Week 30, Marlborough School

April 24, 2012

Emergency meeting!


Over last week's vacation Vera wrote a letter to the peeps of TinyTown.  It was distributed among the residents with the hope that it might help them solve their eminent domain crisis.  The letter is as follows:

To the peeps (and homesteaders) of Tinytown                                                   April 17, 2012

     I am Vera, the old lady peep who visited you last week, the day Rolph said he was taking over the town by eminent domain.  I have visited quite a few peep villages in my life and my human is on the

board of directors of The Game of Village, Inc.   I am surprised and a little worried to notice how very separate and independent the peeps are in Tinytown.  Of course self reliance is good and important. Peeps need to work hard and take care of themselves.  What worries me is that your community is suddenly in a crisis and doesn't seem ready for it.

    

     The crisis is caused by bad leadership.  You all have trusted Rolph and now he has betrayed you!  He claims the whole town and plans to sell it at a big profit to himself.   This would make all the rest of you peeps homeless and maybe be the end of Village for the year.  I saw you asking yourselves “what can we do?”, and some of you had good suggestions that Tuesday April 10.  The peeps were not in agreement however, and didn't want to or weren't able to listen to each other or decide anything.   One thing I do know is that good group decisions can only come when everybody agrees (or almost everybody).   Plus, orderly meetings and patient listening are needed to get to agreement.

     Are all of you peeps going to let one peep steal everything from you because he is in a position of political power?   Can't you all agree that peeps, like “The People” of the United States of America,

may not be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”?  How about prohibiting the taking of private property for public use without just compensation”?  Those quotes are in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Can't you work together enough to stop Rolph, perhaps by calling on a higher authority for legal support?   You can talk to your teachers, your parents, me (Vera), even your own sense of justice (group conscience), and then take action.   What can you do?   First make sure there is written law, then arrest the criminal for breaking the law.   Try his case fairly and take back what is properly yours.   A trial would be one time to practice orderliness since a disorderly trial is a mistrial.  A trial, like any group meeting, works best if it is brief and decisive (you need an impartial judge or jury).  Expressing opinions and arguing with great passion can be productive, but a courtroom can’t have peeps getting out of control.  At least in that formal setting peeps must respect each other, their laws, and the need for order.   Otherwise they can lose everything. 

     There isn't much time left in the school year, and I don't know what goals Tinytown has.    I hope there will be some public event so us older peeps and some younger ones can visit and meet you all and get entertained.   How about a peep circus or something?   Call me if you want to  @  847-3227 and leave a message with your number.  I will call you back. 

                                                           Yours truly,

                                             

                                                                             Vera

Needless to say, Rolph was very nervous about going to Village today.  Would he be arrested?  All of the homesteaders met outside under the pavilion.  An informal meeting was called to order, as there were no materials to use to continue working on houses.  It seemed the only thing left for the TinyTownies to do would be to find a solution for keeping their land.  "We should kill Rolph"  "We should send Rolph to outer space in one of those rockets"  "We should form a government and make some laws to protect us"

Fortunately for Rolph he is likable!  Many homesteaders came to his defense when it was suggested he be killed or sent to the moon.  Disco Dave got up and gave a presentation about having a president... I think.  It was hard to tell what he was ranting about as he paced back and forth through the middle of the crowd.  Whatever it was, it seemed important!  Ultimately it was established that we should elect a president to make laws to protect the town.  Six peeps stood up to meet the challenge and gave campaign speeches.  Some of the speeches were pretty clean while others slung a LOT of mud!  The vote narrowed our options to Bob and Fred.  Bob took eleven votes and was declared the winner.  Fred, with three votes was declared vice president.  Fred then did a bit of talking about making laws, but failed to make any.  Rolph tried to keep them on track by asking what their solution was and what laws actually protect them.  One peep suggested that they pass a law to protect the wildlife of TinyTown and hence cannot be flooded.  This went no where.  The steady tangent revolved around a law that would make a federal takeover illegal without the signatures of the all of the residents of the town.  This is a good law... however, as Rolph reminded them, they have not fulfilled the terms of the contract signed in September to receive the deeds for their land.   The vice president then asked for an extension of three weeks to fulfill these conditions.  Rolph asked what was in it for him?  He was then promised quite a lot of manure.  This is when Rolph stopped paying attention to anything else.  Fortunately for the residents of TinyTown, Rolph is rather simple and has a major weakness!  The new law will become legal as soon as the TinyTownies receive the deeds to their land.  

It looks like we will have class next week.  We will continue outside building houses and improving land.

Week 29, Marlborough School

Pandemonium

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.

