Beth thought it would be nice for our Dutch guests (Micha, Wieneke and their son Fabian, who i was the donor for) to see the new visitor center at the US Capitol while they were in Washington DC (which i call Death City).
So we all packed into Shana’s Subraru, including Beth’s daughter Rachel and i hide in the back to evade the DC police in our overcrowded vehicle.
The first hurdle was the security at the Capitol which wanted us to throw out all our food and the water bottle containers. This infuriated both Wieneke and Beth who did not want to dispose of the perfectly good reusable water bottles they had. So we delayed our tour and Beth took them back to the car.
The Capitol guides are a cross between a security guard and tour leader. Ours started her tour with the emphatic statement “You have two tour options today, you can go with me for about an hour or you can wander off from the group and get a tour from the capitol police, which is very short!”
And so it was for the next 40 minutes or so as we saw the myriad statues and paintings which fill the Capitol with the LA jewish high school basketball team which toured with us. Our guide was regularly directing tourists where they could and could not stand or sit, that they could not use their own headphone jacks in the free radio headsets which werre provided all the while asking triva questions about California’s pending statehood anniversary and basketball tidbits from Kansas (really).
At the end of the tour, Beth asked Fabian how he had liked it and he responded (in a manor i could her myself quiping) “I thought they had outlawed torture in this country.”
If you have acccess to Facebook there is a cute video of Fabian and Rachel Spinning in the Emancipation hall.
The new fire pit is all finished and beautiful, the living roof we built over the shower is looking beautiful, and we just finished major upgrades in our kitchen! Everything is falling into place and we are expecting nearly double the turnout this year.
Below are a list of workshops and presenters given this year. We have a few more details to finish before we finalize our workshop schedule, so things may change.
Cooperation Is The Ecological Solution
by Alexis Zeigler
Cooperative living is the most effective solution for peak oil and
global warming. We will look at how alternative energy and
conservation strategies can be cooperatively applied to live lightly
and well, and how cooperatives can lead the environmental movement
toward real solutions. We will look at cooperative energy
conservation in a global context, as well as some of the nuts-and-
bolts of different conservation and alternative energy technologies
as they can applied in small groups.
Alexis Zeigler is a self-educated activist, green builder, and
orchardist living in central Virginia. He has organized numerous
campaigns around environmental and social justice issues, built super-
insulated buildings and alternative energy systems, and has lived in
intentional community all of his adult life. More information,
including articles, interviews, and downloadable books, can be found
at his website, conev.org or by contacting alexis@conev.org
i did not think love of games was a genetically transmitted trait, but it seems Fabian has it. After an exciting game of Blokus with Feonix, Micha, Wieneke and Fabian, the boys got down to some serious Yahtzee.
They taught me these lovely additional rules, where if you complete your desired roll configuration before your three rolls are done you can bank your unused roll as a stripe on your score card. If you want an extra role you can go into debt by placing an egg at the bottom of your score cards. Eggs cancel stripes, stripes cancel eggs.
Thru some lucky rolls, i got way ahead and on my last roll i had 8 tries to complete my Yahtzee and got it in 6. So generously i gave one of my stripes to each of Micha and Fabian.
Fabian, who was the last to roll got his desired 4 of a kind without using the stripe i gave him. But Micha suggested he re-roll the one unmatching dice anyway. His 2 became a 4 and after the counting, Fabian had won by a single point.
So i said to Micha “i gave him the chance and you gave him the advice and thus Fabian wins.” And so it is, well beyond Yahzee, these additional rules for life.
Fabian and Paxus playing Chess on the Ferry w/ Micha and Feonix on phone
Since the last edition of the Leaves, we've gone from the frigid cold of Winter to the sweltering heat of mid-Summer. We're taking advantage of the sun these days with our latest solar energy project. We've just completed the installation of a 10 KiloWatt array of 48 photo-voltaic solar panels in the central field of the community. The electricity generated will be used to power three of our buildings and one of our well pumps, with any excess electricity being fed back into the main power grid (via our local electic co-op), and we will be compensated for that power.
installing one of the 48 panels for our new solar energy array.
