Cloudy Day by Morgan Madden

Today is a cloudy day of the soul. Not a dark night. No rainbows in the dark. Just cloudy with a chance of rain. I will overcome. I will succeed. I have the determination and the wherewithal to weather this minor storm. What will I do with myself? Maybe I’ll just stay inside and read. Maybe I’ll light a fire to warm myself beside. I’m awful lonely in this cloudy day. I could use some good company. Everyone is staying inside on this cloudy day. No one is willing to venture out to lend a helping hand. The fear of lightning and moisture is insurmountable for some. Will I be held down by this same fear? I sincerely hope not. If it rains, I hope one can see me dancing in it. If it pours, I hope one can see me splashing in the puddles. Even in a torrential downfall, there is happiness to be had. Floods can wash away the old, unstable structures of the past and give me a clean slate for the present and the future. Maybe I’ll go out and see how things are. Feel the winds blowing in my face. See the clouds. Even though they block it out, I know the sun is still there. Maybe that’s all I need for this cloudy day, the knowledge that the sun is still there and one day it will be sunny again. I guess I hope for that as eagerly as anything. I long to see the sun again even though I relish the opportunity to make the best of this cloudy day. Catch me singing in the rain.

Hedroids continue to be spooked by clowns that have slowly begun appearing throughout the house. Behind the sealing of one of our winterized windows grows a collection of clown figures.

Perhaps they are being placed around the house by a sneaky housemate; others believe they may be appearing as a result of a past Hedroid who has been haunting our home since it was rebuilt after burning down during the 1954 Rose Bowl. The source of the clowns remains undetermined.

Hedrick Haus Clowns

Hedroids would like to thank all of you co-opers for braving the clowns and coming out to shake their bootys with us at our most recent partay: Ugly Sweater Sexy Underwear Extravaganza! For those of you who have yet to experience our recently clown-filled home, stop on by the first block of Collingwood and take a peek!

Michigan State University has been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for the past 6 months for MSU’s handling of sexual assault cases. The lack of support for survivors and education of students on preventing sexual violence from the University is unac-ceptable. Fellow students, community members, and myself have been working together to show the University that we care about the safety of our fellow peers and the prevention of sexual violence, which should be a top priority. We have created these banners with the proposed definition of consent in the Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct policy draft. For those seeking more information or assistance, the banner has 5 on campus and 5 local resources. All SHC houses received one, but if you would like another, or know anyone who would like one, let me know! Also, if you’re interested in getting involved find me on Facebook!

P.S. I was the one posting all the consent photos November 13th : )

Fellow Co-oper,

Jenni Opie

Here’s a picture of my lovely housemates and friends at Hedrick Coop with the banner. Lets create a positive consent culture in our community!

Recently, I unexpectedly attended a start-up career fair without any knowledge of who was there or what really to expect.

After talking to most of the vendors, and not finding anything of interest to me, I wandered up to a table with two friendly faces. I introduced myself and inquired as to what they were all about. Their response brought me immediate joy and made the whole experience worthwhile. HerBlends of Plenty tea blends are 100% local and sustainably-grown, they offer health benefits, and from my experience, are quite tasty. They thoughtfully brought their “Unwind from the Grind” mix to the fair as an anti-anxiety for the attendees and were collecting the sample cups for their compost. They have the environmentalist mindset throughout their entire business including their compostable packaging. To support local and sustainable farmers, they’ve partnered with Jameson Herb, Half Barn Farm, Capital Village Trade Cooperative, Learning Leaves Community Farmscape, and Rooted Home. They have a strong desire to give back to the community and continue to grow with the people around them. I truly appreciate their ambitions and way of life. Working with others to develop a sustainable life is something I absolutely love to see. At the fair, my roommate and I decided to purchase the “De-Gunk your Trunk” blend together, and it’s been a great way to clear my head in the morning and start the day. I would encourage any tea drinkers to check out HerBlends of Plenty and see what blends they have. If HerBlends of Plenty is something you’d like to be a part of, they are open to finding ways to plug people in for part-time opportunities to help build their startup business. Let’s look for ways to support those around us and help each other thrive.

-Matt Aoun, Pheonix House

HerBlends of Plenty

A Pleasant Discovery

“We create tea blends that empower individuals to make healthier choices. HerBlends of Plenty offers nutrition & vitality via herbs, re-introducing lost knowledge of medicinal value, and packaging them as a convenient product.”

A beer brewing cooperative, cleverly named Twin Pints, has been picking up speed in

East Lansing. Twin Pints ultimately seeks to become a worker-owned nanobrewery to provide

affordable artisan beer to its member-owners. They would collectively invest in the necessary

equipment and work together to produce a tasty end product –beer. Once established, the

cooperative would then offer a way for artisan brewers to sell their brews in the coop’s taproom

to provide a return on the brewer’s time and effort.

The market for craft beer has been growing in Michigan

over the past decade and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s

not news that big names in craft brewing like those of Founders,

Bells, Oddside, New Holland, and many others on the rise,

already exist in the state. More importantly, an ever growing

community of craft beer drinkers and enthusiasts are generating

the demand needed to support the many breweries sprouting up

in the fine state of Michigan. Since beer is better when shared,

craft beer drinkers are slowly converting drinkers of mass

produced watery-taste-alikes to the wonders of craft beer,

creating an ever-growing community of enlightened individuals.

Twin Pints seeks to offer so much more than just good

beer to its members. The benefits of a local community working

together as a brewing cooperative to produce its own high quality beer are endless. Cooperative

engagement occurs over a fun hobby, and the local community directly benefits as everyone

profits equally in learned skills and in tasty beer at some of the lowest prices possible. This also

creates an opportunity for money to flow back to local homebrewers rather than corporations.

Teddy Linabury (an MSU senior and

member of Bowie House) knows these things all

too well. He has been a part of Twin Pints since the

idea’s conception and has been hosting informative

brewing sessions at Bowie for anyone interested in

the art of homebrewing. He is also spearheading

the efforts to assemble a gear library of loanable

equipment that aspiring homebrewers can use in their own homes to begin making their own

nanobrews. Just this past month, a Wheat and Rye IPA was brewed and bottled by a group of

Twin Pints members under Teddy’s guidance. They got hands-on learning experience in

homebrewing, enjoyed each other’s company, and yielded 50 bottles of tasty craft beer at a cost

of a little over a dollar per beer. Obviously you’re now desperate to get involved to take home

some dank handcrafted microbrews, and thankfully it’s easy…

Join Twin Pints on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/453936151313763/

See you at our next meeting!

Twin Pints Cooperative BreweryAustin Jeltes & Janet Hsiao

THE ICC/MSU SHC Tailgate/Potluck/Canned

Food/Clothing Drive: A Success!

By: Syd Burke

It’s true, football season is now coming

to a close, but hey, let’s reflect on some

awesome things we were able to make happen

during the season! That, my fellow Cooperators,

is our system’s first Inter-Cooperative Tailgate

Potluck Clothing Non-Perishable Food Drive

Combo! (Wow, that’s a mouthful! Much like all

the awesome free food I devoured that day!)

Phoenix House hosted this event on

October 25th and was a great time for members

of the SHC and Ann Arbor ICC past, present, and

future to come together to give back to their

community, network with each other, and of

course, tailgate! “The tailgate gave me the

chance to catch up with old friends in a co-op I

previously lived in

as well as meet a

variety of new

people. With live

bands and

homemade food, it

was a refreshing

experience,”

(Catherine Little

(Apollo House).

Thanks to the Education Committee and

many others involved, there was a great

turnout, delicious food, near perfect weather,

and live music in and around our ears! Arguably

one of the greatest parts of the event is that we

collectively gathered 404 total items (a little

over 80% percent of the way to our 500 item

goal, not bad!) including non-perishable foods

and clothing. We have since donated these

resources to Haven House which benefits one-

parent and two-parent families with children in

the Lansing area.

A big thanks to all who came and supported this

cause, as we hope to establish this as a tradition

for years to come!

Howland LostIn August of 2012, a newly renovated and freshly painted Howland House opened its doors to resume functioning as a student housing co-op. Many in the co-op community know it as one of the oldest co-ops in east lansing, with a rich history of strong culture and independence. What many do not know, is the story of how Howland was nearly lost forever as a cooperative. I sat down with SHC’s maintenance director and former Howlander (or “Howler”), Mike Mccurdy to hear how he nearly single handedly rescued Howland House. It proved to be a most interesting story.

