Lessons from Pennsylvania

Sorry about the long delay in posting.  (over a month, I know.) I'm back in the Boston area after many adventures. (Quite a few of them involving travel--my most recent was trying to return to Boston last Friday when the city and the public transit system were shut down.  If you've been following the news you know why.)

I just spent a month in Pennsylvania.  I learned a lot of things in my time there.  I worked on projects involving hugelkultur and sheet mulching.  One of the people there has a very different method of doing humanure (see my post on Humanure, 1/10/13) involving newspaper.  It was a bit tricky but it was useful to learn.  I took a field trip to Lancaster to learn about the Amish and Mennonites.  I didn't actually go to any Amish locations but I did have an interesting conversation with a Mennonite man who had some insights into why the plain clothes (this was what the common people wore when the Amish were starting out--as opposed to the dress of the aristocracy) and why the Anabaptists (the ancestors of the Amish and Mennonites) and early Quakers were persecuted (the imperialists are always interested in getting rid of those who threaten their way of life).

I also gave a few presentations--one on sprouting (see my post on Sprouts!, 2/26/10) and another (of course) on intentional community.

A bigger learning was from watching these folks and how they were trying to set up something. It turned out not to be what I wanted and I'm not sure that they're actually going to get what they want (I'm not even sure they know what they want) but it makes some of the things that get in the way of building community much more apparent to me.

Probably the most important learning I had was about the ways I don't communicate clearly.  There was a bit of misunderstanding that happened and I could see how I contributed to much of it.   I did try to leave there well but I'm very clear that I need to work on some of my stuff if I'm going to build community (feedback that I got from others as well).  As one of my friends puts it, "Wherever you go, there you are."



Quote of the Day: "The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Snow, Darkness, and Fire

I am in the midst of my final week at Twin Oaks.  Much of the last few days has been spent recovering from the events of last week.

Last Wednesday it snowed here.  I had been wondering if I'd see any snow while I was in Virginia.  Well, we got six inches.  In the Boston area, that wouldn't mean much.  But here there aren't sidewalks or even paved roads.  (At least not within Twin Oaks.)  Everything is dirt roads and paths.  So the experience was quite different from six inches in the city.  To make things worse, it was a wet snow that brought down a lot of power lines.  We were without power for four days.

At first it was fun.  The first night without power, I walked to the far end of Twin Oaks--a place they call Emerald City.  But unlike the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, the road there wasn't paved with yellow bricks.  That night the road was a muddy, slushy mess.

But the stars here are beautiful at night--and the stars and snow kept things from getting too dark.  Four days later, though, the charm was wearing off.  Fortunately, there is a nice woodstove in the visitor's cottage, so we kept warm at night.  And there were lots of candlelight dinners.  And even with all the inconveniences we were very lucky.

Acorn, the community that I stayed at last September and seven miles down the road from here, was not so lucky.  They got their power back much sooner.  However, when the power went out, someone ran into one building to rescue some baby chicks that were being kept warm by an electric heater and apparently moved the heater to the wrong place. When the power came back on it started a fire that turned into an inferno that destroyed the whole building.  Very fortunately, this wasn't a building anyone lived in and no one was hurt--but there was thousands of dollars of damage, including their communal clothes supply and there was at least one automobile nearby that the heat of the fire literally melted the bumper.

Last Saturday, I did what I'm calling a communal trifecta.  A small group of us went over to Acorn briefly (so I got to see the damage firsthand and talk with some of the folks there) before we went on to Living Energy Farm for a work day there.  By Saturday much of the snow had melted, but Living Energy Farm (most of which isn't built yet) was a mud pit.  I was able to help with putting up a fence for an orchard there, but I returned a muddy mess.  Still, it was good to see some of what's going on in the other communities around here.

This Friday, I'll be leaving Twin Oaks and going to stay with a couple of my cousins (and their large and loving family) who live near Richmond.  Then next Monday I'll be off to Pennsylvania, for my next community adventures.


