Fire Family Council Retreat

January 23-25, 2009

 

Day 1, Friday, January 23, 2009.

Present:

Padme Sant, James Bianchi, Venee Call-Ferrer, Peter Van Gorder, Patrick Garretson, Ember McGee, Missy Wilreker, Terence Keane, Jimi Two Feathers, Sylvia Brallier, Morwen Two Feathers

 

Opening check-in rounds, about the Fire Family vision and why we are here.

Recurring themes:

-         Creating a strong and safe container

-         Art unfolding

-         Building community

-         Getting into “The Zone”

-         Being who we are

-         Connecting with ach other

-         Connecting with the Divine

-         Positive change and healing, for individuals and the planet

 

The Vision. We reviewed the current vision statement, to confirm that we are all in alignment. Everyone felt good about the vision as it is articulated, with these comments:

-         How to beef up the “community-built” piece, have the Council do the critical things and let go of other things, to be picked up by the community if they want them. Emphasize co-creation.

-         How to describe “the Fire Circle experience”? Let’s develop language to better describe what we do to people who don’t know.

-         Can we emphasize the sacred intent? Some discussion about being open and accessible to everyone, even those who do not have a spiritual perspective. We do need to check our assumptions, but we also affirm that a sense of the sacredness of everything underlies our approach and personal motivations for doing this work. (This is true at least of those present in this room.)

-         It is important to review the vision statement each year.

 

Topics to put on the agenda, if not for this weekend then for the future:

-         Site (new)

-         Installations (portal, etc)

-         Relationship with spin-off groups, “sponsoring other fires”

-         Newcomers

-         Ritual (in general)

-         Program book (include list of council and staff)

-         Arrival times

-         Registrar

-         Promotion (incl. Pantheacon)

 

What Works – what do we want to make sure not to lose or drop if we make changes? Offered popcorn-style, not in any particular order.

·        Food selections – especially locally grown organic

·        Drumming was awesome! people with years of connection + space for new people to come in

·        where the drum benches were – encouraged limited number of drummers at any time, encouraged self-regulation, rotation throughout the night.

·        installations

·        merchant village worked well – lay out was nice, merchants had system to pay if they weren't there – more merchants?

·        Photo booth

·        Denise and Paula – the cooks – made progress to fitting into community

·        Paul the new medic!

·        On site staff massage therapist (but the continuing problem that the system still isn't working to ensure that they're available in an equitable fashion)

·        lighted walkways

·        documentation for fire circle team provided information and point of interaction

·        installation team rocked!

·        Water temple was beautiful

·        food set-up in center of dining hall

·        Village builder opening ritual and walk through to honor work that was done

·        healers

·        chimineas

·        diversifire space as a workshop space (but not for Taketina)

·        announcements at dinner

·        transformation of dining hall – covering fluorescent lights

·        little altars all over the place

·        nice group of kids in attendance this year

·        opening rituals done by three different groups/different energies

·        bulletin board with pictures of team leaders

·        straw throne – helped people claim their divinity – social center (a “community nest”) - provided an opportunity for people to look at themselves/transform/think/connect – functional purpose – blocked the clutter and movement in the quonset hut – sound block. (There was a perceived downside to the straw throne, as well as the concern that there weren't enough straw bales inside the circle. Communication issue about making people know everyone is welcome there.)

·        rangoli

·        smoker's tepee, and not in the amphitheater

·        a place for stationary dancing

·        interactive ancestor altar

·        speed smudging at the smudge-o-matic, along with low torches at the gate and at the altars and the healers

·        also alternatives to smudge – mist, other herbs, etc.

·        gate in the north

·        removing lower string of prayer flags between healers and fire

·        phoenix in the east, eased the set up

·        history and consistency and rotating leadership of fire circle team

·        concept of an individualized entry into the first night's fire circle, winding through labyrinth

·        smudging the circle before each night's ritual makes a big difference – the actual space, not just the people

·        extra signs for where to find workshop spaces

·        desert moon circle's opening

·        cohesion of certain teams: healers, fire circle team, ritual leaders

·        strong commitment by council to sharing and passing on leadership

·        honoring ritual for Harper

·        workshop during day to allow people to plug into opening rituals

·        community reaction to crises

·        entire architecture of drum area: benches, back row, dancing area behind, etc.

