Lisa Poley, Will Stacy, and Nicholas Blacksburg, VA wstacy@vt.edu

Our family is composed of Will Stacy, myself (Lisa Poley) and our 5 month old son Nick. Will is an engineer working for a growing local fiberoptics manufacturer called Haleos and I am trained as an economist but am currently working somewhere between 10 and 100 hours a week for Shadowlake Village as our Project Liason and am studying under "grand-master Nick" on how to be a mom.

We actually joined this community only a few weeks after we were married and newly returned from the Peace Corps in Ecuador. I had read about the concept of cohousing in my heady, hippie, idealistic undergrad days and at the age of 20 decided that somehow I was going to be a part of creating a cohousing community. Living and working in a small town in Ecuador made both Will and me even more certain that a strong sense of community can contribute hugely to happiness and quality of life. In our town of San Pedro we would wake every day to the sounds of kids running around in the streets (rarely travelled by automobile) and would walk the dirt path to Sonja's store to buy our eggs for breakfast, passing Dona Elvia's and Dona Carmen's houses along the way, stopping to chat or receive a pat on the back or smile. The town had community events in the square and everyone would turn out (usually after having a bit too much cane liquor) and folks from age 5 to 75 would hang out, dance, chat and joke until the early morning hours. It was a wonderful way to live and Will and I often felt dread about returning to the states where the world so often seems like a colder, more impersonal, place. We learned from first hand experience that affluence alone is no guarantee of quality of life.

We both went to college at Virginia Tech in the late 80's, early 90's and loved Blacksburg and the surrounding area. We decided to return here for Will to get his masters degree while I found work with the University as a research associate. Soon after moving here we discovered the Cohousing project and joined to learn and participate, if not to actually commit. Somewhere along the way, leaving Blacksburg and this growing group of friends and neighbors became virtually unthinkable so we decided to find work that would allow us to stay. Our fellow cohousers have watched us go from newlyweds to parents and have been the source of tremendous support and wisdom along the way. We feel incredibly blessed that Nick will benefit from a "village" of people who will be like siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and just plain caring friends to him throughout the course of his life.

Some things that we love to do are hike, camp, canoe, bike, rock-climb, hang out gabbing with friends, and travel (and we are closet movie-aholics). Will loves to ski and invent strange things like passive solar heat blowers and bioluminescent lights and I love to read, paint and solve the world's problems around the kitchen table (when I can get willing conversation partners). My secret ambition is to moonlight as a lounge singer with the stage name Eva Lalone. Nick loves the sounds of running water and watching lights switch on and off.

We have a cat named Tom and a very old Nissan Sentra named alternatively "the brown hornet" or "lazarus" which has a light-up gearshift.

Updated: March 16, 2001