Quote of the Day: "To enter the courtyard at Twin Oaks is--sooner or later--to come face-to-face with the profundity of the utopian question.  Although that same question is everywhere, including wherever you are now, it is perhaps clearer on this commune in Virginia only because in our time several hundred of our contemporaries have totally committed a portion of their lives to wrestling with it in the context of these four-hundred and eighty-three acres." - Ingrid Komar

Issues in Community: Task and Morale Functions

Back in 2008 I wrote a post (Equality and Leadership, 10/2/08) that mentioned a pamphlet which influenced my thinking.  'Leadership for Change' was focused on creating a 'feminist model' of leadership and, among other things, talked about two kinds of group functions that they saw leadership focused on.  The first, which they called task functions is defined as working toward 'group achievement'; the second, which they call morale functions (and I've also heard referred to as process functions) works toward 'group maintenance'.

The authors (Bruce Kokopeli and George Lakey) go on to list ten task functions (information and opinion-giving, information and opinion-seeking, proposing goals and initiating action, direction-giving, summarizing, coordinating, diagnosing/figuring out group difficulties and blocks, energizing, reality-testing, and evaluating) and ten morale functions (encouraging participation, harmonizing and compromising, relieving tension, helping communication, evaluating the emotional climate, observing process, setting standards, active listening, building trust, and solving interpersonal problems).  Their point is that groups need both of these type of functions.  I've heard it said that groups that focus only on tasks either fall apart before they complete their first task--or right afterwards, and groups that focus solely on morale often end up drifting and eventually falling apart because members get frustrated about not accomplishing anything.

I'm convinced that communities need both.  Unfortunately, many communities end up focusing on only one of these, since they may be stacked with either people who joined to get things done or people who joined because of the supportive atmosphere.  The result is that I read complaints about these groups, either that they spend all their time 'processing' and never get anything done, or that they burn out their members with overly ambitious schemes.

I think that one reason Twin Oaks has lasted so long is that they do a good job of both: they have thriving businesses, abundant gardens, and wonderful meals, and they have parties and support members social lives and find many ways of taking care of each other.  So my advice to people forming communities is to look at both of these functions.  Ask yourself (and each other) two questions: What do you want to accomplish as a community?  (Also known as, what's your goal or mission?) And how do you plan to take care of your members?  How can you support each other?

In a good community, members enjoy themselves and feel cared for and get things done.



Quote of the Day: "Understanding these functions can make the difference between a group that flounders and a group that moves... Shared leadership... values the morale functions highly and sees that the power of the group in the long run is as dependent on the nurturance of its members as on its efficiency in particular tasks." - Bruce Kokopeli and George Lakey

Carbon-Free

The Carbon-Free Home by Stephen & Rebekah Hren is a step by step blueprint for how to reduce your use of fossil fuels bit by bit until you are basically 'carbon-free'.

This is a book of projects, although it includes lots of little bits of their story of how they have weaned themselves free, and lots of explanations of what's going on and ways to think about it.  The authors have chosen to focus on eleven specific areas: energy use, renewable electrical systems, appliances and lighting, cooking, refrigeration, hot water, heating and cooling the house, rainwater, waste, food and landscaping, and transportation. 

Each chapter contains a bunch of projects clearly labeled with the time involved, cost, energy saved, ease of use, maintenance level, and materials and tools needed.  The skill level involved is there as well, and it varies.  Some of these projects anyone could do and for others, some skill with carpentry or plumbing or electrical work is needed.  Still, for the DIY person who wants to begin to work their way out of the system, this book is a gold mine.  And even if you don't have the skills, you will learn a lot about how things work and still find a few projects to get you started on radically reducing your carbon footprint.

I like that their stories include the mistakes that they made--in the hopes that you won't repeat them.  For those who want to live beyond fossil fuels but aren't ready to move to that country commune, this is a good place to start the journey.


Quote of the Day:  "We ... are convinced that as day turns to dusk for fossil fuels, we must take a good look at our surroundings and learn to live with what we have already built, what we've spent our free fossil currency on: the infrastructure, especially the housing, that already exists in our towns and cities.  For us it was time to learn from our mistakes and move back to the city, a city that had oodles of existing and abandoned houses just waiting for a good retrofit..."  - Stephen & Rebekah Hren

On the Road Again

Once again I'm setting off. 

