When I worked at a botanical garden, one of the long-term volunteers said that she had never met a gardener she didn't like. After twenty years in gardening, I've met a few bad apples, but I have never met a couchsurfer/couchsurfing host that I didn't like or learn from. It has been delightful to meet people from all over the world and to show them around Toledo and Boulder. I haven't gone out surfing much lately, but when I have, my hosts have quickly become friends. In the book Hard Times, Dickens criticizes the "philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter." Like Dickens, I oppose the process that has turned most of life into a bargain across a counter. The Couchsurfing community is a virtuous way to share space with kindness and gratitude. Our house has hosted couch surfers for years (without the benefit of this great website) - activists, gardeners, artists, cyclists, explorers, et cetera...

I like the sounds of the environment (especially cicadas), silence, John Cage, Detroit Techno (Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Derrick May etc), Meredith Monk, Ani Difranco, Ozomatli, Godspeed You Black Emperor! Miles Davis, Coltrane, Sixto Rodriguez, Odetta, Indre, underground hip hop, etc. From Couchsurfing: Miss Christine, Indre,...