Twin Oaks: Ten Learnings

I’ve been through two three-week visitor programs at Twin Oaks and then guested there for nearly a month.  I’m almost always inspired by all that they’re doing.

Here’s ten things I think any community could learn from Twin Oaks:

1. The O & I Board This is a set of hanging clipboards which is one of the main methods of communication at Twin Oaks.  Someone puts out a proposal and other people comment on it.  Members read these faithfully to know what’s going on and these highly influence decision making.
2. Radical Sharing  If it can be shared, Twin Oaks will try to figure out a way to share it.  Income, cars, tools, workshops, musical instruments, clothing, bicycles, among other things.  
3. Public/Private Options   For clothing and bicycles at least, TO allows you to share or not share.  If it’s public, it’s maintained by the community.  If it’s private, you need to maintain it.
4. Separate Building for Visitor’s Program  At Acorn and Dancing Rabbit, I stayed in tents when I was visiting.  TO has a building (Aurora) just to house visitors, so all visitors stay together in comfortable quarters
5. Visitors as Small Living Group  The visitors all arrive together and are encouraged to see themselves as a little mini-community.  Many of the houses at Twin Oaks are thought of as ‘Small Living Groups’ (and a couple of the houses have two different SLGs), so TO suggests visitors form a temporary SLG while they are there as a way to experience community.
6. Lovely, Big Dining Hall  TO has a spacious central dining facility known as Zhankoye (or ZK).  They also use it for parties and celebrations.  It’s a focal point for connection at the community.  They try not to do too much business stuff there and have one table devoted to having fun conversations (also known as ‘the fun table’).
7. Diversity of Businesses Unlike Acorn (with its seed business) and Ganas (with their thrift shops) TO has a true diversity of ways they bring in income: hammocks, tofu, tempeh, indexing, ornamentals, wholesaling seeds for Acorn, and contracting services (and probably a few I’m not aware of).  They started off dependent on hammock but have really decided not to put all their eggs in one basket.
8. Music!  TO also supports member’s creativity.  As far as music goes, I mentioned that they have public instruments anyone can practice on.  They also have many bands and groups, including lots of rock bands, singing and choral groups, and (until recently) even had a community klezmer band.
9. Organized gardening  The community has many greenhouses and gardens and has regular gardening crews.  They grow a large percentage of their food.  Pam (the garden manager) has written a book on Sustainable Market Farming.
10. It’s the oldest, most successful secular egalitarian income sharing community in the US  I often start talking about TO by mentioning the myth that all those communes from the 60s are long gone.  Started in 1967, they have around 90 adult members and 15 children and a waiting list to get in.  I think they are an example of what a community can look like after nearly fifty years of evolving.

Next, ten learnings from Acorn.

Quote of the Day: “Bumper Sticker for an Income Sharing Community:  ‘My other car isn't mine either’ “ - From the Twin Oaks website

Ganas: Ten Learnings

This list was the start of this series.  I was thinking about what positive things you could learn from Ganas (after living here for a bit over six months) and without thinking too much about it I came up with ten things.  Here they are:

1)  Openness to Dealing with Conflict and experience doing it Conflict is going to happen at any community but I’m impressed with the fearlessness they have about dealing with it at Ganas.

2)  A No Blame Philosophy Ganas likes to think about problems and solutions to them, rather than trying to figure out who’s to blame in a situation

3)  Abiding by just four rules On the Ganas website they claim: “Since we deal with problems daily in open discussion, we are able to limit ourselves to only 4 rules:

1) Non-violence to people or things; 2) No free rides (everybody is required to work productively or pay their expenses); 3) No illegality (including illegal drugs); 4) This rule requires that people bring their complaints about the community or people in it to the group, where the problems can be discussed and resolved with the people involved. The reason for Rule 4 is that the community suffers when negativity is presented as non-negotiable fact in private or public venues.

People breaking one of these rules will be asked to leave.”

4)  Visitors Dinner  Every Friday night they invite visitors to come and talk about themselves and ask questions about Ganas

5)  Residents Dinner On Wednesday nights, Ganas holds a forum during dinner where people can talk about issues.  They often use a ‘question bowl’ where people write down a questions they have and one is pulled randomly from a bowl and discussed.

6)  Regular Birthday Celebrations  This is a major fun activity at Ganas.  When it’s your birthday, you can design the festivities and Ganas will try to accommodate.  (Limitations apply, naturally.)