·        community-focus of Village Builders and team leaders – great attitudes

·        Council worked well as a team

·        Vision Council worked well

·        renting the van to pick up the food and having two drops instead of just one: one for VB and one for main event

·        fun in the pool

·        ritual planning meetings in the pool!

·        Night swims

·        ad hoc logistics crew that got supplies up mountain

·        orientation went well – not one person doing everything, focusing on pithy main points

·        frequent changing of water in dish-washing stations

·        level of commitment and enthusiasm for sustainability

·        Green Mary as eco leader!

·        Changes to schedule – one workshop per day! Less was more! Later lunch and dinner – dinner later in particular was better

·        meal plan allowed you to pick only the meals you wanted

·        registration went smoothly

·        salons (please bring back meeting when salon leaders reconnect afterwards)

·        having a special needs coordinator – let people feel heard with their concerns and get assistance addressing them too

·        registering stoves – when stove went on fire we knew where to find it – remember to register all things that use propane

·        designated smoking areas

·        photo policy

·        reed diffusers for toilets

 

 

Problems that need solving

-         Service groups. Relationship between VBs and service groups. No-shows. Qualifications for certain teams. Big problems with breakfast shift no-shows, especially last morning. Thursday service group meeting didn’t work.

-         Don’t have last breakfast in merchant circle; we lost the benefit of being in the circle itself, might as well just do it in the dining hall and make it easier on the staff, or have it at the fire circle itself.

-         Lack of clarity regarding expectations, lines of communication not clear, need clearer lines of authority. Among other things, this caused on-site Council meetings not to come together well.

-         Need better way for participants to notify staff of problems.

-         Kitchen: Need “young buck” with strong back to help in kitchen. Also need better attention to sanitation (i.e. sneeze guards for serving). Accommodations for cooks. Better coordination between VB and main gathering cooks.

-         Inventory management and storage, supplies and procurement. Knowing what we have and where things are once we're on site. Lots of issues here.

-         Drinking water, at fire circle, and around site, esp. during tear-down. Needs to be specifically assigned as responsibility to someone.

-         Council: too many people on multiple committees, Council spread too thin. Need to coordinate on-site meeting times, better on-site communication.

-         Communications infrastructure. Need radios, there were not enough, and then they disappeared as the people who loaned them to us packed up and left the site, while we still needed them. Not well-placed. We need our own radios. Also batteries. Clearly articulated emergency protocol.

-         We need a PA for announcements

-         Medics left before the end, while there were still people working on site. Need someone licensed in CA to be on call until the end.

-         Tear-down! Not having truck available to move things during set-up/tear down. Lack of clarity regarding Guardians’ role helping move things around. Truck left before a clear plan was made to take trash off site, so trash ended up in a private car. Need a dedicated crew for tear-down with clear lines of responsibility. Meals during tear-down were also a problem. Food was held for the tear-down crew, but then other people (who were not working) ate it.

-         Guardian burn-out. Need more bodies, also better scheduling, clearer job description.

-         Need to coordinate only ONE town run each day (for staff and gathering needs, not for attendees)

-         Signage could be improved

-         On-site transportation of stuff: coordinate, limit number of vehicles driving around. But we do need an “official” shuttle from village to dining hall for special-needs folks.

-         Schedule of work and meal times during VB days needs adjustment. Have early-morning work time, before heat of day. Make breakfast and lunch later.

-         Need to purchase some equipment for healers and VB support (radios, EZ-up)

-         Electrical infrastructure. Who’s responsible?

-         Concerns that we're not doing enough for newbies

-         Dawn rituals

-         Closing circle (at fire, and for gathering)

-         Need to figure out alternative to full-fledged food vendor.

