to the hills for a morning hike.
SUNDAY
10:30am – A group of high school students comes to the SDHC. They bake bread, make seitan and tortillas, and make soup for the first half of the week. They bike the seitan, bread, and tortillas to folks who have signed up for those things. They get paid a little over minimum wage, depending on their experience.
At the end of the week, San Diego is a little healthier than before.
we are weirdly synchronous once again….i JUST spent a long evening talking about systems like this, at a potluck dinner up in Orange, MA! the community hosting the dinner has been bartering their services amongst one another for decades. it’s an amazing way to live, and i love that it can happen in urban communities too, not just farming ones in the middle of nowhere in western, MA! i’d love to start something like this in Portland.