Week 28, Marlborough School

April 3, 2012

Town Meeting

I can't believe we are already at week 28!  Our days are numbered and we have SO much left to do, or not.  We had town meeting today to further discuss the senator idea of government.  We began with an announcement that the meeting was for peeps, not kids... please use your peep when speaking.  Our agenda consisted of senators and businesses/jobs.  It was suggested that peeps be limited to only speaking four times during the meeting to help things run more quickly.  This was seconded (in thirded and fourthed...)  "THERE ARE NO THIRDS!" shouts the moderator.  The measure fails.  The meeting is called to order at 8:24am.  Bob comes up and presents his ideas about senators:

                   - Oligarchy:
                                     3 peeps from any grade
                                     1 peep for each grade, representing 5 peeps each
                                     1 representative from each grade

Disco Dave has an idea, " I know this may sound crazy... Make everyone a senator, then there's higher things than senators, president- senate- reps... different levels of power."

Moved to vote

More discussion:
"Each grade can talk with the whole council, then the '3' will make the final decision."  "Hey, I have an idea, we could just have three grades separate as groups to make decisions, then send a rep."

"Which one would be like the senators from Star Wars?"
"ORDER!"
"We could just have no government"  "We cannot get rid of the FED"

We vote:

1. separate grades to vote (1 rep /grade)
2. 3 total people
3. 1 peep representing five peeps
4. 1 peep from each grade
5. direct democracy
6. leveled power with a president
7. anarchy

Results:

1. 2
2. 0
3. 2
4. 2
5. 2
6. 5
7. 4

"ORDER!!"

"I move to reconsider"

"Some people voted three times"

"In history women were not allowed to vote, we could just do that"

Disco Dave gets up again to tell us more about his idea, "The President was a side track of leveled power, there would be President and then dot dot dot dot dot, and then peeps.  Leveled power is sort of like a pyramid."  He then draws a block pyramid on the board with the President at the top, followed by three senators, followed by five representatives, followed by everyone else.

"The FED would still be above the president"

"All in favor of redoing this entire vote?"  11 yays, 3 nays

Re vote results:

1. 0
2. 0
3. 2
4. 0
5. 0
6. 8
7. 6

Leveled power wins- we now have a pyramid scheme government.

"RECONSIDER!"  only 4 are for another re vote.

Disco Dave tries to present again.  Morton moves, "Cut out the representative level, we don't have enough people for that."  This passes 12 to 5.

Disco Dave, "No we aren't, this was my idea..."

"Do you have to be of a specific financial standing to run?"

"You just need enough money for a campaign- or pass out 'Vote for me' papers- because I did in fact invent this..."

This is when the bell rang.  In an exit poll, half of the kids want to continue this next week, while the other half want to get back to building.  During the meeting one peep suggested that not everyone should have to participate in the meeting.  Rolph informed them that this is why we are bothering to have this discussion: to figure out who will be making decisions for our community.  The peeps of Tiny Town do not know how lucky they are that Rolph is such a simpleton, it sure would be nice if he got it together and forced some very undesirable federal laws and taxes on this town.  Something to brainstorm for next week.

Week 27, Marlborough School

March 27, 2012

Building, peep intros


We began this morning with two peep introductions.  Our helpers from Keene State introduced Carly and Jeremiah.  Jeremiah is a 45 year old, retired firefighter.  He is a sports fan, a poet, the owner of two dogs and an avid bowler.  Carly is a 15 year old ballerina, she loves music and hanging out with friends.  Both of these new peeps are homeless, Disco Dave offered accommodations for them in his storage unit.  Sarah and Erin (our Keene State helpers) asked the class if they noticed anything different about their peeps (the new peeps were left in the oven too long and have a charred appearance as a result).  Up to this point it had seemed that the kids were not fully engaged, during the introductions most of the questions were asked by Rolph.  When asked about the differences of the new peeps nearly every hand shot up.  "The new peeps are black."  Sarah and Erin then asked the kids how they thought this might effect their community (pros and cons).  "They will bring variety to Village."  "I think they survived the Great Peep Massacre (referring to their burnt appearance)."  "We won't be just a bunch of white people."  "More like a regular environment with diversity."  "We could have a civil war."  "We could have slaves."  This last one drew many a gasp from the class, it was presented as a con and I think the student realized the weight of what he said about 1 second after he said it.  "Chuck would give you free rent if you were his slaves."  It kind of seems like Chuck might be racist.

This was an interesting conversation to have in Village because the peeps as well as the homesteaders were answering the questions.  This is one of the great, and most valuable lessons in Village: your peep can make big mistakes or controversial statements and as a result the homesteader can learn from those actions based on peer reaction and not be condemned by peers for exploring a controversial thought or action in the first place.  The beauty of role play!

Many houses are really coming together, some even have carpeting now.  We tried another way of building this morning:  Instead of nailing a house together, we used wood glue with spots of hot glue as clamps.  It seems like it worked and it was a LOT easier than nailing.  We shall see next week if the wood glue created strong enough bonds to keep the walls together.

This weeks newspaper:

Last weeks newspaper:

Lumber (donated by Whitney Bros and Carlisle Wide plank flooring) waiting to be drawn on

Cardboard models

Lumber cut, some painted ready to be turned into homes for peeps!

Some houses coming together!