-         Web site

 

Brief discussion of which of these items need to be discussed by the Council as a whole, and which should be addressed by Committees (mostly the latter).

 

Discussion of Service Groups

(each bullet is a new speaker. offered popcorn-style, not in any particular order.)

-         Different groups require specific or more qualifications that others. It’s important for certain groups to have the right people (for example, healers, guardians, fire tenders)

-         Need to have specific people to cook for breakfast, not random people. We lost people in the morning, lots of no-shows.

-         Doesn’t work to include maintaining the food altar in Temple Keepers service group

-         For the fire circle, the daily “service” is really just filling the torches, only need 2 people for that. This is not a good job for first-timers. Give first-timers a break. Not one-size-fits-all.

-         Burn-out in certain areas, certain jobs are seen as cushy jobs, some as shitty jobs. As a new person, having someplace to plug in and work can be very valuable. It’s about connection. How to have accountability for no-shows? How to get things done in a way that promotes connection and community?

-         Can have sign-up for shifts and have individuals do different things on different days (rather than the same thing for the whole gathering)

-         Maybe split guardians into 2 different groups, security and operations

-         Very pissed about no-shows, people who claimed (falsely) to be working on other crews, or “forgot.” Certain team leaders covered multiple uncovered shifts themselves. We shouldn’t call it “service” because that makes it seem optional. Need to clarify jobs in advance.

-         Charge $ for no-shows, or have a refundable deposit, or charge more for gathering and tie financial aid to work. Consequences for not showing up, explain that it’s not optional.

-         There are always problems with not showing up for shifts. At Dance New England the language of service works, much better than previous language of “chores.” At DNE if you miss a shift you pay $10 and someone else gets paid to do it. There’s also a “Placard of Shame” where no-shows’ names are posted in dining hall. Another way to do it is to give everyone two stickers with their name on them, which they put on shift chart.

-         The healers do lots of work, it may be perceived as a cushy job but it is very demanding.

-         There’s a distinction between a special skill or service provided to the community (e.g. healers or drummers) and the work needed to maintain the gathering infrastructure such as meals, clean facilities, dishwashing and recycling, etc. One should not be a substitute for the other. Everyone should help maintain the physical container regardless of whatever other service they do. If someone is on the meal plan, they should do a shift in the kitchen. It can be challenging for leaders or supervisors to train a whole new group of people several times a day for a job that has a learning curve, that’s the advantage of having dedicated teams or service groups. But it’s hard to achieve parity that way.  Absolutely against creating a class system where people with money can get out of doing work/chores and people without money get stuck cleaning up after others. Some amount of “work-study” is ok, but also want some financial aid that is not tied to work, and do not want to create an option of “buying out” of community service.

-         What really needs to be done? For example, not all tasks on guardian list need to belong to the guardians. Distinguish between service to the container (perhaps connected to “portals”) and maintenance of the gathering infrastructure (food, cleaning, trash, etc). Remember good idea from post-gathering meeting in August about family groups.

-         Guardians used to be separate from rest of gathering/community, have become more integrated, but also took on more. Suggest volunteer shift deposit. Putting names on wall works best for accountability (good old-fashioned guilt). Don’t get into hiring people to do jobs others don’t want to do. That’s a slippery slope that will eventually kill volunteerism.

-         Look at how many are needed on a team. (guardians needed more)

-         Like doing 3 different shifts. Communicate with community about how much it would cost to hire people to do the things we are asking the community to do, explain how community service helps keep the cost of the gathering down.

-         Idea to get meal ticket when you show up for your work shift each day

-         Family groups do work shifts together

-         Don’t be attached to the past

-         VBs don’t need to be “on” throughout gathering

-         Wrist band or obvious token for teams (to deal with claims that someone is a member of another team)

-         Careful not to create adolescent rebellion by punishing for not showing up.

-         It’s important that we can all afford this experience

-         Match sign-ups to need

-         Healers training during VB days. Talk publicly about how people are selected and trained for Healers.

