Mark Mooney & Meg Geiss-Mooney – Dome 5
Dome 5 – I moved into Dome 5 In summer 72. Larry Brooks and I lived there until he was able to move to Dome 11. I borrowed a van, drove down to Costa Mesa and brought Meg to our new home. Meg came to my 22nd birthday party at Beckett-Hughes, and never went home. I remember that the loft wasn’t quite finished, and the ladder was precarious. We filled in the loft area, moved our waterbed up and build a snazzy new ladder that had a trap door cover for the loft. Soon after that the dogs, Herrmann and Ajax figured out how to climb the ladder. Going down was 3rd step, 5th step, floor…
There were no trees to speak of at that time and the grounds could get pretty muddy when it rained. We had a plywood walkway to get us from the front door to dry ground for the first year.
Meg and I got married in ’76 in Costa Mesa. With a lot of help from my Mom and Dad, we had a dome wedding party and served lasagne for all the domies.
The shape and construction of the domes set up an interesting sound phenomenon. Certain domes were “tuned” to other domes. At the right volume on the right evening, we could hear the folks from Dome (
6?) as if we had ghosts in the house.
The domes got hot on a summer’s day. They were originally fit with a corn crib type ventilator at the top of the dome. I finally went down to the hardware store and bought an aluminum spinning ventilator for the top of dome 5. It would spin from the heat leaving the dome, and with any breeze at all the wind would create a vacuum at the top of the dome, pulling the heat out the top. Soon, there was a turbine ventilator on the top of every dome! We wondered at first if we’d need to do something to keep the rain out, but it turned out that the spinning motion kept things dry.
Those domes that were originally created with darker colors were also much warmer than the lighter color domes.
We painted dome 5 with automotive lacquer, Chrysler refrigerator white. It was difficult to apply with rollers and the off gassing that occurred while we painted her made the folks hanging around on the dome with a roller dizzy.
It turned out that gloss finish housepaint worked just as well and was less of a problem to work with.
We tied a rope around the ventilator on the roof and put one person on top with a roller tray and the paint. The other person had their own rope and was hanging further down. The top person would fill the roller and then stick it to the wet roller to the side of the dome, handle down. When they let it go, it stayed connected to the dome surface and came slowly down to the painter on the rope. They would spread the paint until the roller was drying out and then toss it back to the person on top.
U.C. Davis has a ‘junk yard’ full of wild and weird unused hardware and parts. Once we found this place we visited often. One of the finds from the ‘junk yard’ was these big clear polycarbonate half domes. I remember them as being around 20 inches in diameter.
We brought as many of them as they had back to Baggins End and you will see them sticking out of the side of several of the domes. Additional light as well as a way to see around the outside of your dome, which the windows do not provide.
Living at the Domes put one in a community of creative and self-sufficient individuals who worked together and enjoyed each other’s company, while having the joy and privacy of living in your own spaced and cooking your own meals. There was a feeling of ownership and stewardship attached to being a dome resident. We paid rent, but those domes were ours.
We learned a lot about working the U.C. system to get the things we needed without getting the attention that we definitely didn’t need. I remember going to meet with folks on campus to make a request for this or that. We’d come in and sit down at the office in question. The secretary would as if we had an appointment. We’d smile sweetly and say: “No, but I brought my lunch.”
Dome meetings were held on a monthly basis. We’d all crowd into a different dome for each meeting. Meetings were mandatory. People who wanted to get on the Domes waiting list had to attend several meetings. It really was self-governance at it’s best. At the age of 71, I’ve been to a lot of meetings. These were some of the good ones.
1978? – Moved to Sonoma County
Settled in Petaluma, Ca. With much help from Meg, I went back to school and got a Masters in Finance. Went to work for an interdealer broker called Garvin Guybutler. Offices in San Francisco, New York, London etc. Realized that all the information that we were writing on a trio of 40 foot white boards every day was being erased every evening. Started collecting the trading info and pricing and went to work generating a feed of financial information from our worldwide sources. Sold the feed to Reuters, Knight Ritter and Bloomberg. Our little group within the big group was Garvin Information Systems. Our original deal was to keep half of what we sold…. This worked until we signed the afore mentioned primary dealers at which time their lawyers proved that they were bigger than ours, and we continued, but at a much smaller portion of the pie… Spent several days a month in New York at one of our corporate apartments in Battery Park City. I had already left the business when 911 occurred but found out that the front doors to my apartment building had been blocked by a net engine on the day.
Our daughter, Nancie was born and we bcame parents. This was working out quite well, so we decided to have more children. Twins! Laura and Elizabeth. Nancie is a scientist for Thermo Fishe. Laura is a premiere baker in Healdsburg.
Liz and Jesse live in New York. He designs, builds and animates armor for Avalanche. She is a free lance photo retoucher who’s work is regularly seen in national magazines.
Meg found Textle Conservation during an internship at a museum in Sacramento. It was love at first site and she is still practing here in Springfield.
1998- Started Moonware Design,LLC a web development company. Still operating today.
2022 – Bought a house in Springfield, OR. Daughter Nancie and Nate had preceeded us, as it is still possible for a young couple to buy a house here. We followed, figuring that if we were going to be a burden to our children, at lease we would be close….
