April 10, 2012
We were joined this morning by Michael Iselin and his peep Vera. I was concerned after last week that these homesteaders really needed something BIG to happen to Tiny Town to bring them together and get them to actually make some decisions on their own. I played with the idea of sending an oil pipeline through the town... but this idea was half baked and not really realistic. After discussing the problem with others, Rolph decided to sell the town to a power company to make way for a new hydro-electric project (a dam!). When homesteaders arrived this morning they had this on their tables:
One or two read it immediately and asked me what was going on. Rolph answered that he had sold the town. Many of the kids continued business as usual, so Rolph and Vera wandered around asking homesteaders if they had read the proclamation. Some kids said they couldn't read it, it was written in a very tricky font. Others formed small groups trying to read and understand its meaning together. One homesteader began wandering around the room chanting about standing up against the project and coming together. "Join PAST: peeps against seizing towns!" Another homesteader kept yelling, "Emergency town meeting!!" Rolph continued around asking, "Why bother to keep working on houses when there is no where to put them?" and saying, "Oh, I like that house it will be perfect for my hogs when I take your house to settle your debt with the Federal Bank." Some homesteaders asked Rolph why he sold the town. He let them know that he received 930meeps for it. The homesteaders were incredulous. "That's all you got!!"
After a while the kids managed to get organized and held an emergency meeting regarding the proclamation and what to do about it. The meeting was run by Hunter and moderated by Ostar.
"We should protest!"
"We should have a sit in!"
"We should build a rocket and send all of the peeps to space!"
"We should elect a president to fix this, vote for me!"
"We should settle somewhere else."
"We should build in the trees."
"Maybe it's a code, what do all of the highlighted letters mean?"
"Everyone, bring me as many two liter bottles as you can and I will build a three or four stage rocket to send them to space!"
"But we won't be able to go with them!"
"Maybe we should get collateral loans?!"
"Maybe we could pool our money and buy it back."
Through the course of much speculation, some false, Rolph asked the kids if they had read the entire proclamation, specifically paragraph two. The homesteaders read it together and realized that they have until May 1 to come up with a solution. This helped to focus their conversation a bit, but not much. Toward the end of our time the seventh graders began to get interested, even though they are pretty sure nothing is really going to happen. It will be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.
The newspaper published a new edition today... the newspaper editor seems sadly uninformed about what is going on in town. Perhaps he thinks that whatever he reports will become what is really happening?
Next week we have no school and hence no Village. The following week we are making our transition to our outdoor classroom.
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