7)   Food Chain  Every Tuesday night dinner is interrupted by this community building activity.  It makes me really feel part of a cooperative effort.  (For more on this, see my post Food Chain! on 4/27/15.)

8)  Courtyard/Gardens/Inter-house Layout  From the street, the Ganas buildings don’t stand out, but there are non-obvious walkways between them in the front and a big shared yard and gardens behind them.  It’s very well done.

9)  Businesses  The clothing, furniture, and book stores are all pretty different from one another and yet very similar.  As someone pointed out, these all focus on recycling as they sell donated and used items.  The businesses are part of the commercial area of the ‘North Shore’ of Staten Island, and so connect Ganas to the larger community.

10) Most successful community in NYC New York is the largest US city and while it has many little collectives and cooperative households in it, as far as I know this is the largest, longest running secular community in the city.  They’ve been here 35 years, have more than 70 folks, have a long waiting list, and seem to be going strong, all in a challenging urban environment.

Next, ten learnings from Twin Oaks.

Quote of the Day:  “Our purpose is to bring reason and emotion together in daily problem solving, in order to create our world, with love, the way we want it to be.” - from the Ganas website

Community Learnings, an Introduction

In my last post, Some 'Software' Tools, I wrote that I was focusing “on tools used at Twin Oaks, Acorn, Ganas, and Dancing Rabbit because these are all places  I've spent some time at and all of them have been running 20+ years and all  seem to be going strong.”  Having spent a bit of time at each of these places, I’ve been thinking of what I could learn from each of them.

Part of my thinking is that it’s easy to be critical and look at what’s wrong with places (and I could find fault with any one of these, or any place else for that matter) but I think it’s more important to look at what works.  Part of this is a follow up from my last series, again focusing on what works at successful communities as a source for people building communities to think about.  And one of my inspirations was something Paxus talked about long ago when he was considering starting a new community.  His idea was to use what he called Best Practices.  In a sense I started thinking about the Best Practices at each of these communities.

I started with the community I’m now at, Ganas.  I sat down one afternoon and without thinking hard I came up with a list of ten useful things I think any community could learn from Ganas.  Then I went on and listed ten things for Twin Oaks, and Acorn, and Dancing Rabbit.  

So my posts for the few weeks will be these lists.  Since they’re already written, I promise they will come quickly.  (Not my current weeks or months.)

Quote of the Day:  “The human condition is that we are individuals in relationship, and there are tensions between individuality and relatedness.”  - Jone Johnson Lewis

Some ‘Software’ Tools

In my last post, I talked about the need for communities to deal with the ‘software’ (people and relationships) as well as the hardware.  I still hear a lot of people who are planning community worrying about things like money and property more than how they will find and keep community members.  But I think that many communities never succeed because they don’t have the people power.  In my last post I also mentioned a community attempt that had all sorts of great stuff, but basically consisted of two people, a couple.  I personally know of at least two other situations just like this, where a ‘community’ with great ideas was basically a heterosexual couple and having difficulty growing beyond this.  My sense is that there are hundreds of situations like this, where there is either one person or a couple (and I know of at least one situation where it was a gay male couple).  Lots of them have great ideas and even the know-how to do the hardware.  But how do you go from ideas to community?

I’ve recently been reading a book on Twin Oaks, Living the Dream, by Ingrid Komar--one of three books on the community and the only one not written by Kat Kinkade (a founder).  While this isn’t my favorite book on the subject, I did notice that Ingrid Komar devoted a chapter to ‘The Many Support Systems of Twin Oaks’.  One reason that I think Twin Oaks (and other long term communities) do well is that they provide support for their members, ‘software tools’ so to speak.

Twin Oaks has lots of support systems, as does Acorn (especially their clearnesses but they also use transparency tools and parties and games) and Ganas (which focuses on ‘feedback learning’ but also has lots of birthday parties and the occasional NVC or transparency tools group) and Dancing Rabbit (where they talk about ‘inner sustainability’ and have women’s groups and men’s groups among other things).  I will focus on tools used at Twin Oaks, Acorn, Ganas, and Dancing Rabbit because these are all places I’ve spent some time at and all of them have been running 20+ years and all seem to be going strong.  And they all use some of these tools.

