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Edited on Mon Aug-21-06 10:30 PM by mycritters2
who don't work outside the home, homeschool their kids (because their kids are all too gifted for the public schools to deal with), and wouldn't deign to feed their kids what other people eat. They all claim to care about the environment, but they ALL live in the big mcmansions in subdivisions that are eating up the best farmland in the world. There's no sense of community to it at all, which was one of the things I loved about the one in Iowa.
That co-op was an interesting collection of, yes, aging hippies (our cordinator there liked to refer to herself as "queen of the granola birkenstock people"), crazy fundie Christians who had some issue with scanners and bar codes or something that kept them away from supermarkets, and older women who needed to buy nuts and carob chips in bulk for baking (many of them became like surrogate grandmothers to me). And people like me who needed foods we couldn't get locally--like vegan dog food for a dog allergic to eggs. Different as we were, we had this great little community. We had a buyer's meeting before each order, and people would ask others to split orders, ask for opinions on foods, that sort of thing. I decided I'd always help with splits, so I ended up getting to like some pretty interesting foods that I never would have tried otherwise. At the meetings, we'd also let others know if there were a chance we'd miss the delivery, and someone would commit to getting our order if we weren't there. There were three clergy, and because our schedule can change at the drop of a hat, someone always volunteered to get ours in case. We'd share news as to who was ill, and other community news. I often went to buyers' meetings even when I wasn't ordering, because, well I liked these folks.
There was a board of three people who set policy, which had to be approved by the whole co-op. And trust me, no one was ever kicked out.
I used to laugh that the crazy fundies would come to events at my church--even though they were pretty sure we were going to hell--because they liked me personally. And one such family would just GIVE me free-range eggs. Because "you're nice".
Not here. There are no meetings. What little communication there is happens via e-mail and it's all one way from the coordinator. I've learned that many members don't even know each other's names. And you're simply not allowed to miss a delivery. Oy! You should have seen the coordinator when I told her my mother's funeral was going to be on a delivery day. I kid you not, she said "You need to set priorities". And so I did. Don't know what happened to my order, but I didn't get it, so I didn't pay for it.
So I've been kicked out of a club I didn't like belonging to. Not such a bad thing, but it still pisses me off.
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