Earlier in the year, we found out that there's nothing like being snowed in for days and weeks on end to bring out people's creativity. In January, Twin Oaks took advantage of the avalanche of snow we received (and the 30-hour power outage) and members' inventiveness was bustin' out all over! Our very own 'outsider-artist-in-residence', aka our member Purl, used the time to construct a chair out of hickory saplings and hemp rope for his daughter Anya, aged 15 months. And when our pond froze, Noah decided a game of ice-hockey was in order, but we only had 2 sticks. Undaunted, he used some scrap wooden stretcher bars from our hammocks business to construct 6 very realistic hockey sticks, 5 of which lasted until the end of the game! And on a more cultured artistic note, Kayde organized a Variety Show in which members could showcase their talents, including poetry, singing, piano, dancing and a puppet show featuring Marshall Rosenberg of NVC (Non-Violent Communication) notoriety as the main character.
Anya sits in her new chair.
Another big January event was the arrival of our newest Oaker, a healthy baby boy born to Elsa and Scott. Elsa delivered him into the world at home, with the help of a midwife, her assistant, a doula, Scott and big brother Luuk. We welcome Ridgeley Ember Jennings Linden to our lives!
Ridgeley Ember Jennings Linden
In February, as an alternative to Valentine's Day, Twin Oaks celebrates Validation Day, a day in which everybody, not just people in intimate relationships, receives a handmade, individually designed card, inside of which other members have written validating messages. On Validation Day, we hand the cards out after dinner, and then break out into a dance party. This year, we also had a 'Songs of Love' performance, which was graced with the presence of the KITCH Army, sharing their version of KISS's new song 'Stand'.
Memory, Calliope, Claire and Keith transformed in to the KITSCH ARMY
Some people might say Twin Oaks has hit the big time, when we were featured in an Earth Day special on CNN news in April. In two of our fifteen minutes of fame, the piece focused on Twin Oaks as an example of how to live a sustainable lifestyle in contemporary America. We were pleased that information about our alternative culture was able to reach the masses.
There's also good news for our two largest community businesses. We've launched a new and improved website for Twin Oaks Hammocks. We sell hammocks both to wholesalers and to retail customers, and the new site makes it easier for our retail customers to make a purchase. Please go to www.twinoakshammocks.com if you'd like to take a look. And with our newest tofu account, we've increased our workweek to 5 tofu production days. This enables us to make the additional 5000 (yes, five thousand) pounds each week for the new account.
And several members have been busy working on creating new community.
We've been having meetings of a group of former and current members
who are working towards creating the Living Energy Farm. Now in the
process of finding land, the project will ultimately encompass an
intentional community with an environmental education center, which
will focus on sustainable ways of living, free of fossil-fuel. It has
been informally dubbed neo-amish (ie. Amish-style, minus the
patriarchy).
6 a.m. My alarm wakes me up and I roll out of bed, ready to start my day. The sun hasn't quite come up yet, but there's some soft light coming through my east-facing window. I don't have to get up this early--we each set our own schedule--but I like being up before the hustle and bustle of the day really begins. Plus, since nine of us live in my building, I probably won't have any competition for the shower.
6:15 a.m. I make myself breakfast (toast with homemade bread and an egg from one of our chickens) in the kitchen in the Courtyard, where I live. Lunch and dinner are served buffet-style at Zhankoye (ZK), our main dining facility and community center, but we also have a handful of smaller kitchens for breakfast, snacking, and preparing meals for small groups of people. As I eat, I read a novel I pulled from our public collection of several thousand books--no library card needed.
6:55 a.m. Since I like being up early, I signed up for a 7 o'clock tofu-making shift last week when all of our labor was being scheduled. I head to the Tofu Hut, a mere two-minute walk through the woods from my room--not a bad commute. It's chilly out, but the Hut is warm and steamy. I put on boots, gloves, a hairnet, and an apron, and start pressing curds into big slabs of tofu.
10 a.m. My shift is over, and I head back to the Courtyard. I check my email on one of the public computers in the office. In addition to actually making tofu, I also do a lot of customer service for our soyfoods business. Someone has contacted us to find out where they can buy Twin Oaks' tofu in their area; I respond, and also check out the orders that have come in locally from stores and restaurants in Charlottesville and Richmond.
10:45 a.m. I see my friend Sabrina outside with one-year-old Anya in a carrier on her back. She's doing a "primary," labor-creditable child care. We make tea and go for a walk together, Anya making cute faces at me the whole time.
