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These informal reports, filed every couple weeks by Roshi (and e-mailed to interested members), are meant to provide snapshots of what's happening at Chapin Mill, plus the who, how, when, and where of it.
Now that the dust has settled on last week's Ralph Chapin Memorial Work Retreat, we're already looking to repeat it next August. It was another milestone event at Chapin Mill, the first training program involving sizeable numbers of people staying overnight and sitting (three times a day), eating, and working together through the week. It also came on the heels of the Mill House finally becoming available to us, with Ralph's
daughter Andris having just finished clearing it out. That provided sleeping space for several participants in the work retreat. Others bedded down in the other buildings south of the creek or in tents sprinkled over the volleyball field. And a great deal was accomplished on the new building and the grounds. All in all, it was just what Ralph had always longed to see Chapin Mill become: a bustling Zen training community.
Visitors to Chapin Mill will now see much progress on the road work. The new 6-inch water main, which will ultimately link us to Genesee and Monroe County water, is at least 80 percent completed. Its installation is an investment that will save us, over time, a considerable sum in what would otherwise have been higher insurance costs and expensive purification equipment. It required a tear-up of the roadway, but that had to be widened (and paved) anyway.
The kitchen is generating the most heat now, as kitchens tend to do. We are concentrating on finishing the drywall mudding and painting to keep up
with the gung-ho Kitchen Committee, which has chosen a supplier for the equipment and ordered changes to the electrical work as well as extra drains to comply with the health codes for commercial kitchens. The Sangha is blessed to have staff member Marlize Meyer on the Committee, leading the design work; in her native South Africa her work was -- designing kitchens! Was it mere coincidence that she landed here this summer??
On the eastern front -- i.e., the dormitory wing -- Mike Chrest and Angel Martinez have begun another big project: hanging bedroom doors. These are made of solid-core oak, which will make them much more soundproof than ordinary interior residential doors. The dormitory wing now also has a working bathroom, in the monitors' quarters, next to the main entrance, complete with shower/tub and sink. That brings to three the number of toilets in the new building. And thanks to Alan Temple, we now have a hot water system installed in the dormitory wing. It runs off of the hot water furnace rather than requiring a separate and more wasteful gas heating system of its own.
Mill House -- Ralph's old house in now officially ours, except for the third floor,
which will remain Andris' for life. The Sangha has responded generously to the plea for furniture, and we've begun hauling in donated beds, tables, sofas, and lamps, as well as some kitchen items to supplement the
appliances and lesser items that Andris kindly left for us. The second-floor living room will remain mostly empty for now in anticipation of its being used as a residents' zendo temporarily
when the flooring in the retreat center is installed and ready to be sanded and stained. There are no plans afoot for any real changes to the Mill House for the foreseeable future; we have a few other tasks at Chapin Mill that promise to keep us occupied. Meanwhile, Lou Kubicka will move into the Mill House, and we may put in an office adjacent to the kitchen, but otherwise we'll just have the second floor available for the occasional guest for now.
One other milestone: On August 13 Laimons Klava retired from Chapin Manufacturing, which had employed him as Caretaker of Chapin Mill for the past 40 years. For the past year Laimons has mostly been working for Andris in the Mill House, usually joining our own workers for lunch in the farmhouse. We hope to continue to see him often.
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