Howland’s origins trace back to 1948 when a group of 50 students, mostly World War II veterans, purchased the early 20th century Victorian mansion. At its peak membership in the mid 1970s, Howland House was home to over 40 members. As many of the co-ops in east lansing began to federate together forming what would eventually be the Student Housing Cooperative Incorporated (SHC), Howland continued to stay independent in order to maintain the highest degree of control over their assets. By the mid 1990s, Howland began experiencing some membership problems Including disorganization, a culture of apathy, drugs, violence, poor physical condition of the house and a bad relationship with the city. In 1998, the house was in such poor physical condition that city inspectors mandated Howland House make repairs and renovations or else the city would not renew Howland’s renters license, essentially condemning the house. The estimated cost of repairs was about $60,000, money that Howland House did not have. No bank would lend $60,000 to a student group in such conditions. The only way Howland could get a loan, was if they hired a property management company tooversee the renovations, collect rents, and file correct paper work. Seeing few options, the members of Howland decided to do just that. Enter the “dark days”.

Dark Days – Howland Lost The first action the property manager took was evict all the current Howland members.Some members fought and tried to fire the management company, but the membership wastoo disorganized to effectively collectivize and make a powerful, meaningful decision. The end result was total eviction. The management company became responsible for filling the house and had a hard time keeping the Victorianmansion full and inspiring cooperative culture. Placing one person in each room, the company considered sixteen to be “full”.

Howland continued to exist as a co-op with ownership legally in the hands of the members, but it did not function as a co-op.The management company would file annual documents with the state that continued Howland’s existence as a co-op and symbolically fill officer positions like President, Treasurer and Board of Directors. “I would walk by sometimes and talk to a few people if I saw them outside” Mccurdy recounted, “I’d ask if theyknew they were a co-op and they’d say that people keep telling them that but they really didn’t know what it meant or what kind of control they actually had”.

With little internal organization, a low sense of pride for home, and very little community, a house of this size operating

outside of the co-op model was bound to fail. Members hated the management company. Having little input and low sense of ownership, members would not take care of their home, allowing Howland to fall again into serious disrepair during the twelve years under the management company. During this time, the co-op community was stunned to see Howland slipping away. How could this happen? How did we lose Howland? There must be something we can do! And there was.

All it really would have taken for Howland to return to cooperative living was a majority vote by members to end the contract with the management company. The house belonged legally to “Howland House Cooperative” and not to “POS Management”. The power was there for the taking, but uneducated “tenants” were not aware of this dynamic. While working for SHC, Mike Mccurdy tried to come up with ways to get Howland back as a cooperative. “Let’s offer them a hot tub if they sell us the house!” he’d exclaim to other SHC staff (co-opers inherently love hot tubs. It isa fact. Every co-op that has ever existed has entertained ideas of installing a hot tub).For twelve years, Howland House Cooperative continued to slide further and further away from being a cooperative coming just months away from being lost forever.

The story continues in January with the rescue andreturn to glory!

Howland House circa 1993

THE TRUTH ABOUT REPTOIDS AND THE SHC

THREE QUESTIONS OF ALL HUMANITY 1-WHY ARE WE HERE 2-WHERE DID WE COME FROM 3-ARE WE ALONE? Everyone asks these questions, here are the answers: 1-evolution from protists (seeded by comets/also reptoids); 2-insides ancient stars after they supernovaed +reformed; 3-NO REPOTIDS. At least #3 can be answered: everyone debates UFOs and aliens and all that butt the TRUTH is other beings have been living with us for thousands, hell maybe millions of years. I for one find comfort in not wasting my time with the question of r we alone becus the answer is: REPTOIDS! But know no comfort in that there’s probably one sitting near you reading the SHC Pine Press RIGHT NOW!!!!!