My first stop on this next voyage will be another three week visit to Twin Oaks.  I'm going back for three reasons: 1) I like it there and want to soak in a well functioning, ongoing community, 2) While I'm there, I'll get a chance to catch up with stuff in the nearby communities of Acorn and--more importantly--Living Energy Farm, as well as checking in with someone at Twin Oaks who is trying to set up yet another community in the area, and 3) The visitors group attracts people who are interested in community.  Reasons 2 & 3 touch on my current goal and the reason I'm journeying again: I want to be part of building new communities.  (Living Energy Farm is a new and struggling community.  And as I'm trying to find people to build community with, the visitors group in one way to meet folks interested in community.)

I'm currently at Twin Oaks and will be hanging around here (working my 42 hour a week quota) until March 15th.  From there I will be going to visit relatives for the weekend and then off to Pennsylvania where I will explore the likelihood of building community there with the two people I had visited with last November.

My time in Pennsylvania is basically an indefinite stay.  I don't want to commit to anything at this stage because it's unclear what's going to happen there.  All I can say beyond this, is that I have backup plans, and have been joking about having backup plans for my backup plans.  Among other things I've been thinking about are returning to the Virginia communities and visiting another hub of communities that has developed in Missouri.  I've also got the next Communities Conference (at the end of the summer) in the back of my mind, whether I stay in Pennsylvania (as a way to find people for what might be developing there) or not (in which case I'd go there to network again).  As you might remember, that's where my voyages started last fall.

So, I'm traveling once again.  I have one more book review that I wrote while I was in Boston that I will post soon, and I hope to keep posting in my 'Issues in Community' thread because I have a bunch more that I want to cover--and I may have yet more from what I learn in this round at Twin Oaks and with the struggling folks in Pennsylvania.  Community isn't easy, but it's definitely worthwhile.


Quote of the Day: "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." - Lao Tzu

Issues in Community: Size

How much does size matter in community?  The community I helped found in North Cambridge never had more than five or six adults (plus two children), and FEC groups like Sandhill Farm (currently seven adults and one child) and the Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle (currently eight adults) are relatively small.  My belief is that you need at least four members to have a functioning community.  There are joys about living in a small community (closer connections, for example) and difficulties (closer connections, for example).  My experience is that the smaller a community is, the more intense it can get.

On the other hand, communities can be fairly large.  Consider Twin Oaks (with ninety something adults and around fifteen children) and East Wind (with around sixty adults and four children).   Acorn (with around thirty adult members) holds a kind of middle ground.  (And then there are communities like Skyhouse, with four adults and one child, that's part of a much larger community, Dancing Rabbit, which now has nearly seventy people.  A small group within a large group.)

In my recent post Connected (2/3/13), I mentioned 'Dunbar's number', which the authors said was the optimal size for social groups, around 150 members.  I think this is often the high end for communities.  Notice that within the FEC only Twin Oaks approaches this number and they have decided not to grow any larger than they are.

Acorn has also decided that they don't want to have any more than the thirty odd members that they have.  Both communities feel that they would lose what they currently have (and like) if they got much larger than they are.  Still, for a community such as Dancing Rabbit that wants to have a population of 500 to a thousand, it is worth noting (again from Connected) that "The Hutterites explicitly regard a community of 150 to be the limiting size, and they make arrangements to split into two groups as they approach that number."  I suspect DR may want to pay some heed to this advice if their community ever begins swelling over a hundred.

Certainly communities function differently at different sizes.  Twin Oaks, which is the largest of the groups, is also the most highly structured.  Acorn prides itself on all of its face to face meetings and they acknowledge that if they began growing any larger, this would be less possible.  In fact, that's one of the reasons that they don't want to grow larger.

And 'Dual Member' (Twin Oaks and Acorn) Paxus tells of someone excited about joining a community with 'No Meetings'. Quoting from his blog, "One member is leaving Acorn, because a smaller sexy community in Missouri is offering a culture which is free of meetings.  Members make decision on the fly and informally.  This is great for a group of 4 or 6, but at 28 (Acorns current membership) or heaven forbid 100 people (Twin Oaks is this size), this gets much harder."

