Acorn, Again

I just got back from spending three weeks at the Acorn Community in Virginia.   Faithful readers (if I have any left) might remember that I began my community-seeking travels there back in September of 2012, a year and a half ago.  (See my posts entitled Update 2: The Acorn Community, 9/14/12, and Update 3: Life on the Farm, 9/23/12.)  At that time I went exploring the possibility of joining Acorn as a member.  This time I went for completely different reasons.

I'm currently involved with a group exploring building a community in the Hudson Valley of New York (at some point I will blog about this--hopefully when it's clearer what we are doing), and went to Acorn for several reasons.

The first is that I'd like to see our community become part of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities.  (I wrote a little bit about the FEC in my post on Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08--basically these are secular income-sharing communities.)  The FEC was having its Assembly (a gathering of member communities) at Acorn this year and I came as an unofficial representative of our group.  (Unofficial because, although I'm not the only one in our group that hopes we can eventually be part of the FEC, we haven't come to any agreement about what kind of community we will be.)

Full FEC members  prior to this meeting, were Acorn, Twin Oaks (I've written a bunch about TO, including  Real Models 1:Twin Oaks, 9/30/10, Update 6: Life at Twin Oaks, 12/4/12, and Snow, Darkness, and Fire, 3/13/13), East Wind (in southern Missouri--I've never visited there but I hear interesting stories about them), Sandhill (in northern Missouri, I posted on them as Sandhill Farm, 6/8/13), The Midden (an urban community in Columbus, Ohio that I've never visited but would like to someday), and the Emma Goldman Finishing School (in Seattle, Washington).  All of these communities sent delegates except Emma Goldman.

There were also delegates from a bunch of other communities that were either Communities in Dialogue (and wanting to be full members) or communities wanting to be Communities in Dialogue.  These included Living Energy Farm (Which I wrote about as Update 7: Living Energy Farm, 12/8/12), the Possibility Alliance (I wrote about them in The Possibility Alliance, 6/11/13), Sapling (a new community--an offshoot from Acorn--just starting in Louisa county, and located halfway between Acorn and Twin Oaks), and CRIChouse (a community in California).  There were also some presentations from a project that a couple of folks at Acorn are doing to create urban communes along the East Coast, a project that they're calling 'Point A'.  (I briefly alluded to this in my last post, A Long Pause, where I mentioned getting into dialog with someone wanting "to create urban activist communities."  This was second reason I was at Acorn.)

Some highlights from the few sessions that I attended is that Living Energy Farm is now a full member, and Sapling, CRIChouse, and the Possibility Alliance are all now Communities in Dialogue.  Unfortunately, the FEC has not (as of this writing) updated their website to reflect all these changes. Hopefully this will change soon.  I'm personally excited that the FEC is growing--hopefully, in a few years, it may include the community I'm part of starting, and maybe a few urban communes coming out of Point A as well. (Point A folks are hoping to have their first communities up in running some time in 2015.)

Some of my other reasons for being at Acorn were to catch up with some of what was going on down in Louisa county (I got to find out more about Sapling and the current state of Living Energy Farm, for example),  to see how things were going at Acorn itself (after two major fires in the last year--see my posts on Snow, Darkness, and Fire, 3/13/13, and Issues in Community: Recruitment, 11/11/13, for a bit about these--and some major new construction, I wanted to see how they were doing), getting a hit of community living in a well functioning community, and learning some skills about rural living from living in a rural community.

I'm pleased that Acorn is doing well.  The building I stayed in and worked in didn't exist the last time last time I was there.  It's called the Seed Palace and, although it isn't finished, it's in pretty good shape.  Heartwood, site of the arson attempt, was in pretty good shape as well.  It, too, is still a construction zone, but they were finishing rebuilding the kitchen and were just starting to use it while I was there.  (The steel building, site of the first fire, was apparently only cleaned out and reused, even though it's not in very good shape.  It's mostly used for storage and what I heard is that it leaks but they have simply thrown tarps over stuff stored in the leaky areas.)

As for my plans to do things, I had been sick before I arrived and discovered that the more I did, the sicker I got.  Although I was able to help briefly with the goats there and got to feed a baby calf, mostly I worked with the seeds.  Acorn runs a major seed business (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange) and I ended up doing a lot seed work--packing seeds, picking seeds, counting seeds, etc.  It wasn't very strenuous work, so that's how I ended up spending lots of my time there.