12:05 p.m. It's lunch time, so we walk up to ZK. Lunch is mostly leftovers, supplemented with a fresh salad and baked potatoes. We grow greens throughout the winter in our huge greenhouse, and we harvested enough potatoes in the summer and fall to last us through the winter.
12:50 p.m. I walk back to my room to put on work boots for my forestry shift, then ride a public bike up to Modern Times (MT), where Carrol, River, Purl and I will meet for the shift. MT is our main shop building, with space and tools to fix our cars, bikes, tractors, and vacuums.
1 p.m. We head out into the woods, where we'll selectively cut trees and haul them in to be processed into firewood. All the wood we harvest is done so sustainably, and all of our buildings are heated with wood all winter long. It's too hot to do forestry work in the summer, so during the off-season, I'll switch some of my work scene indoors to do data entry and accounting work to monitor our communal money budgets.
5:15 p.m. I hang out in my room a bit before dinner, finishing up a letter to my family and listening to music. I find it's important to carve out alone time for myself--it's very easy to get sucked into the social scene 24/7 here. There's always something going on, someone to talk to.
6:00 p.m. Dinner is served! Tonight it's my favorite--veggie burgers. (And, OK, hamburgers too. But I'm a vegetarian.) There are plenty of side dishes, like steamed spinach and sweet potato fries. A large percentage of the meal, both veggies and meat, is homegrown. I sit in the Lounge with about ten people and chat with McCune about his latest plumbing adventure. Sometimes at dinner there's one main conversation but tonight several smaller discussions have sprung up. Besides copper-vs-plastic waterlines, people are talking about the new fruit orchard we're planting, the latest news from our sister community 8 miles up the road, and trying to work out if people's schedules will allow our belly-dance troupe to meet on the same night as the queer-theory discussion group.
7:30 p.m. Mala has invited me to her residence (named Beechside) to hang out--there's a really cozy kitchen/living room there that's highly conducive to fun social gatherings. A bunch of people come over, and we sit draped on the couches and on the floor. Debbie and Trout play fiddle and guitar, Casey is knitting a pair of socks and Ezra makes a large amount of popcorn. Zadek, age 4, and Samir, age ten months, provide a lot of the entertainment. It's a festive atmosphere, though there's no particular occasion; we just like to enjoy each other's company.
10:00 p.m. I head home to my room. I record the work I did today on my labor sheet and write in my journal a bit to unwind before bed. I'm very tired, but happy. It's been a good day.
Jessica Marie Quintet
by Summer
Debbie (above), Elsa, Jessie and Summer, 4/5 of the Quintet
I'm standing downtown in Charlottesville with my 6-month old daughter strapped to my front, singing with four other women. We run through our repertoire as a small but steady crowd of people gathers to listen. We are appreciative of the donations they leave, and afterwards we go to soothe our voices at the gelatto place down the street.
I am part of the The Jessica Marie Quintet, nee Oakapella or FEC-Sharp, which started in 2008 with eight original members singing a broader range of a cappella music, and has gradually narrowed to a focus on barbershop. When the idea first arose, I squealed with irrepressible dorkiness my delight at the thought of being in one of these groups again--in high school I was head of our 8-member a capella group. Characterized by close harmonies and four distinct voices that often sing the same lyrics (as opposed to doo-wop, which usually features a lead singer and several backup vocals), barbershop feels more egalitarian, more cooperative.
After a few months we were down to 5 people, and renamed the group the Jessie Marie Quintet, in honor of the two members who share that name (Jess, our bass; and Jessie, our tenor). Free online sheet music eventually gave way to specific arrangements ordered off the internet; one practice grew to two 2-hour rehearsals a week; and we began to perform as much as we could, including at homespun coffeehouses, busking in Charlottesville, at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, Christmas/Solstice caroling, at a nursing home, at Acorn's Land Day, and for Twin Oakers in full-on JMQ concerts. Twice we've taken an educational trip to town to rehearse with the Skyline Chorus, Charlottesville's Sweet Adeline 30-member women's barbershop chorus. Their director has come out to Twin Oaks with two members of the chorus to help us through a rehearsal. We finished the practice with new warm-up exercises, help with posture, breathing, mouth shape, diphthongs, and lots of other information that has helped us advance our singing together. Last summer we used Twin Oaks' recording equipment and squeezed ourselves into the young adult library on hot evenings to put out our first CD.