I suspect that the current controversy about consensus and sociocracy boils down to that consensus tends to work well in small groups that know each other and share common values (Acorn uses it and it seems to work fine there) but for large ecovillages and cohousing arrangements, something like sociocracy may be a better fit.

Obviously, when it comes to communities, one size doesn't fit all, but size is important to think about because different sizes offer quite different possibilities.


Quote of the Day: "...a community's population size and their physical proximity totally affects its social and interpersonal dynamics.  In large communities, say, with 20 to 50 or more people... you don't need to be close to or like everyone in the community, since you won't be interacting with everyone in equal amounts....
"In a smaller community, however, with, say, less than 20 members, you'll have a different experience. ... You'll find it easier to live in a smaller community, however, if you like and get along with everyone most of the time, and much harder to live in a community of this size if there's even just one person who bothers the heck out of you." - Diana Leafe Christian

What about the Children?

This, in a sense, is a continuation of my post on Issues in Community: Children (1/26/13).  I want to explore more about some of the questions raised, not only by raising children in community, but in any unorthodox setting.  I know people fear that somehow children will be damaged by this, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

First, something I meant to include in my post on children in community is a little bit about children at the Acorn community.  Whereas Twin Oaks has raised many children, it hasn't worked out as well at Acorn.  People have started families at Acorn, but then moved on.  I know one person who decided to move to TO to raise a child b/c he thought it would be a better setting for a kid.  (TO has more experience with children and there are also more children around.)  But I also know a couple at Acorn that just had a child and seem determined to raise him there.  I do hope it works out--someone has to change that cycle.

But there are other settings that people wonder about raising children in.  One that has come and gone is the counterculture of the 1960s.

Wild Child (edited by Chelsea Cain) is a collection of essays from women who grew up in 'hippie'/'counterculture' type households.  Not necessarily communities (although there's definitely mentions of 'communes') but an interesting look at what being raised in a free and open environment was like from a grown up girl's perspective.  Most of the experiences were mixed, and one (from a young woman who was sexually used and abused in the name of 'free love') is horrific, but there's also a strong thread of enjoying the freedom that comes when you know it's okay to be different.  One woman who grew up in a very non-countercultural (in fact, fairly repressed) household talks about the afternoon she spent visiting a hippie family in the neighborhood and of the positive impact that had on her life.  Another woman, who tells how her family was changed when her parents got involved with an unconventional couple ends her essay by saying her parents have no idea now where that couple is, "But a breeze continues to blow through the window that they opened."  In many cases, being raised in unconventional setting has opened door for people.  This is true even if they decide to live a seemingly more conventional lifestyle

And then there are questions about children being raised by GLBTQ parents, and even more questions about children being raised in families where people are practicing polyamory.  Fortunately, there are studies that indicate that families with polyamorous relationships can still raise children well. 

It will be interesting to see how these kids take on the world.  A few years back I saw something about a new group wanting to claim a space on the queer spectrum, claiming that they were 'sexually straight, but culturally queer'.  I assumed that this was some wannabe group, until I realized that this was a group of young adults raised by gay and lesbian parents.  And then I realize that they really were culturally queer--these are our children.

Again, from my own experience in having helped raise two children in communal household, I'm pleased at how they turned out.  This is not to say that there aren't horror stories of abuse in these varied settings, but I'm not sure that there's any more than in more conventional settings.  That is to say, you can raise a child well or you can raise a child poorly regardless of the setting.


Quote of the Day:  "It turns out I am part of a tribe... I am proud that I ... will never have beige carpeting in my house, will never own or wear a skirt suit, will never rever misogynistic steak-house politics, and will never be a Rules girl, obedient to some outdated, fifties model of partnership.  I find that there is a common bond and an actual language that is immediately understood by super-crunchy-granola types... Growing up, between two worlds, I learned to judge people by their actions, not their outsides." - Moon Zappa