Spring Camping, on Lake Monroe

Olivia P.

(or Viva-I-Poll-Ova)

Last year I was not open to living with anyone much less with 4 people, or looking ahead, with 18 people. A summer in Romania with 13 others in a small house, followed by a month long trip living in a car with two people quickly changed my mind. Going back to my two bedroom house with a basement that I had to myself seemed bland and lonely, and I started the search for a roommate or two for my move to Bloomington. I had an old friend who was living in the co-op and after one visit, I knew that I wanted to be part of this community.

I study social patterns, specifically how individual differences run as patterns among society and cause quirks as well as offer explanations for some of life’s mysteries. IU is what brought me to this town, and I believe that I still learn more about this place every day. I am convinced that life is what you make it and I make a point to seek experiences that take me off the beaten path. I hope that in this lifetime I find many opportunities to impact others with positive long lasting effects and contribute to a world that has more to offer the future generations than when I entered it.

Andrea R.
My name is Andrea Rae and I live in the lovely Woodlawn House. I am currently an senior undergraduate student at Indiana University studying human biology and management. I love outdoor activities, swimming, biking, history, and poetry. Next year I will be headed to medical school and I look forward to combining my interests in food, health, and medicine. This is my first year living in a co-op and I think it one of the greatest experiences of my time in college.

o

Opportunity to sublet!

BCL has one of their biggest rooms available for subletting as soon as April 10th.

The rent is $650 a month. This includes your utilities and food.

The room can be split between two people that don’t mind sharing space, or soaked up by one spacious individual.

If your’re interested, fill out an application.

2012-2013 Signing/Re-signing Dinners (Thurs, 3/29; 7:00 pm)

Friends, Romans, Countrywomen,

   At long last, we, the BCL sub-committee on Transalpine Unicorn Aquaculture (i.e. Membershipping and Recruitment), are in a position to begin signing for rooms for next year. Instead of one, central signing dinner/party (as we had previously planned, announced, and cancelled), we have decided to take a more distributed approach. Oh yes, read on!

   If you are interested in signing/re-signing with BCL for a room for 2012-2013 (starting August), then next Thursday (3/29), at 7:00 pm, we invite you to attend dinner at the house that you are interested in signing a room in! All documents to be signed and information needed will be provided by the house contacts listed at the end of this email. 

   If you are re-signing, please bring a $15 deposit (made out to Bloomington Cooperative Living), to be added to your existing deposit (again, this is simply to adjust for inflation, and make the accounting easier, down the line);

   If you are a new member, please bring a $540 deposit (made out to Bloomington Cooperative Living), along with an additional one-time $37 fee to become members of NASCO (also made out to BCL—and then BCL will write a big check to NASCO in a few months).

   Specifically, we will be signing for spots/rooms only in the houses we currently hold 2012-2013 leases for. That is:

      Woodlawn (418 S Woodlawn), 
      Helms Deep (630 E Atwater), and 
      711 (W Kirkwood)

   ***If you are interested and/or committed to living in MiddleWay, we recommend that you sign for a spot in one of the above three houses now. The moment MiddleWay is a “go” (a certainty), we will allow you to 1) break lease, 2) sign for a specific MiddleWay room, and 3) BCL will take responsibility for filling the spot (i.e. you willnot have to arrange a sublet).

   Priority for specific rooms will be given to people who are already living in those rooms, if they want to re-sign. If you are in this category and cannot make the Thursday signing, please write me and let me know who you are, which room, etc., and when you will be able to meet up this week to sign! In all other cases, signing is first-come-first-serve; so if you are unsure and need to see rooms, do some visiting/coordinating with me or others from the specific houses over the next couple days! Floor plans for all the houses are also available online, in the Dropbox! 

   Note: a more general announcement/community shout-out about signing for rooms will occur AFTER this event, thus giving all of you priority!

   If you are interested in signing next Thursday and would like to see rooms, or a tour of a particular house, or questions about signing, please email one of the house contacts below, to make arrangements:

   Helms Deep: Chris (chrisharshaw@yahoo.com)

   Woodlawn: Eduardo (edizquierdo@gmail.com)

   711 W Kirkwood: Olivia (oliviapavlov@gmail.com)

   We’re looking forward to seeing you Thursday! 
 
Chris, Ana, Eduardo, Olivia, Kelsey, Hannah
Bloomington Cooperative Living
Membershipping Committee

A night of camping, improvised cooking, singing around a bonfire, laying around in hammocks looking up at the stars, and waking up to the sound of birds and waves.

Open to anyone. Bring pets, canoes, pots and pans, ukeleles, mangoes, or something something.

Ask us about directions.

Greetings!

Clear your mind and your room next Tuesday, March 13 at 7pm at Bag End (831 West 6th Street)! You can also enjoy a potluck dinner and good company at that time.

Our idea is that people bring clothing and/or items that they no longer want. Then we sort it all roughly into piles and people can sort through the collective things to find stuff they want to take home with them. You do not need to bring anything to take something home; likewise, if you brought stuff you are free to leave empty-handed.

If you are out-of-town next week on Spring Break, we will miss you! But don’t despair… you can still get rid of your stuff at the Really Really Free Market which is rumored to occur on April 7th on the B-Line Trail.

We’re looking forward to seeing many of you there!
Yours truly,
Bag End

kas4:

For the past few weeks, I have been waking up early on Sundays to prepare pancakes for the house. It has been a good opportunity to experiment. The pancakes are always without animal products and have a few staple ingredients - homemade almond milk, whole wheat flower, raw honey, and oats. But the tastes change from week to week.