Overall, I'm glad I went.  I talked with a bunch of folks there about our community endeavor and got some good feedback.  I was also able to do some outreach, posting a flyer at Acorn, and sending flyers to be posted at Twin Oaks, Sandhill, East Wind, and the Possibility Alliance.  And it was good to get another taste of well functioning community.


Quote of the Day: "Being a thriving anarchist community (and consequently not having any bosses or supervisors) we are necessarily committed to a culture of personal responsibility; effective and healthy communication; and being serious about getting done what needs to get done on our farm. We are fairly hard-working ... We enjoy the hard work because it is our livelihood (that which provides us with direct connection to the healthy, cruelty & exploitation free food that we grow and nurture; as well as our shelter which we build), rather than a job which has no meaningful connection to that which we truly value in life and only provides money to buy things which we have no insight into or connection to.  Its the difference between making a life and making a living."  - from the Acorn website

A Long Pause

Yeah, it's been a while.  My last post was on the Winter Solstice, more than a month ago.  While I've certainly had longer pauses than that in my blog, this post is to let you know the pause is going to continue--perhaps indefinitely.

I'm currently trying to do much of what I've been writing about.  I'm in a period of 're-skilling'--learning about making sauerkraut, and sharpening knives and tools, and how to tie various kinds of knots, as well as studying how to grow mushrooms and take care of animals.  I'm learning farm skills--because I'm working with a bunch of folks to create a farm-based, rural, income-sharing community--one focused on being restorative, regenerative, and resilient. 

For folks who've followed me for a long time, this is where I want to put my interest in SECS--see my post on SECS (9/24/08), and posts on Simplicity (9/24/08), Equality (9/30/08), Communities and Cooperatives (10/6/08), and Sustainability (10/14/08)--into action.  Here's a chance to live what I've been talking about all through this blog: community, sharing, supporting people, growing food, survival skills, living beyond fossil fuels, etc.  I've talked about community as a microcosm of the social change we need to see happen and now I'm working to create that microcosm. 

In addition, I've also gotten into a dialog with someone who wants to create urban activist communities.  As I've also been saying since the beginning of this blog, there isn't one right way to do this.  My final Word for the Day in 2008 was  "Dissensus" a term I've picked up from John Michael Greer, another way of saying that when the future isn't clear, we need to pursue a lot of different paths.  We need to agree to disagree.

And, in fact, there isn't really any disagreement here.  We need to create rural and urban communities, communes and co-op houses and cohousing and ecovillages, family enterprises and tiny houses and co-op businesses and networks of co-ops and communities--many, many different alternatives all focused on creating a new world, one that meets people's needs and works with nature, one that build a future that is not only simple, egalitarian, communal, and sustainable, but restorative, regenerative, and resilient, one infused with love, compassion, joy, and serenity, and one built using love, planning, work, flexibility, creativity, and persistence. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get to work on doing just that.  Hopefully I'll be back with a progress report.


Quote of the Day:  "There's no single answer that will solve all our future problems.  There's no magic bullet.  Instead there are thousands of answers--at least.  You can be one of them if you choose to be." - Octavia Butler

Spreading the Light

I've blogged each year on the winter solstice since I started this blog, five and a half years ago.  This is the shortest day of the year.  From here the nights get shorter and the days grow longer and light returns to the northern hemisphere.

As people who follow my blog know, I also blog at the end of October/start of November (aka Samhain) about the blessings of darkness.  Light also has its blessings.  We need light in order to see, we need light in order to find our way. 

There are treasures in that darkness, but we often need light in order to find them.  At this time of the year, it's the small lights that count: candles and flashlights and moonlight and starlight.  Given how tough it is to find our way at this time in our world, each of us can be a bit of that light, helping others to find their way and helping to find what is hidden in the fertile darkness around us.

I write this, of course, from my own challenge of finding my way and helping others find theirs.  I'm a bit lost at the moment.  I know where I want to go and I'm not sure how to get there.  But this is the season of wandering.  With the light returning, hopefully the way will become clearer.


Quote of the Day:  "There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."  - Edith Wharton




Preparation

I grew up a good Catholic boy. This season was called Advent--it was a time of preparation for Christmas.  We lit candles on an Advent wreath every night and marked the time until Christ's birth.

I'm no longer Catholic, or Christian.  I'm a funny mix of Agnostic, Pagan, Buddhist, and Humanist--attracted to Sufi dancing and Quaker meetings and Taoist writings, very influenced by my Jewish friends and my Catholic upbringing.  I am a devotee of love, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. And try to be in touch with the Earth and the Seasons.  I tend to follow a Pagan/Catholic calendar.  (Not as strange a mix as it might seem given that a lot of the Catholic feasts are built on Pagan festivities.)  I often find myself naturally in sync with this nature based calendar.

And right now is a period of preparation for me.  Not for Christmas, but for a community that might or might not happen.

I've recently been studying group process, carpentry, weatherizing, greywater systems, plumbing, systems theory, anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, first aid, and general health stuff.  What ties all these things together is I see that they might be useful when trying to put together an intentional community.  I'm thinking a lot about infrastructure.  What systems will we need to have in place to be able to take care of everyone and the community run well?  I've recently gone on a book buying binge, buying books on systems thinking, humanure, greywater, a resilient farm in Vermont, and an innovative ecovillage in Columbia.

The key here is preparation.  I feel helpless at times in the process of actually acquiring a place, but the one thing that I can do is prepare myself.  And this is the season to do it.


Quote of the Day: "The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before... What is possible is to not see it, to miss it... So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.” - Jan Richardson

Moneyless

My friend Susan has been urging me for a while to read the book The Moneyless Man.  She read it during her year of reading books about living a year of...  In The Moneyless Man, Mark Boyle decides to live for a year without using money.

What got me to read it was when Susan sent me information on Mark Boyle's new book, The Moneyless Manifesto. I immediately checked to see if I could get it through the library system and found that none of the libraries in my area have it.  They did, however, have The Moneyless Man and I requested it and read it.

The first chapter ('Why Moneyless?') outlines the reasons for going without money, including peak oil (see my post on Peak Oil, 7/18/08, for more information about that) and climate change (which is hard to avoid reading about at this point), money encouraging competition rather than cooperation, and 'money replacing community as security'.  This is the theoretical chapter.  He follows this with a chapter on 'The Rule of Engagement' where he outlines the rules he was going to live by over the year.  The rest of the book tells of his life and adventures living without money.

The book ends with the question of whether this is a year-long experiment or whether Mark Boyle will continue living this way indefinitely.  He does talk about his decision and anyone reading the book won't be surprised by it.

One of the things that intrigues me is that the author studied economics and business in college and then managed organic food companies in the United Kingdom for six years.  (Mark Boyle is Irish and the event in the book all take place in Ireland and England.)  It was during a discussion with a friend that he realized that many of the major world issues we all connected by one thread--our disconnection from what we consume--and money is the main tool to fuel that disconnection.  He goes on to point out all the marketing designed to encourage us to use money and consume.

This book encourages what I've been thinking for a while, that money is not a necessity in our lives--in fact, we would be better off without it.  For some of my ideas about what we do need, check out my series on 'Needs' (which I still think is perhaps the most important things I've written in this blog).  The series starts with Looking at Needs, 5/4/09, and ends with Our Needs: One Last Look, 9/19/09.  Perhaps the most important post in there, from the standpoint of living without money is Protection from Poverty, 6/18/09.  I may write more about going beyond economics at some point in the future.

Interestingly enough the whole of the book The Moneyless Manifesto is available to read (for free) online.  It's worth checking out.


Quote of the Day:  "Humans are not fundamentally destructive; I know of very few people who want to cause suffering.  But most of us don't have the faintest idea that our daily shopping habits are so destructive. ...
"... I wanted to find out what enabled this extreme disconnection from what we consume.  The answer was, in the end, quite simple.  The moment the tool we called 'money' came into existence, everything changed." - Mark Boyle

Issues in Community: Recruitment

One of the people at the co-op where I'm currently staying decided to sublet his room while he was away.  Since the other housemates would have to deal with whoever sublet, we interviewed almost a dozen people.  A few of them we decided quickly weren't appropriate.  With the others we ranked them and it turned out different people here had very different preferences.  We had a hard time coming to agreement about what we wanted.  And in the end, it didn't matter.  Most of our top choices, chose somewhere else.  It was less about who we wanted than who wanted us.