Here’s a list of some tools.  This list isn’t comprehensive but it should give folks who are interested in building communities some idea of what’s available to help with people and relationships. Take this as a beginning, and know that there’s lots more stuff available.  Remember: you can’t build community without people.  It sounds obvious, but I have seen so many places where folks were worried about everything else.  And then they wondered why no community was happening.  Maybe the most important thing is to support and encourage people and to have fun.  If you’re dour and intense and discouraging, I don’t think you’re going to succeed.

• Listening  I think this is the first and most important tool.  I believe even that if you only are able to listen well to each other, it will take you a long way.

• The Clearness Process  I’m referring to the Acorn version where people check in with each other to make sure that things are okay between them.  Simple but very useful.

• NonViolent Communication   It’s more than the four step process that many people learn first and it begins with the desire to really understand and connect with another.

• Re-evaluation Counseling This is a good basic tool for peer counseling, although the organization behind it is rather strict about how you do it.  There are also alternatives.

    

• Twelve Step Groups  Again, a peer approach, this one primarily useful with addiction and dependency issues, but really looking at the human condition.  (Like it or not we are all more powerless than we care to admit.)

    

• The Seven Habits  I’ve written in extensively in this blog about the Seven Habits, ending with the posts Synergize!, 9/15/11, and Sharpening the Saw,  2/21/12.

• Transparency Tools  This is a collection of techniques for getting to know people better.  It may simplistic, but often it’s more revealing than expected.

 

• ZEGG Forum This comes from the ZEGG community in Germany and is a process that has influenced many communities, including Ganas and the Network For a New Culture.

• Conflict Resolution Not a tool but a variety of processes to work through conflict, including mediation, NonViolent Communication, Restorative justice, and Restorative Circles

• Parties/Dances  Having fun is important.  Parties, dances, etc, let people relax and interact--often to great music.  Why would you join a community where no one has fun?

• Games  Another way to have fun.  Games played as a group--both competitive and cooperative--can help build community.  These can include team sports, board games, and role-playing games.  Ultimate frisbee is popular at Twin Oaks and Magic and Dungeons and Dragons are often played at Acorn.  I think the game Pandemic is a great community building game.

• Team Building  Games (as above) but also specific exercises and particularly the experience of working on a project together can be very community building.

• Women’s Groups/Men’s Groups  They have these at Dancing Rabbit and Twin Oaks and are helpful building safety as well as cohesion.

• Other Identity Groups  Particularly for social category that’s a minority within a community (queer folks, people of color, etc) having a group restricted to folks in that category can, again, build safety and cohesion.  You want to avoid an us vs them mentality but use the groups to build strength to work within the community.  Sometimes fishbowls are helpful to help others outside the group learn what it’s like for people within the group.

• Spiritual Practices These include prayer, meditation, chanting, Sufi dancing, Jewish and Pagan Rituals, Quaker and church meetings and services, and even humanist/agnostic gatherings.

• Discussions  Acorn has two meetings a week, the business meeting, and an evening discussion where they pick a single topic and discuss it but make no decisions.  Ganas has had some success with a Residents Dinner where folks ask questions and the group tries to answer it.  What’s important is that these aren’t business meetings.   People just get to hear each other talk about things they think are important.

• Intentional Community Organizations  There are a bunch of these including the FIC, FEC, the Cohousing Network, GEN, NASCO, and Point A.  I’ve also written about the phenomena of Communities of Communities, 6/9/12.  Because even communities need social networking.

• Group Works  A deck of cards with each card giving info on a different group process.  You can use them systematically to learn a whole lot of group techniques or randomly for inspiration.

As I said, this is far from all of the possibilities.  Perhaps it’s only a beginning.  But I’m hoping it’s a good place to start, particularly if you have a group focused on all the ‘hardware’ of community building and ignoring the ‘software’.  

Quote of the Day: “The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -- or a relationship.” - Deborah Tannen

‘Hardware’ vs ‘Software’

One night at Ganas, we had a discussion about sustainability and someone started talking about the difference between what he called the 'hardware' and the 'software'. (Obviously he was a computer person, but we all started using the terminology.)  The hardware, in this case, is all those cool eco-things: solar panels and gardens and greywater systems and ... (the list is very long).  The software is the people and relationships (and community).

Twin Oaks doesn't focus much on sustainability. They have a few solar panels and (as I mentioned) one half of one house that's off the grid. But when someone did an energy audit on them, they found that TO produces almost 80% less carbon emissions than what the average American produces--and that's because they share so much. On the other hand, I recently went on a tour of a 'community' that had tons of amazing 'eco-groovy' stuff. I was pretty impressed with all of it and learned about a bunch of things I didn't know. But I noticed that, other than the folks on the tour, there was no one there. Someone asked about how many full time members there were and the tour guide admitted there were two, him and his wife. Obviously they weren't doing well with the 'software'.