I think we need at least one more week inside.  The weather has turned frightfully cold again and frankly I don't want to be out in it!

Week 26- Marlborough School

March 20, 2012

More Building!!


As always this group never ceases to amaze me.  Today I decided to try something different, I tried not speaking at the beginning of class.  I turns out that I am becoming unnecessary in Tiny Town.  The class got right to task this morning.  There were a few homesteaders who gathered their things and sat quietly awaiting announcements and instructions so I told them they could go ahead and get started.  Otherwise things went progressed without a hitch.

We continue to understand the importance of the cardboard models and right angles as we move on to actual house building.  I think there will be a lot of peeps who are not well protected from the elements when we move outside.  This, however, is yet another learning opportunity.  If these kids participate in another Village, they might take a little bit more time and consideration designing their houses.

Another Tiny Times was published today, I forgot to bring a copy home... so nothing for the blog until next week.  The paper included a coupon for the trading post.  I overheard the newspaper editor and the trading post manager hashing out the details of the discount.  The trading post manager did not want to run a coupon because he felt that the trading post was already losing money by having such low prices.  In the end they worked it out.  If you spend 10 meeps at the trading post you get 1 meep off.

Regardless of the weather, I am planning to bring the class outside the week after next.  We have several houses that are completed and ready to be put on the land.  It will be interesting to see if everybody remembers which land was whose and to see how our fences fared over the winter.  Additionally, it is simply too loud to continue with the hammering indoors.  Best case scenario we only have ten weeks left for Village, probably more like eight.  Now is the time to decide if we will be able to have a mini fair.

Week 25, Marlborough School

March 13, 2012

Building, lumber orders, newspapers


This week again was similar to the past several.  Hammers were banging and the class was a hive of activity.  We were joined this morning by my husband, Tim.  He worked with a group of homesteaders to accurately draw out their lumber orders.  More and more houses are coming together with "actual" right angles!

The editor of the Tiny Times has finished his house, so we should be seeing more and fuller newspapers in the coming weeks.  Volume 2 was published today:

It is a great edition and really captures what is happening in Tiny Town right now.

Our Marlborough town meeting is tonight, a group of homesteaders plans to attend the meeting.  My hope is that this will be an experience for them to draw from for our future Tiny Town meetings.  While there doesn't need to be a "right" way of conducting town meeting, there is something to be said for not reinventing the wheel.  I think several things will happen.  Homesteaders will see the respect that a moderator commands, and how that comes about.  Homesteaders might be so bored by actual town meeting that they will have no trouble with Tiny Town meeting.  Homesteaders will observe that a few individuals tend to ask all of the questions and complain an awful lot.  They will also see that real town meeting is mostly about taxes and not so much about policy, what they do with this information I have no idea.


A huge THANK YOU to Carlisle Wide Plank Floors for a large donation of wood to build our homes!

Week 24- Marlborough School

March 6, 2012

Building


Have I ever mentioned that we are incredibly busy?  This morning's class was visited by Jesslyn, who played Village with us last year at Marlborough School and over the summer in Nelson.  It was great to have some extra help on hand, because we were SO busy!  The very exciting news from this morning is that the first house seems to have been completed!  Okay, mostly completed.  A peep would not be comfortable living there yet as there is no furniture... but the walls are up, the ceiling is on, it looks like it is going to make a very nice home for one lucky peep.  The other good news is that this home belongs to the editor of the newspaper, hopefully now that his house is finished we'll start seeing more news published.

The rest of the class continued working on the steps necessary to complete a house.  Most homesteaders are at the point of drawing out their lumber orders on the wood.  So many, in fact, that we ran out of wood this morning!  This lack of wood provided some homesteaders with an opportunity to do something different.  One homesteader who is apparently bankrupt (from purchasing everyone else's cardboard models and taping them all together) had some time to work out his finances and to think about how he can solve his current plight.  I don't think he came up with a solution that he was willing to do, however, his situation is dawning on him.  This has the potential to go two ways as I see it.  1:  Possibly some impressive changes in this homesteader's sense of community.  In his time of need will he look for/find a job?  Will he talk about his financial woes with his fellow homesteaders?  Will he ask them for help?  2:  He shuts down and refuses to participate.  I am hoping for number 1!

Another homesteader began brainstorming what this idea of having senators will mean  in our community and how it might be applied.  He was so enthusiastic about his plan that at the end of class when I asked him to put his paper away, he asked me if he could bring it home because he wanted to work on his ideas some more.

We spent a bit of time learning about the importance of right angles in home construction.  We also learned a few tricks to make sure the walls and roofs we are drawing out are accurate (a wall that is eight feet high at one end of the room shouldn't be nine and a half at the other end).

Our trading post manager imported a house he built at a previous village.  He had other homesteaders appraise it's value to determine his tariff. "I don't want to do it myself because it would be a conflict of interest."  Once again fairness it very important in Village.

Things are really coming together!

Next week we will do more of the same.  Tim and I have a TON of lumber orders to cut out between now and then.