-         Circle Keepers as category of activity separate from service groups. Conceptually separate Healers from service groups – but do need healers to show up, have regular contact and supervision.

-         Do less infrastructure work (but no nuns J )

-         Attitude of JOYFUL SUPPORT, will support accountability. How can we support rather than parent.

 

Further discussion of these points, and putting together a specific proposal about how to handle service groups at PF09, was delegated to the Program Committee for follow-up.

 

More specific discussion of the transformation and healing process at the fire. (who has notes from this?)

 

At the end of the day, we said goodbye to Sylvia and thanked her for three years of service as a member of the Council.

 

 

Day 2, Saturday, January 24, 2009

Present: Padme, Jimi, Peter, Venee, James, Missy, Terence, Ember, Patrick, Morwen

 

We began with a brief ritual, and then a review of the consensus decision-making process.

 

Then the corporate meeting was convened.

 

Fire Family

Minutes of Annual Meeting

January 24-25, 2009

Eclectia

Scotts Valley, California

 

 

The corporate president, Morwen Two-Feathers, convened the annual

corporate board meeting of the Fire Family on January 24, 2009 at Eclectia,

Scotts Valley, California.

 

Board members present: James L. Bianchi, Patrick Garretson, Peter van Gorder,

Stephanie (Padme) Sant, Jimi Two Feathers, Morwen Two Feathers, Melissa

Wilreker, Shimmering Wolf

 

Invitees present: Venee Call-Ferrer, Terence Keane, Tandy (Ember) McGee

 

1. Approval of Minutes - By unanimous approval, the minutes of the annual

board meeting of February 23, 2008 was approved as modified.

 

2. Acknowledgment of Council Resignations: Morwen Two Feathers announced

that Una Gallagher and Jason Cohen, who both announced their one-year

leave of absence at the annual meeting of 2008, have elected not to return to

the board. Jasper Starbow remains on the board on modified leave but

continues to server as our Treasurer. Sylvia Brallier announced before the board

meeting that she is stepping down from the board and will be joining Una

Gallagher and Jason Cohen on the Advisory Council. Shimmering Wolf,

completing his 3rd year as a board member, announced that he will be taking a

one-year leave of absence. Morwen Two Feathers expressed a desire to step

off the board, but existing board members (Jimi abstaining in order to avoid the

perception of a conflict of interest) asked that she stay on to assist with the

transition of the new board who desired the benefit of her experience.

Accordingly, Morwen elected to stay on the board for another year.

 

3. Election of new board members: Venee Call-Ferrer, Terence Keane, and

Tandy (Ember) McGee were elected to the board by unanimous consent.

Board members serve 3 years and may elect to add 3 additional years at 1/yr

intervals. Then they must step off for at least a year before being considered for

board membership again. The new board is as follows:

 

James L. Bianchi (2nd year)

Venee Call-Ferrer (1st year)

Patrick Garretson (2nd year)

Peter van Gorder (2nd year)

Terence Keane (1st year)

Tandy (Ember) McGee (1st year)

Stephanie (Padme) Sant (2nd year)

Jasper Starbow (4th year)

Jimi Two Feathers (4th year)

Morwen Two Feathers (4th year)

Melissa Wilreker (2nd year)

 

4. Election of Officers – By unanimous consent, the following officers were

elected:

Terence Keane – Co-President

Missy Wilreker - Co-President

Jasper Starbow – Treasurer

James L. Bianchi – Clerk

 

5. Authorization to Expend Funds – The board reviewed the final budget for 2008,

made minor adjustments, and authorized the expenditures within these changes

provided that the funds are available.

 

6. Insurance – James L. Bianchi announced that non-profit boards are now

required under California law to acquire an Errors & Omissions insurance policy

covering the liability of board members. The board directed that the insurance

be acquired.

 

James L. Bianchi, Esq.