Last week the pancakes were filled with shredded carrots, walnuts, cinnamon, and nutmeg. This week was a little crazier. We decided to split the batter into two - one containing ground millet, molasses, and cinnamon, and the other chopped walnuts, dark chocolate chips, and ripe bananas.

These little experiments have encouraged me to further explore food blogs, unique recipes, and beautiful food photography. I’m hoping to soon gain the confidence to share my recipes and experiments, and learn to document them in beautiful ways.

The picture above is from one of my favorite food blogs. Not only is the photography beautiful, but the recipes are simple and based on natural foods. Check it out.

(via kas4)

kas4:

Sitting in Soma with Eduardo, figuring important things out. This person introduces himself to us, and shows us the illustration above. He had made it in just a few minutes.

Such a beautiful surprise. The illustrator is Avi Katz. Check out his work.

The Song of Karun and Coleson

The Song of Karun and Coleson:

On the eve of the day of leaping,
in the year of unbeginning,
at the hour of greatest need,
when their people did pine for sweetness
like a tribe lost, 
longing for a dessert oasis

Karun and Coleson heard the unspoken words,
the hearts’ inner-most longings of their people,
providing crepes of golden spectra,
bathed in creamed ice, of sweetest vanilla,
cranberry compote and ganache of darkest chocolate;
peaches from distant lands,
where sun soaks the fertile branches
of orchards, mysterious and divine.

Heaven, in each bite;
all tongues needs slaked, 
the people of the Deep,
rested for the night.

Hey there,

Woodlandia will be hosting their monthly potluck this Sunday at 9 AM.

All are encouraged to contribute their favorite breakfast dish,
or preferred pancake topping.

Pajamas are optional, but encouraged.

Love,
The Woodlandics

418 S. Woodlawn Ave

For the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus, house-moving is one of the most challenging tasks its colony faces.

Its future success depends on finding a home that offers the right physical environment. At the same time, choosiness must be balanced with speed. In most cases, consensus must be reached among hundreds or thousands of individuals, lest the colony should divide among multiple sites to the detriment of all. Crucially, all of this must be achieved without well-informed leaders or central control.

When there are multiple nests, some better than others, ant colonies have been shown to make rational decisions collectively (Edwards and Pratt, 2009). The process of making the decision is similar to the honey bees described in our previous communication. Essentially, a group of ant scouts go out. Each get to experience a number of nests. Some nests are better than other ones. How good the nest is influences how persuasive the ants are at convincing other ants to go visit it. This simple process of positive feedback results in the best global nest chosen collectively.

The reason the decision works well is because each ant has a limited number of nest options that it knows about, and the ability to influence only a portion of its nestmates. Just like bees, there’s an unusually well-distributed information and power structure among the scouting ants. But when the information and power are distributed unequally, the group decision is more likely to be irrational.

Of course, this asymmetry of information and power doesn’t naturally occur in bees or ants, but it does occur in other organisms. And these organisms might still be attempting to make decisions collectively. Pancake Research Institute is going to hold a session this Sunday 9am to discuss and brainstorm on a simple mathematical model to study this issue. Whiteboards will be provided, as well as pancakes.

Sunday 9am. Join.
Pancake Research Institute


Figure caption. Recruitment behavior used in emigration by Temnothorax colonies. (a) Tandem run, in which a single ant is slowly led to a candidate site. (b) Social transport, in which a single nestmate is rapidly carried to the new site.

BCL has several sublet opportunities beginning now and throughout the summer.

We are a housing cooperative - a wonderful living environment full of artistic and energetic people of all ages. We have four houses, and around 30 people.

The rooms available include:
Bagend - 1 for $525
Bagend - 1 for $500
Woodlawn - 2 for $485
Woodlawn - 2 for $525
Woodlawn - 2 for $575
Woodlawn - 1 for $650
Helm’s Deep - 1 for $525

Don’t forget that the numbers above include food and utilities.

This is a fun environment with artistic, creative people. Join the movement and eat good food all summer.

For a honeybee swarm of many individuals, choosing a home is a momentous decision. Failing to choose a single location may cause the swarm to split. Studies over the past 60 years have shown that honeybee swarms use quorum sensing, a form of decentralized decision-making, to choose a suitable nest site, but many gaps remain in our understanding of this process.

Basically, honeybees have created two different committees: the scouting committee and the bivouacking committee. The scouting committee is responsible for locating suitable new homes. The bivouacking committee is responsible for seeding the new house, once chosen. The scouters are usually some of the most experienced workers in the colony. Upon their return from scouting, they advertise potential locations and their qualities by performing a waggle dance straight across the bivouacking bees. Waggle dances recruit additional scouts until a quorum number is reached and the swarm prepares to move to its new home.

Until now, this was all we thought was going on. But in a recent article, Seeley et al. (Science 6, vol 335, Jan 2012) show that there’s also an inhibitory signal between bees advocating different locations. Essentially, in the case that there is more than one good option, you have several groups of bees dancing for their preference. And every once in a while, a worker bee will stop doing its dance, and give a “vibratory head butt” to a bee that’s doing a dance for a different site, to inhibit it.


Woodlandia has traditionally consented to waggle dancing, but we haven’t discussed the use of vibratory head butting yet. We will gather on Sunday morning to discuss these new findings. In the case that we collectively decide to protest against bee coercion, we will have (vegan) pancakes ready for pouring honey all over them.

Sunday, 9am. Join.
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