Katy and I moved to Reno in 2004 to work on the election - she as a union organizer, me as a field director for a large GOTV effort. Susan, Katy’s mom, had already been a long-time faculty member at UNR so we lived with her and worked our tails off on another losing electoral effort. But we met lots of great people in that effort and decided to stay.

We lived in town for a couple years and then moved out to the River School for another couple years. That launched us on an almost two-year journey of learning and discovery across the country where we studied natural building, investigated intentional communities, and lived at the Possibility Alliance in Missouri that helped ricochet us back to Reno to begin our own project.

Upon returning to Reno we found a fixer-upper that seemed perfect for creating the new life we wanted to live. However, the house was unlivable, we had two small children ages 5 and 2, effectively no money, and dreams of creating an alternative living and learning space that put forth our hopes and values. To raise the money we held a few info sessions and started asking friends and family to chip in to make the Be the Change Project a reality. Almost 200 of you responded and we were able to put together $40,000 in short time - enough to purchase the house and the half acre of land it sits on (the market was way down in 2011).

We chose to make the space fossil fuel and electricity free to both withdraw our support from fossil fuels and move towards more connection with the light and dark and the seasons. We owned no vehicles and biked and bused around town with our kids. Eventually, after about eight years and as our kids grew and started attending school, we got some solar and even an electric car (which we had to charge in town).

We chose to live in voluntary poverty to refrain from paying war taxes to the federal government, to push us to find creative solutions to our needs (like growing a lot of our own food or asking a neighbor for his old window instead of buying anew), and to demonstrate simpler, more sustainable, and maybe even better ways of living in this time of climate change, mass extinction, and polarization.

We made beeswax candles, heated and cooked with wood and the sun, and made so many repairs with salvaged materials. We hand-washed cloth diapers, installed a greywater system, put up a greenhouse and planted (and killed) a lot of plants as we learned about gardening and design. We wrote articles for Mother Earth News Magazine about our adventure and were chosen as one of their Homesteads of the Year in 2013.

We also spent a lot of time with our kids since we unschooled/homeschooled them until they each chose to go to middle school in 8th grade. We generally tried to just have them around our lives - the gardens and compost, moving woodchips, making and building with cob, biking around town and the neighborhood, and hanging out with grandma.

We got to know our neighbors and friends and family soon moved into the neighborhood. Scott bought a house two doors down about a year after we did and then Susan did the same down the block a bit after that. Both of those houses were also major fixer-uppers but allowed even more people to live here and join in the mix. This led to lots of potlucks, holiday caroling, pizza parties with our cob oven, work parties, and random events like movie showings, a guy playing piano in our front yard from the back of his truck (he was traveling the country doing this), and dance parties during our building workshops.

We offered a lot of classes on the gift economy, held book groups, integral nonviolence workshops, permaculture classes, and gave away tons of seeds and seedlings. We raised rabbits, chickens, pigs, and a friend’s goats. We collected food and clothing and redistributed it to those in need. At some point along the way we created a non-profit in order to more easily accept donations and apply for grants to support our work.

We started the state’s first food-waste collection service, the Reno Rot Riders (now Down to Earth Compost), created the Reno Garlic Fest, conducted the first microplastics testing of the Truckee River, built the first single-family home to be part of a community land trust for affordable housing (here’s a new story about that), built a worm farm (“Wormtopia”), and organized murals and public art along Wedekind Road to bring a little beauty to an ugly stretch of road.

After another losing campaign, this time my own campaign for Washoe County Commission in 2022, a friend and longtime political activist suggested that in order to win a future election I’d need to become more normal. Not sure that’s going to happen.

Today, we still live an alternative lifestyle with lots of gardening and natural building, limited electricity, the use of water conservation and appropriate technologies, and an income under the poverty level. But now we have a Prius, a dog, travel more, fully support our kids in their lives and education, and are focusing more specifically on the teaching of natural building and permaculture.

We’re looking to sell our house/urban homestead, too, and hope to find someone who will love, appreciate, and use the unique space as much as we have. That money will go towards our new project. Interested? Reach out to me. We’ll post more info on that soon.

What Next?

I’m from the green and watery northeast and have missed that realm since I’ve been here. And we’ve both yearned for a quieter, calmer, and more naturally beautiful environment than our funky neighborhood and the growing and sprawling city that is Reno/Sparks. Also, when we leapt into this alternative lifestyle after following regular career paths, we felt fresh and alive. New experiences, new learning, and new thinking pervaded our lives. It was invigorating! But for several years now, I’ve felt a creeping complacency and am yearning for a new project.