So communities that succeed, are communities that get the software right.

One of my interests in communities is as laboratories for social change.  In a sense, you could look at the whole Soviet Union as a social change experiment that demonstrated that communism doesn't work--at least if it's done from the top down. On the other hand, communism seems to be working very well at Twin Oaks (and Acorn, etc). Someone wrote a comment in an article about Twin Oaks (that they didn't seem to have read very well) that Twin Oaks wasn't going to work. But this kind of communism been working at TO for nearly fifty years
and they're going strong. It works there and Twin Oaks works.

I think of intentional communities as small enough experiments so that if something doesn't work, the community simply comes apart, people move on, hopefully we learn something, and few people are hurt. (Contrast that with what happened with the USSR.)

This is why I see community building as my social change work. I want to be part of creating working alternatives--to see what works and what doesn't and to create those simple systems (communities) out of which we can grow a new society.   But one thing I do know, getting the ‘software’ (the people and relationships) working is as important (if not more important) than getting the hardware to work.  The best designed community won’t work if it doesn’t attract and take care of people.

Next: Some ‘software’ tools.

Quote of the Day:  “Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.”  - Margaret Wheatley

Population Explosion

I’m currently temporarily staying at the Acorn Community, having just attended the Community Conference (my fourth in a row--see Update 1: The Twin Oaks Community Conference, 9/9/12, Circling Around to the Communities Conference,  9/5/13, and Where's Weirdo?, 9/22/14 for my previous adventures).  The big discussion here at Acorn is about children and families.  Acorn just got two new kids living here and there are a couple of other families applying.  Twin Oaks has had children and families for a while but there haven’t been a lot of children or families at Acorn up until now.  So this is a very alive issue at Acorn at the moment.

But the real population explosion that I want to blog about is about all the new communities starting up recently, many of which want to be income-sharing egalitarian communities.  There’s one in Vermont, one right on Staten Island (where I’m now living), one in Baltimore, one in DC, one in Richmond, one in Louisa (which would make Cambia the fifth egalitarian community in Louisa County--after Twin Oaks, Acorn, Living Energy Farm, and Sapling), and one folks are trying to start in southern Virginia near the Appalachian Trail (not even mentioned in the article Pax wrote).  Most of these communities had folks at the conference.

This is great news for the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (see Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08), which according to their current website,  only has six member communities and three Communities-in-Dialogue.  (Two of them, Sapling and The Mothership, also had representatives at the conference.  Last year they were brand-new--now they’ve been upstaged by all these new forming communities.)

So this is an exciting time for the egalitarian communities movement  I’ll be interested to see where all of this new community building energy goes.  Even if only a little over half of the newly starting communities make it, that would still be four new communities for the FEC.  And I still want to work on growing another one in New York, and maybe some in other places (like the Boston area) as well.  Maybe I’ll be part of one of the new ones next year.

Quote of the Day:  “If a community is seeking FEC membership …  that community may apply for Community-in-Dialogue (CID) status. For a community to be accepted as a CID, the Assembly need only be convinced that the community is actively working toward meeting the membership criteria, and that there exists a mutual desire for cooperation between the community and the FEC.

“...by becoming a member of the FEC, your community joins a group of like minded yet diverse communities that work together to try to make a better world.” - from the FEC website

Quoth the Raven

I know.  I’ve been neglecting this blog.

I’ve been focusing on other things, some useful (doing work here at the Ganas community and work on the Point A project for example) and some sort of useful (reading even more about chemistry and biology) and some not so useful (reading webcomics like Girl Genius, Skin Horse, and the awesome Kimchi Cuddles).  I've also been keeping my other blog (Lagoon Commune) going but I’m about to put that on hiatus for a while (or perhaps indefinitely) both because of low readership and because I want to focus on other things--like writing for this blog.

Meanwhile, my name has been mutating.  While I’m still officially MoonRaven, I’ve been going more and more simply by Raven.  It sounds a little less outrageous--at least to my ears.  (A friend informed me today that Raven still sounds weird.)

All in all, life is good.  I’m happy (I think of that as a decision), I’m enjoying life here, and I’m doing the work I want to be doing.  What more could I ask for?

Quote of the Day: "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." - Emily Dickinson