Second World Kiosk & Village Commons Opening Gala

Name: Second World Kiosk & Village Commons Opening Gala
Start: 2025-08-15T18:00:00-07:00
Location: 5311 NE 15th Ave, Portland, OR 97211-4905, United States

Schedule

Fri, 15 Aug, 2025 at 06:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

5311 NE 15th Ave, Portland, OR 97211-4905, United States | Portland, OR

SECOND WORLD OPENING GALA
Next Friday, August 15 at 6pm
Simone Weil House Side Yard
6pm Mingle in the new Village Commons; Tour the Second World Kiosk!
6:30pm Dinner outside (mostly provided, potluck sides welcome) following an Assumption / Dormition Blessing of the Wheat and Fruits
7pm Words, acts, & ceremonies christening the Second World
In the beginning and up until this very week, our front yard was a formless void, fit only to be underfoot on the way to a sandwich from the free fridge. But no more. From the Second World Kiosk, newly planted in its center, emerges a garden of second nature, a new world from the shell of the old. We are speaking of a village commons by which one can step from the wilds of transactionalism into a little garden of commons infrastructure - common closet, pantry, etc, message board, lounging space - assembled to gently re-awaken the habits of life gracefully shared.
When you first see it, Second World Kiosk might strike you as a manned spacecraft from medieval Romania. Fittingly, inside there’s someone to keep kiosk and commons like you might an inn, or perhaps a revolutionary bookstore, if like Simone Weil you think that real revolution is L’ enracinement - a re-rooting.
And if you make a habit of coming, you might find yourself in a situation like this: Walking to the common closet to hang up some clothes, you peruse and find a salad in the common pantry gleaned from a local grocery store; you recognize someone in the kiosk and their jabbering makes you curious about the pamphlet on the relationship between what’s happening here and the principle of subsidiarity, or the “communion economy” credit union community hosted here. In any case, you sit with your free popcorn and get to notice others following their own one-thing-leads-to-another path into the Second World.
Additional Second World features coming soon:
- An ongoing discussion series attached to our Wednesday dinner.
- The launch of the Second World print newspaper!
- Village industry for the village commons - We’ll find ways to share things that feel like good community work in the yard (harvesting and processing wheat, sifting worm castings, repurposing textiles from the common closet, etc.)