What are reptoids?? That’s probably the 1st question anyone who has fallen victim to reptoid-orchestrated media puppet show asks. It’s okay; we don’t judge here @ the Hedrick Reptoid Exposure Bureau and Research Center: we want to educate the TRUTH! Reptoids are a race of highly intelligent extra-terrestrial humanoid reptilian shapeshifter aliens. They are scaly, snake-eyed creatures who naturally range between 5’5” and 12” tall, sometimes possessing leathery wings (DRACO reptoids, an elite class). They have large sloping, ridged heads with slit ears, sharp teeth, 4-6 digits in each hands, and a forked tongue. It’s rare to see a reptoid like this though because they mostly look like HUMANS! They do this by two methods:

the use of cloaking technologies and careful selective breeding with humans to merge the reptoid “RNA” and human “DNA”.!

I can go into rich detail about reptoid biology, ecology, and history (WOULD LOVE TO) but I’ll keep it brief (see more at our blog www.michiganreptoids.wordpress.com ). Reptoids are most likely from star systems in the Sirius and Draco constellations. Their scouts visited earth millions of years ago, probably did some genetic swapping with late-Triassic lifeforms maybe even seeded the evolution of mammals, then hibernated until humans began to gain power (c.1500s). they began manipulating politics, wars, religions, and so on by manifesting as ghosts, gods, or folklores. Fast forward to the technological age: they used ancient knowledge and new human-technology to create cloaking devices and infiltrated our media/politics. THAT’S THE FIRST WAY I + MANY OTHERS DISCOVER REPOTIDS look closely at news/political figures on TVs you can see their cloaking mechanism failing due to EM interference (looks like pixilation on the screen but it’s actually them!) you can maybe see their lizardlike eyes too!

SHC and Reptoids

So yeah reptoids are major driving forces of our society but they also walk among us as recon scouts, posing as mere mortals. Thus the logic follows that THERE ARE REPTOIDS IN THE SHC. HERE’S why:

FIND OUT NEXT MONTH!

by Red Dog & Hamm

Nicknames: Meowcolm, Meow-Meow, Beeb-beeb, Chubby

Favorite activities: laying on seemingly uncomfortable objects, wrestling, fall-ing in love with Kya, entertaining guests Known for… the smelliest poops, most extroverted cat, being there when you need him, current Alpha cat.

Nicknames: Kya-girl, Kitten Favorite activities: Parkour, being sneaky, working her way up to Alpha Cat. Known for… finding the best hiding spots, being a spunky independent lady.

Nicknames: Huey-Dewey, Hoo-Doo Favorite Activities: Eating bread, sneaking out and coming back in a few hours Known for… the best morning cuddles, getting stuck in bags

This is Frank. He lives with me in Bower There is a lot I could say about him, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. Frank is a cockatiel with personality. He keeps me company when I do homework and provides hours of entertainment for our house cats. He talks. He sings. He dances. He has a special interest in feet. He is pretty great. - Nicole

SHC Pets

This is Huey P. Newton-Lowlor the cat (usually just goes by Huey). He is a one and a half year old cat model, my best friend in the whole world and my number one snuggle buddy. He enjoys long naps, eating loafs of bread and sneaking out of the house so he can go kiss his mysterious cat lover. Huey lives in Ferency house. He brings lots of love and cuteness frustration.Can’t wait for Huey to become more famousHuey gets a double feature because he has a large fan base.

The Pacific

The slow stroll.The smell of coffee, so strong, so safe.The first sip, andthe first glance.

The first glance.The Pacific.The slow wash of tide, in and out.The first shout,the jog along the shore.The first shock of cold, the rush and pour.Feet numbed, mind racing.The first flecks of gold, spinning in the water, tiny, unexpected dancers. Glitter, shimmer, spin.The mussels, secretive pinpricks of air revealed in smooth sand. Pop, pop, squirt.

A cold breeze.Do I dare?The first toe, cautiously dipped in the surf. You’re braver than you thought.The slow wade out,The taste of salt.

Linked hands, shared shivers and smiles.

The first big wave.The dive in, hands held, voices screaming and laughing.

You stand up.The water pours off your body.You all look at each other.The aftertaste of coffee and sea salt.Gritty sand between your toes. -Lisa Warner, Raft Hill

FINALS WEEK

Bower House Art Fair9p

Know Your RightsWksp 6-8p

1 Spring Semester Starts

Education Mtg Hedrick 715p

RCAH Theater