(click for larger view)The genre is "church retreat center" given how AFSC files taxes, plus we've got a bona fide Quaker Lodge overlooking the pounding surf (on foggy days, that's more just a sound effect).
A FED is a Fly's Eye Dome but that's just an unbranded generic name for it. Our sponsors aren't bound to call 'em that.
From my email outbox:
My Project Earthala model follows the Breitenbush model i.e. a core group or community runs the operation, with a large turnover population of tourists, who book facilities for retreats of various kinds, trainings.Earthala is more of a back office type place (one of several), helping Friends and their coworkers get up to speed for duty elsewhere in many cases.
We specialize in trainings featuring the new toyz or technologies associated with living this way. Extreme Remote Livingry or XRL I sometimes call it, following a pattern of having an X when doing eXperimental prototyping.
Once you know the ropes, you'll expect redeployment in some civilian scenario focused on disaster relief, health care, truce monitoring, habitat studies, diplomacy and ethnography, other training.
My brand of Quaker isn't much into missionary work though. People who wish to join us will find a way open, but we're hardly into the art of the hard sell. We keep our Faith & Practice on-line in hypertext, for those wishing to familiarize themselves with our ways.
Project Earthala is currently near future science fiction, on the drawing boards. Making it real will require more ambient, televised awareness of design science, alternative curricula. I focus on Junior Friends as a potentially interested demographic, although a few older adults still have the capacity to absorb new information (most are much better at suppressing it, once vested in whatever mindset).
Note: I envision the ATV garage containing mostly electric editions, like for sale here on Sandy. Also, there'd be some times during M4W & M4B when a lot of whiny little engines wouldn't be a welcome noise (another reason we like electric more).
Rocky and I joked at the meeting how he'd inadvertently booked our Quaker group into that ATV camp, and we sat around doing M4W amidst motorized mayhem (hey, it's not like there wasn't fun stuff to look at, not sorry we tried it, a formative experience even).
Historical note: my CamelCase title alludes to a very popular toy in its day, although practically no one (extremely few) had the level of operational skill shown below:
