Community as a Living Organism

At one of the visitor’s nights here, a young man was asking for details on how Ganas functioned.  He was curious about whether it could be replicated.

Earlier a few people were talking about the differences between Twin Oaks and Ganas.  After the visitor made the remark about replicating Ganas, I pointed out that one of the similarities between Twin Oaks and Ganas is that each is a unique community, in many ways different from just about any other community out there--and, naturally, different from each other.  And that was because each of them had changed significantly to be what they are.  Neither is what they were planned to be, each is what they grew to be.

People have mentioned in meetings that I’ve been in that Ganas was not even intended as a community.  It started as a group of people who were experimenting with a process (‘Feedback Learning’) and began living together in order to do this together.  It was only when a visitor remarked that they were an intentional community that Ganas took on this identity.

Twin Oaks was started as an attempt to replicate the fictional community described in BF Skinner’s novel Walden Two.  While a sharp eyed student of psychology could probably spot a few behavioral components to Twin Oaks even now, I doubt that Skinner would want to claim it if he was alive and few Twin Oakers think of themselves as behaviorist.  It’s more what you’d get if you took the behavioral paradise and turned it over to the care of a bunch of new age hippies and then let it mellow for nearly fifty years.

Both Mildred Gordon and Kat Kinkade (the more famous founders of Ganas and Twin Oaks, respectively) left the communities that they helped start, were often critical of what they became, and literally returned to their communities to die.  (Kat Kinkade was buried at TO.  Mildred Gordon died this past January and there was a memorial held for her in Manhattan in February.)

The point is that the communities didn’t turn out the way the founders thought they would.  Each community (and I think this is true of many other communities--Sandhill, Acorn, Dancing Rabbit, East Wind, The Farm, etc, etc) evolved and grew in its own fashion, in ways that the founders didn’t anticipate or even want.  And I think that this is what healthy communities do.  They develop a life of their own.

This is why mature communities aren’t replicable.  They have grown to be what they are.  No one would design a community like Twin Oaks or Ganas, just as they weren’t designed to be what they are.  They grew into it.  They evolved.

And this is important to remember.  Communities have life cycles, the way that people do and even the way that ant colonies do.  As a community matures, it changes.  It’s got to change.  If a community doesn’t change, it dies.

Quote of the Day:  “...life ... repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.” - Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan

Food Chain!

One of the many cool things that they do at Ganas is to organize a chain of people to get stuff up from the truck on the street that they use to get food to the pantry (or other places) in the houses way above.  (Since Ganas is on a hillside, you need to go up a long flight of stairs to get from the street to the houses.)  It’s sort of like one of those old fashioned bucket brigades.

Someone yells, “Food chain!” at dinner and anyone who feels strong and abled bodied goes out and helps.  Groceries are passed from one person to the next on their way to the pantry.  

I was watching the behavior of the chain with a systems theorist’s eye.  It was amusing seeing the people bunch up on one end and then on the other.  The whole thing reminded me of a slinky stretching back and forth in waves.

Fortunately, most folks are in a good mood while doing it and it really does make what could be a difficult task fairly easy and fun.  As a result, the whole thing works very well.  And then it’s done before you know it--and folks go back to dinner.  And all the food is now up the hill and in the pantry.

It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with a little co-operation.

Quote of the Day: “Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

The New New Yorker

Well, I’ve settled down.  In New York City, of all places.

I was talking with my brother on the phone and he was wishing me the best with my new community life at Ganas in Staten Island.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said.  “You won’t start rooting for the Yankees.”  (I think he was kidding.  I think. It wasn’t hard to promise though--I can’t imagine rooting for a team that wears pinstripes.)

I’m having trouble believing that I’m now a permanent resident of the Big Apple--the city that never sleeps, the largest city in North America.  It wasn’t where I planned to be and a big part of me is still wondering what I’m doing here.

I was involved several years back with someone who grew up in Brooklyn and I listened to her stories which to me seemed a mixture of the exotic and the familiar all at once.  Familiar because so much literature, so many movies, so many TV shows reference New York geography.  Now many of those places are part of my life.

I’ve been traveling all over the city. A few weeks ago we were doing stuff in Long Island City (sometimes abbreviated LIC--and LIC is part of Queens).  Then a couple of weeks ago, I met with a woman in East Harlem that wanted to buy property in the South Bronx.  Last week I met with another woman over in Bushwick, which I now know is part of Brooklyn.  After that I visited a food co-op in the East Village in Manhattan.  And this week I’m planning to visit a co-op house in Bed Stuy, which is also part of Brooklyn.

Daily I walk up the hill here  on Staten Island and look down on St George/Tompkinsville and across the Upper New York Bay over to Brooklyn.  The night sky of Virginia has been replaced with the lovely lights of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and once in a while, Manhattan.

And I get to take the marvelous Staten Island Ferry, passing the Statue of Liberty and with views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Governors Island, Jersey City, Bayonne, and Staten Island.  The few times I’ve taken it at night is when I’ve gotten to see the the lights of all of these place reflected in the dark waters.

I’ve learned or figured out all sorts of strange things.  There are five boroughs here--most people know that--but only one of them, the Bronx, is part of the mainland.  Manhattan is an island, Brooklyn and Queens are part of an island, and, of course, Staten Island is an island.

One morning we were talking about a part of the Bronx even many folks here hadn’t heard of: Spuyten Duyvil, the place where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River.  Someone said it meant “Spitting Devil” in Dutch. (Wikipedia says, “Spouting Devil” or “Spewing Devil”.)  It’s strange things like that that make living in New York so interesting.

And now, one of the things I’m doing is that I’m busy figuring out how to establish a New York City residency.  It turns out I live here.  I really do.  Go figure.

Quote of the Day: “Other places may give you a sweet and soothing sense of level; but in New York there is always the feeling of ‘Something's going to happen.’ It isn't peace. But, you know, you do get used to peace, and so quickly. And you never get used to New York.” - Dorothy Parker

Becoming MoonRaven, Sleeping Submarine Style, and Other Tales from the Communes

I’ve been living down in Virginia since the beginning of this year, mostly at Twin Oaks and Acorn.  (And taking side trips with the Point A crew up to Baltimore and New York.)  As of the end of this month, I will be moving into the Ganas Community on Staten Island.  But I’ll miss living at the Virginia communes.  They are, in many ways, the flagships of the income sharing communities movement in the US.  Here are some stories and reflections from my nearly three months here.

As many readers may have guessed, my real name isn’t MoonRaven (or Moon--first name--Raven--last name, as I’m listed on gmail).  I used the name, beginning over ten years ago, because I wanted to remain anonymous on the internet.  It’s the name Paxus at Twin Oaks first knew me as, because I would comment on his blog using it.  When I finally met him in person, I told him my real name and he said he preferred to think of me as MoonRaven because it was more poetic.  

When I moved down to the Virginia communities in January to help him with his Point A project, Pax asked if I’d go by that name.  My real first name is quite common and people at the communes often take new, exotic names--partly to avoid confusion with other people who have the same mundane names.

So I agreed to go by MoonRaven down here and that’s what people know me as at Twin Oaks and Acorn these days. I’m even considering keeping it when I move to Ganas in a few weeks.  Ironically the name I’m using on this blog and elsewhere on the internet to cloak my identity, has now become the name I’m using day to day--I’m getting getting used to people saying “Hey MoonRaven”.  In a way, now I’ve become MoonRaven and left the name I was born with behind.

When I came down to Virginia in January, Pax and I decided I’d stay at Twin Oaks for a while.  There was no visitor program until the end of the month and so I stayed in Aurora, the lovely visitors cabin that I stayed in during my two previous visitor periods.  However, ‘visitor’ has a particular meaning at TO.  It means you are part of the visitor program.  Since I wasn’t part of the program this time, I was a ‘guest’, which means a TO member hosts you, and I was welcome to stay at Aurora until the next visitor program started.  When it did, I moved over to Acorn, which does not have a visitors cabin.  

When I stayed at Acorn the first time, it was September and I stayed in a tent.  Last time I was here I got lucky and was able to stay in the new seed building.  This time I’ve been staying in a small building that Acorn has been using to house visitors, guests, and interns.  

I didn’t get my own room this time.  The building I’m staying in is one big room where someone has built a wall of bunks for people to sleep in.  I imagine it being the way that sailors sleep in bunks in a submarine.  There can be as many as five other folks sleeping around me--and one night I think we might have had six since there was also one person sleeping on a couch that someone moved into the place.  For a few nights recently, I was the only one sleeping in the building, but last night I think there were three other folks sleeping there besides me.

Both Twin Oaks and Acorn are farming communities and both communities grow food.  They also both have animals.  Twin Oaks has chickens and a herd of dairy cows.  Acorn has chickens, and goats, and pigs, and some rabbits, and a stray cow that wandered over and looks silly amidst the goats, and two dogs named Horus and Odin, and an indeterminate number of little cats (one of which regularly tries to sneak into the bunkhouse I’m sleeping in).

Aside from farming, Acorn’s one business and concern is the seed business.  Twin Oaks, on the other hand, is very diverse.  Besides hammocks and tofu (their main businesses) they also doing indexing for books (something that dates back to their early days) and sell ornamental flowers.   One of their more interesting sources of income comes from a nearby college that got a fancy arena that can have several different kinds of flooring, depending on the type of event they want to host.  They’ve hired a team from TO to change the flooring regularly.  

And besides tofu, Twin Oaks also makes tempeh, something I’ve participated in on occasion.  They steam soybeans and then sprinkle a culture on the beans.  Then someone (and I’ve done this) needs to spend several minutes working (nearly kneading) the mold spores into the beans (inoculating them).  The beans are then put in little bags which will be kept warm until the mycelium grow and the beans ferment.

At Acorn, mostly what I’ve done is pack seeds and pick seeds.  Packing seeds involves weighing out a measured amount and putting it in a packet which is then sealed.  I’m given instructions to do this for some number of packets ranging from six to four hundred.  It’s a fairly repetitive task.  When I’m done the seeds are put in the seed room.  Picking seeds involves looking at orders people have sent or called in and going into the seed room and walking around finding the seeds and rubber banding together all packets of seeds that make up an order.

Ironically, the work that I’ve been doing most often the last few days is washing dishes.  Like any community Acorn provides meals and people dirty dishes.  This week there have been a lot of people away and the usual dishwashers were gone--and no one signed up to do dishes.  I volunteered a few times.  Dishwashing is particularly daunting here because, unlike Twin Oaks or Ganas, it’s pretty much a solo task.  One meal can be eaten by twenty to forty people, plus cooking equipment and miscellaneous dishes and cups from people snacking.  

If no one does the dishes after a meal (which is what was happening), it means the dishes begin piling up in the dish room.  I was ending up cleaning a good twenty-four or more hours worth of people’s dishes on a couple of occasions.

And, of course, my main focus has been working on Point A projects with my comrades Paxus and Triple Threat Tony.  We’ve been having breakfast meetings where we lovingly grump at each other and divide up the tasks.  One of my latest task lists begins with my first task (sent by TTT): do “not do any more dish shifts”.

I will miss working face to face with these two folks.  I’ll continue working with them by email after I move to NYC, but it won’t be the same.  And I know I’ll need to come down here again, since I think of this place as the heart of a movement towards working cooperatively, collectively, together.

Quote of the Day:  “It amazes me how difficult it is for people to think in terms of collective phenomenon.” - Evelyn Fox Keller

Old 400th

Six and a half years ago, on June 20, 2008, the Summer Solstice, I began this blog.  Now, Blogger informs me, I have written four hundred posts on it.  In terms of pages, that's the size of a good sized book.

I actually wrote 97 posts the first year I was blogging and an even one hundred the second.  Then I slowed down as I got involved in many other activities, especially attempts at community building.  Last year I only wrote twenty posts, the lowest I've done in a year (although my second lowest was in 2011, four years ago).  Nevertheless, the trend is clear at this point.

A good bit of the reason for this is because of all the things I've become involved with.  Besides community building (the latest with Point A, as I wrote about in my last post--1/31/15), I've also began writing another blog, an ongoing silly story about commune life in a fictional commune in the Green Mountain state where I'm publishing a chapter every week.  (Except last week.  I got a virus that messed up a thumbdrive which slowed down the publication of stuff on both that blog and this.  Fortunately, I got some help working around the problem.)  In addition, I've been helping Paxus on his blog and I now have a bio on that site and he republished my Point A post--with pictures!  I've written another post especially for his blog that should be published there soon.

But as busy as I am, I want to keep writing for this blog.  I've got two more posts I'd like to write soon (one on commune life at Twin Oaks and Acorn, and another on a book that I've been reading on Emergence) and I'm sure that there's more things that I'll want to put out along the way.

The point of this blog has always been social change (or 'Social Alchemy' as I called it) and although the focus has shifted from political theory to community as a laboratory for social change experiments, Social change remains the point, through sidetracks on history, spirituality, personal growth, biology, chemistry, ecology, agriculture, and permaculture--and a heavy dose of systems theory.  My personal creed is at the bottom of the right hand column: (It's all connected... it's all connected... it's all connected...)  At the top of that column is my greatest hope for this blog:  * Offering Some Tools for Creating a World that Works for Everyone *

Hopefully somewhere in these four hundred posts any readers should be able to find some useful tools.  And with that hope, I will keep writing.  As I think of this blog as being a toolbox, having more tools available can only benefit my readers.