Clerk, Fire Family

 

Day 3, Sunday, January 25, 2009

Present: Padme, Jimi, Peter, Venee, James, Missy, Terence, Ember, Patrick, Morwen

 

Reviewed officer elections, discussed having co-Presidents. Remember that having two people on one job can be more work, not less – communication is essential so things don’t fall through the cracks, as well as complementary skills. Everyone feels good about having Missy and Terence share this job.

 

We are not wed to always having co-presidents, but it can be an option. Gender balance is good.

 

Missy and Terence are mapping out jobs and will come back to Council in a month with proposal about this year’s staffing. We will not select team leaders till then, but can brainstorm a list of people to choose from.

 

Missy to contact everyone to collect info on tasks.

 

Registrar Discussion

When it came to choosing this year's registrar, we acknowledged that several of the people we thought might apply were unavailable and considered the strong resume of the candidate who did apply, Kama Star. While she is a member of the greater Fire Family, there was discussion about how her unfamiliarity with our gathering might effect the ease of the registration process for participants, for the Council, and for her. Yet there was agreement that she met all of the other qualifications for the position, and full confidence from those who know Kama (and trust by those who don't) in her abilities. There was discussion of whether we were setting a precedent, and a feeling that that if we were the precedent was to select the best qualified candidate available.

 

We agreed by consensus to hire Kama for the job. Program committee to contact and get process rolling. Ember will be her primary liaison with Council.

 

 

Discussion about opening the gathering to early arrival on Wednesday

Background: Our contract with Cutter this year allows us to arrive on site a day earlier and to have the Village Builders arrive on Sunday rather than Monday. Cost for the camp is the same, but there would be extra meals cost.

 

Proposal: To start the gathering on Wednesday, and have registration go till noon on Thursday. This gives us Thursday afternoon with everyone there for orientation, workshops, compressed portal. May need to allow for Friday arrivals if we do this .

 

Some discussion about whether to limit early arrival to returning people, or limit the number of early arrivals, and quickly decided not to do either.

 

Ember and Padme said it could actually be better for the registration team to have limited hours on two days rather than long hours on one day.

 

Passionate opinions were expressed by both Peter and Terence that one possible approach to this idea is to make it an avenue for people who are helping to co-create the event in new ways, tying it back to our earlier discussion about our vision.

 

Strong feelings expressed about the value of closing the container before the first fire, even though we know that some people will be excluded because of that.

 

Any Wednesday arrival option would include extra fee and extra work shift of some kind. Needs deadline for sign-up. Program Committee will come up with specific proposal.

 

Discussion: Work study/Financial aid

-         Work-study a way to plug people in, including new people

o       Possible work-study positions: coffee, delivery drivers, last morning breakfast crew

-         Keep some “scholarship,” no strings attached subsidy of up to 50% of reg fee. Brings people in who otherwise wouldn’t come, increases total registration, and people pay it forward.

-         Payment plan: only with auto-pay or credit card, paid before gathering, no chasing down

-         Need clarity on work-study/scholarship, how much, timing of application/award.

 

Program Committee to develop proposal and guidelines, back to Council by Feb. 15.

 

Some talk about fundraisers:

-         Message-o-gram

-         Ads in program booklet

-         Auction? In advance? On-line?

 

Committees met in small groups:

Operations/Logistics Committee: Jimi, James, Patrick

Program Committee: Morwen, Terence, Ember

Marketing/Communications: Peter, Venee

Organization Development: Missy, Padme

 

The Operations and Program Committees were each asked to select one member for the Core Production Team (CPT). They chose Jimi and Morwen, respectively. After some discussion, it was decided that the logical third member of the CPT should be the Kitchen Coordinator, or Patrick.

 

CPT decisions needing to be made relating to the Kitchen:

-         Expenditures/Budget

-         Volunteers (how many, how organized, staffing needed)

-         Scheduling

-         Last morning breakfast

-         VB meals (cost, scheduling

 

Gathered in group and listed Action Items (circulated separately)

 

Adjourned at 5 pm, followed by many hugs and goodbyes.