Hello, potential Magician!
We’re Magic, 15-20 people living together with the watchwords “science” and “love”. We’re aiming to become, and to assist each other in becoming better at both. We’re spiritual without dogma, purposeful and playful, teens to eighties, typically from a half-dozen countries, and joined in applying ecology to live and die well and yo contribute to others’ doing so.
Some of us work part- or full-time with Magic, the public service organization that sponsors our community, in exchange for room and partial board, while others work, study, or are otherwise engaged elsewhere and pay a money fee. All of us devote six hours per week to household chores and community food service. As some of us depart over the coming months for the next job, degree program, or other adventure, we’ll gain capacity to integrate additional people who want to learn, serve, and enjoy with us.
Our three houses on a half-acre in a quiet Palo Alto neighborhood of tree-lined streets are a few blocks from Stanford University, stores and restaurants, and bus and rail transit. We’re three easily bikeable miles from an entry point to tens of thousands of acres of protected, publicly accessible open space with hundreds of miles of trails.
You can learn more about us as people, about our buildings and grounds, and about the neighbors, climate, and landscape of our locale from our Communities Directory listing. For more about the ideas on which we found Magic, current and past public service projects, and a larger Magic circle that extends beyond the residential community, please visit our website.
If you’re interested in work exchange, we’re specifically seeking:
- handypeople (painting and finishing, appliance repair, woodworking, tilework …)
- gardeners (maintaining fruit trees, pollinator plants, flowering vines …),
- IT people (social media, equipment maintenance, website development and maintenance, web publishing …), and
- interns who will combine a changing mixture of work responsibilities with learning how to be healthier, a better cooperator, and a better Earth steward by applying valuescience, using a syllabus we developed during forty years of teaching at Stanford.
What we offer
- a stimulating and shifting collection of responsible, convivial residents and Magic affiliates from around the nation and the world who are eager to share our diverse skills and perspectives and to make good memories with new friends and experiences
- a clean and orderly home environment
- exclusive use of a simple, naturally-lighted, comfortable, private room
- shared access to our many common facilities
- a healthful vegetarian dinner every night and fruit from our landscape
- full complimentary access to ongoing classes and workshops
- support in fulfilling academic, career, and personal development goals that overlap with Magic’s underlying philosophy and ongoing work from community members who’ve been here 10-50 years
- opportunities to volunteer with projects to improve individual and population health, foster cooperation at every level from household to globe, protect and regenerate ecosystem integrity, and evolve a consilient, science-based global culture that can be a basis for successful human adaptation
- urban amenities, Stanford University, and bus and rail transit within a ten-minute walk
- entry points to extensive mountain and bayfront open spaces within an easy half-hour bike ride
What we ask
- maturity, responsibility, peaceful communication, commitment to learning and to common good
- each week
- attend at least two community dinners each week for at least one-half hour between 7pm and 8pm
- contribute six hours of heartfelt labor to the community
- each month
- pay a residential fee of $1,300-$2,000 (depends upon the private space allocated to your exclusive use), or
- contribute 40-60 hours (depends upon the private space allocated to your exclusive use and your effectiveness in working) beyond the 6 hours each resident contributes, or
- contribute a mix of money and labor equivalent to the all-money and all-labor alternatives.
If you’ve read this far, want to explore next steps, and have yet to read our directory listing and visit our website, please do these things. Once you have, if you still think what we offer and ask may be opportunity for you to learn, serve, and enjoy making Magic, please contact us through either our website or our directory listing.