Recording together was another learning experience: how far away do we each have to stand from the mic? Which room captures the best sound? We feel proud of the result and hope to make another album once we've added enough new songs to our repertoire. Right now the group is working on our theater debut singing and dancing for the community's performance of Greasel. After that, a belated two-year anniversary concert is in order. And after that, who knows? [The Jessica Marie Quintet is comprised of Jessica Marie (Jess) on bass, Summer on lead/baritone, Debbie on lead/tenor, Elsa on lead/tenor, and Jessica Marie (Jessie) on lead/tenor. Our CD, *In the Good Old Summertime and Other Modern Hits* is available for $8 (sliding scale).]
From Seed to Seeds
By Cloud Supernova
Edmund processing seeds.
As Winter comes to an end, and warmer seasons slowly unfurl, I look
forward to working again in the Seeds gardens. I remember last year,
three days after harvesting a van full of over-ripe (as they must be
to ensure proper seed maturity) Suyo Cucumbers, the experience of
slimy, smelly, fermented cucumber pulp on my arms, which I admittedly
enjoyed, as I plunged through phase II of the project. After
fermenting the seeds in buckets of water for three days to help
disengage them from the gooey cucumber innards, as well as kill off
potential pathogens, I disturbed the viscous liquid and waited the
minute or two it took for the viable seeds of our bounty to sink to
the bottom of the bucket. Once the floaters were poured out, and the
process repeated 2 or 3 more times, good seeds were set onto screens
and placed into fan powered drying racks. Germination tests were
administered and met the standards of our biggest buyer, Southern
Exposure Seed Exchange, which are often much loftier than the national
average.
Twin Oaks Seeds business is contracted by seed companies, such as
Southern Exposure Seeds and FedCo, to grow and then process our own
organic seed yields. And like our seeds, we've grown. The business
started out as a solo project in 2006 by ex-member River with an
income of approximately $5,000. Under the managership of Edmund
Frost, along with a dedicated crew and expanded growing area, Seeds
generated an income of $27,600 in 2009.
We project doubling our profits, which means doubling our output for
the 2010 growing year. Why? We have demonstrated to the Community
that the Seeds business is a viable business and one worth investing
time and money in. It's an income area we feel really good about;
it's organic, our methods of cultivation rely heavily on our own
sweat, and the products couldn't be Greener. Our seeds inspire
backyard garden sanctuaries, help provide nourishing food for many,
and promote the genetic diversity necessary in preserving our food
sources for the future.
Twin Oaks Theatre: 'Greasel'
by Kelsey
To most of American society, 'community theatre' means a group of theatre people, who happen to live in general proximity of each other, bound together by the act of putting on a professional-looking show. Here, it seems we take the word order of 'community theatre' more literally. It's more community, with a 'Hey! Since we're all here, let's do a ridiculous Twin Oaks-based spoof on Grease this winter!'
Talent? That, we have in buckets here. It started with the unbelievably hilarious team of writers (or re-writers, rather) creating songs and a script for the fantastic band and actors that then assembled. From within our ranks also came choreographers, set designers, props and costumes managers, publicity, lights, and no fewer than three directors. Not to mention those that pick up the slack within the community for this motley and brilliant team to have time to put a show up.
We knew we wanted to spoof the plot of the original show, placing it in a Twin Oaks setting, with lots of references to our alternative culture. Just the name alone-- 'Greasel' -immediately presented itself as a tip of the hat to the alternative energy practice of using vegetable oil for fuel, so-called 'greasel' instead of 'diesel'.
The 'cool kids' in this show were we communards. Members Michael and Summer starred as a hippie, dread-locked Danny paired with Sandra V, the mainstream commodities trader plopped into the middle of our commune for a visit. Musical highlights included 'Oberlin Dropout' as Crunchy (aka Frenchy) ponders returning to grad school, and 'You're The Ones That I Want' as an homage to polyamory. And what would Grease be without 'Hopelessly Devoted to Tofu' (performed, of course, by some of our most committed tofu workers)?
Really, though, there is more to what makes theatre here so interesting: while we do happen to have a lot of talent residing on these 450 acres, talent is also not exactly the point. In community, art is everywhere, and everyone can have a role-not just the 'artsy' people in society to whom we delegate the task of moving our culture forward. Anyone that wants a way to contribute here can probably find one, and while we don't aspire to Broadway with our work, we do aspire to enrich all of our lives through a collective creative process. So, we do. We shape our time together as we wish, and it is certainly never boring. Besides, what makes life worth living if not some Twin Oakers singing about how unexpected romance can blossom over pickling the beets?
