Category: Projects
-
The Garage That Was
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation The garage at 403 W 2nd St is gone now. Not entirely. The stone and concrete base is still there, along with the remarkably respectable pile of brick and stone we salvaged from the walls. But the little building that stood there for nearly a century has, after several weekends… Read more
-
Considerably Less Structure
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation Toni is asleep beside me in a blanket. Toni, for the record, is our heritage turkey poult. We still don’t know whether Toni is a she or a he, so for now Toni is simply Toni: small, delightfully curious, and completely convinced that I exist for warmth and occasional preening.… Read more
-
The Next Move
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation Last week, I wrote about games. About how much we seem to love them, whether we are watching football, playing cards, or inventing entirely unnecessary rules for ourselves just because apparently life is more fun that way. You may remember that I love games that let me build things. But… Read more
-
Finding Family
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation The Open House on June 20th went swimmingly, if I may say so myself! The weather was amazing, and folks from all around the community, from next-door neighbors to neighbors from two towns over, came to see what we’ve been up to. Some came to ask questions. Some came to… Read more
-
Footprints on the Ceiling
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation The funny thing about cleaning a house is that the more you clean, the dirtier everything seems. You finally get around to dusting the ceiling fans, and then you notice how grubby the windows look. You clean the windows and suddenly the baseboards seem questionable. That sort of thing. Maybe… Read more
-
Further Along
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation Do you know how absolutely, soul-quenchingly satisfying it is to see a system you designed and built work as intended? I mean, really. It’s ridiculously fulfilling, even when it’s something small and simple. Remember our driveway drainage issues? Well, our new drainage network got its first real test today. Torrential… Read more
-
Says Who??
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation Each week, when I sit down to figure out what I’m going to write about, I usually go back and read the last column or two and see where my thoughts want to go next. I got to the last sentence of last week’s article, though, and stopped. “Where a… Read more
-
It’s What Comes Next
By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation The demolition work inside Seneca Plaza’s smaller building is almost complete – and the transformation is already spectacular! The previously claustrophobic hodge-podge of internal dividing walls is gone, and what’s left is one bright, open, and airy blank slate. For the first time in a long time, you can actually… Read more
-
Progress isn’t always fast—but it’s still progress.
Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation Welcome to June! And… this isn’t the article I hoped I’d be writing right now. I hoped we’d have more definitive updates, more visible progress, more reasons to celebrate. But, after two decades of doing this work, I can’t say I’m surprised. Slow, sometimes excruciatingly painful progress is the norm, not… Read more
-
No, Don’t Do That! (The Joys of DIY Videography)
Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation “No, don’t do that. I don’t wanna do that. Stop that!”—actual quote from Rachel this week as we tried to film a simple video. Cut to: an accidental clip of the W 2nd St house project slowly spinning from sideways to upside down while both of us tried not to scream…… Read more
-
Pellere – We’re Investing in Communities
By Selina Pedi-Smith, Founder, Pellere Foundation Throughout March we’ve talked about investment – not just in the financial sense, but in what we choose to care about, build, and sustain for the future. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that the best investments take time. They start as ideas, sometimes ambitious, sometimes simple.… Read more
-
The Work of Change: Progress, Possibility, and What Comes Next
Selina Pedi-Smith with Isaias Gomez, Pellere Foundation When you’re deep in the cleanup of a long-neglected house, you learn to see progress in small victories—another wall stripped to the studs, another load of debris hauled away, a little light breaking through where there used to be none. For Isaias Gomez, who’s been hard at work… Read more