Quote of the Day: "I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood."- Audre Lorde

Point A

Down here in Louisa County, Virginia (which is where I'm currently staying) a plot was hatched last year.

There are four functioning communes in the county, starting with Twin Oaks (where I was when I originally wrote this post and which was begun in 1967), and then Acorn (where I am now and which was started in 1993), and then Living Energy Farm (started in 2010), and now Sapling (started in 2013).  (Someone posted a note on a board at Twin Oaks about doing the SALT circuit--from the first letters of the first words in each commune--starting with Sapling and ending with Twin Oaks.)  Then there's also the communities in northeast Missouri (which I visited in May and June of 2013) and East Wind in southern Missouri.  As I said in my post on Building Urban Communities (12/1/14), there's a lot of rural communes.

The plot began with a discussion about this between Paxus and GPaul, both of whom were living at Acorn.  One thing that they realized is that, while rural communes were growing in Virginia and Missouri, more and more people are living in the cities.  They decided that this was where they should put their community building efforts.  Although there are two urban communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (the Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle and the Midden in Columbus, Ohio) there isn't any urban egalitarian communes on the east coast of the US and hasn't been since the community that I helped build (Common Threads) folded in the year 2000.  (For more about some of this, see my post on Issues in Community: Urban and/or Rural, 9/29/13.)  They decided to try to grow communes in various east coast cities, starting with Washington, DC, and New York City.

They started off secretly  with a few collaborators.  Paxus, who a couple of years ago was working to create another rural commune in Virginia, decided to abandon it to work on urban communes.  (I've written about Chubby Squirrels and the Louisa County and northeast Missouri communities several time in this blog--most notably in my post on Communities of Communities, 6/9/12.)  They began working on a mission statement which culminated in a proposal.  Then the hard work began.

They connected with The Keep  in Washington and began holding workshops in New York.  What they found out was that DC wasn't that difficult (although GPaul and folks from the Keep are still working on the final stages).  On the other hand, NYC is proving to be quite difficult.

So why am I writing about all this and what am I doing back in Virginia (bouncing "back and forth between Twin Oaks and Acorn" as Paxus put it to me in an early email before I came here)?  As I wrote in my post on Building Urban Communities (12/1/14), I'm down here 'to be part of the Point A project'.  I've already been part of one whirlwind tour that stop briefly at The Keep in DC, before going on to spending a few days at Ganas in NYC and then a few more days at the Baltimore Free Farm which, of course, is in Baltimore (Maryland).  Even now I'm planning our next trip up to New York.

And I'm on the waiting list to get into Ganas--which will allow me to do Point A work on NYC, from NYC.  Eventually, if we can succeed in starting a commune in New York, I hope we can work on creating a Point A urban commune in the Boston area--which is my home area.  As I said to people when I left Boston, I was going to Virginia to get to New York so I could come back to Boston.  It's certainly the long way around, but given how long I've struggled in the Boston area to build something like the community that I loved disappeared in 2000, the long way may be the only way to go.  It feels like with Point A, at least I've got support in building community.



Quote of the Day:  " ...the rural commune is a model that is pretty thoroughly explored and proven.  ... We're taking on a big project not only in training ourselves to cooperate well and in maintaining this protective bubble, but in transforming all of society to more cooperative, democratic, egalitarian forms." - from the Point A website

Addiction and Connection

I've just read a pretty interesting article online. I'll admit that I'm skeptical about it, but the premise is intriguing.  It's all about the question of what causes addiction.  The basic idea (and the author backs it up with a bunch of studies) is rather than chemical dependency being involved, he claims that the cause of addiction is isolation and disconnection. 

Johann Hari makes at least two major points from this.  The first is that the war on drugs doesn't stop drug addiction.  He thinks, and uses the example of what's been done successfully in Portugal, that drugs should be decriminalized and addicts should be given social supports.  This is not only more humane but works a lot better. 

More important to my thinking is his second point.  We also need to deal with the social isolation and lack of connection that this society fosters.  As he put it, "We need now to talk about social recovery -- how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog."

I think (no surprise to anyone who reads this blog) that community is one of the main antidotes to isolation and that we need to rebuild this society so that it's based on human connection (as well as our connections to the earth and the ecosystem) rather than selling products and controlling people.  This is real social alchemy.


Quote of the Day: "...the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection. ...
"Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love." - Johann Hari