Recruitment is a tricky issue.  On one hand, communities need people and want good folks to live there, people who believe in what the community believes in and supports what the community supports.  On the other hand, interviewing people is a pain.  It takes a lot of time and can be very disruptive to the community.  In co-ops like the one I'm in, prospective members get an hour or two each, and sometimes are asked to come back for a second (or very occasionally even a third) interview before we make a decision.  It's a lot like job interviews.  At one point one of my housemates started yelling, "That's it.  No more people.  No more interviews." 

Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Dancing Rabbit all have three week visiting programs, the chief function of is to evaluate prospective members.  (Over the last year I used these programs to visit all of them and, in the cases of Twin Oaks--which I did the visiting programs twice--and Dancing Rabbit, I was very clear with them that I wasn't applying for membership--so you don't have to want to be a member to do the programs.  See my post Nine Communities, Many Thoughts, 7/1/13, for a wrap up on my community visits.)  Having someone visit for three weeks gives you a much better idea of a person than even several multi-hour interviews.  You actually get to live with them for three weeks.  A person can put on a good performance for a few hours, it's a lot harder for a few weeks.

But even three week visits have risks.  Acorn just experienced a nasty fire deliberately set by a visitor who had been asked to leave.  And communities have accepted people who seemed nice but had lied to them and put on a good show for the full three weeks and later caused trouble.   (Or in some cases, the person changed over time.)

One person at the co-op I'm currently at didn't want to be part of the latest decision making process because he had been enthusiastic about two previous members when they were being interviewed, and both of them turned out to be difficult people to live with.

And that's the hard part of recruitment.  There really isn't any way to tell until you've lived with someone a long while, but if you don't do recruitment, you won't have people to live in your community.


Quote of the Day:  "I saw a larger and larger part of the community sitting around on the front steps of the dining hall smoking cigarettes and drinking their wake-up coffee at 11 in the morning, and heard them ridicule as 'workaholics' the people who made the money and kept the organization together.  It looked possible, even probable, that this once-promising community would be undermined and destroyed by it's own people. ...
"I knew this phenomenon was not happening at Twin Oaks, and the difference seemed to be that Twin Oaks selected its members with some care." - Kat Kinkade

Tools for Connection

Whether you're talking about social change or intentional community, you're talking about dealing with people.  Sometimes connecting with another person is easy.  Sometimes it's not.  Almost always it's interesting.

I've recently come across a couple of tools to help deepen that connection.  I've already blogged about a few connection tools: Nonviolent Communication (11/25/10), Stephen Covey's 'Habit' of 'Seeking First to Understand' (see my post Seek to Understand, 11/11/10), and just plain being willing to listen (see Listening to Each Other, 6/7/10).  Here's two more, both oriented toward building connection in a group context.

The first is something developed by Paxus who is at Twin Oaks and Acorn.  It's called Transparency Tools and consists of a variety of exercises designed to help people to share intimate information about themselves with each other and explore their histories and emotions,  particularly within a 'transparency group' (the link gives more information about these groups as well as the tools themselves).  I've done some of these exercises at the last couple of Communities Conferences (see my posts entitled Update 1: The Twin Oaks Community Conference, 9/9/12, and  Circling Around to the Communities Conference,  9/5/13) and found them pretty helpful.  They're particularly good for people who know each other but want to deepen their connection by learning more about each other.  (Note:  Paxus just blogged on the dangers of doing Transparency work with the wrong people in a post he captioned 'Winos with Power Tools'. )

The other one is, surprisingly, a deck of cards--but a deck oriented toward understanding groups and group processes.  Its called group works and each card is a description of a useful tool for groups.  In some ways it's sort of a book about how to use groups to increase connection and create better group experiences, except it's in card form.  The whole deck is available on the internet (via a free download) but having them in my hands feels more satisfying to me. (You can buy the deck from the same website, which also has longer descriptions for some cards and lists of resources for many topics.)  There are 91 cards with topics ranging from Setting Intention to Trust[ing] the Wisdom of the Group. I'm currently making my way through the deck, a few cards at a time, trying to learn them better.  If you do any work with groups (which again can include intentional communities and social change work), this deck might be worth checking out, at least online.


Quote of the Day:  "How can you reconnect with your love for one another? What will nourish your sense of unity, in a way that welcomes the individual while honoring the long-term well-being of the community?" - Tree Bressen (catalyst for the group works deck)