Politics at Twin Oaks
by Valerie
Here at Twin Oaks, we generally consider ourselves beyond conventional conversation restraints; this becomes immediately obvious by listening to a mealtime discussion of the lurid details of gruesome symptoms related to the latest sickness going around.
When it comes to talking about politics, it becomes a little more complicated. There are certain topics that we can all discuss with ease and generally agree upon. However, somehow there are others that are more like opening a can of worms while walking through a field of landmines...
Acceptable: global warming and polar icecap melt
More delicate: what temperature to set the communal hot-water heater, and the ecological implications of using ice-cubes
Acceptable: Obama versus Hillary
A bit trickier: Organic versus Local
Acceptable: increasing water shortages and the evils of the bottled-water industry
Tread carefully: the fact that a certain communard-who-shall-remain-nameless replaced the low-flow shower head with one that delivers the approximate force and volume-per-minute of Niagara Falls, without any process.
Acceptable: the discriminatory aspects of impending US immigration policy
Walking on eggshells : our membership process about whether to accept that controversial visitor from the last visitor period.
Acceptable: gay marriage
Call in the Process Team: your lover announces their desire to form a polyamorous triad with that statuesque blonde who arrived as a new member last week.....
Copyright 2008, Valerie Renwick-Porter and Communities magazine. This
article first appeared in Communities: Life in Cooperative Culture,
Autumn 2008; for further information on Communities: communities.ic.org.
Twin Oaks Conferences!
You are invited to come to Twin Oaks and participate in our two summer events:
Join us for a weekend of sharing and celebration at the 2010 Communities Conference, August 13-15th.
With workshops and events focused on:
Intentional relationships
Group process
Collective child raising
Creating culture
Forming communities
Sustainability
Appropriate technology
Community economics
Music
Dancing
Slide shows
Campfires
Swimming
Magic
More!
The Communities Conference is a networking and learning opportunity for anyone
interested or involved in co-operative or communal lifestyles.
Come join us for the annual Twin Oaks Women's Gathering on August 20-22nd.
Our 27th gathering to celebrate the strength, diversity and power of women in community! All female and non-male ID folks are welcome to this event, which is a three day conference on themes ranging from sex and sexuality to positive relationship building to DIY music, art and movement. There will be scheduled workshops and performance spaces, as well as lots of free time to network, drum, dance and play at beautiful Twin Oaks Community. Registration fee (sliding scale from $60-$160) includes meals and tent space.
Since the last edition of the Leaves, we've gone from the frigid cold of Winter to the sweltering heat of mid-Summer. We're taking advantage of the sun these days with our latest solar energy project. We've just completed the installation of a 10 KiloWatt array of 48 photo-voltaic solar panels in the central field of the community. The electricity generated will be used to power three of our buildings and one of our well pumps, with any excess electricity being fed back into the main power grid (via our local electic co-op), and we will be compensated for that power.
installing one of the 48 panels for our new solar energy array.
I got a call this week that I didn't want to get. Dorothy Andersen called from California to tell me that her husband, Al, had passed away last Sunday. He was 91, and had been in frail health for some time.
I first met Al back in 1991, at the FIC fall organizational meetings at Lama Foundation (San Cristobal NM). It was the first time the Fellowship had met in the Southwest and Al came up from Tucson to check us out. • • • Al was 22 years old when Pearl Harbor propelled us in to World War II. As a Conscientious Objector, he sat the war out in a federal prison in Danbury CT. Around 1948, he collaborated with Griscom Morgan (who would later become the Director of Community Service, Inc, now called the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, after Griscom's father) to organize a series of gatherings for communities in the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley regions. The momentum generated by these get-togethers ultimately coalesced into the Fellowship of Intentional Communities. (Note the different preposition from the FIC of today—this first incarnation was oriented toward people already living in community, many of whom were COs who wanted to focus what could be done to eliminate the occasion for war.)
That's right, Al was there when the first FIC was founded. Although the dynamism of FIC 1.0 petered out in the '70s, and none of the bunch involved in that original effort were around for the revitalization spearheaded by Charles Betterton in 1986, it was only natural that Al wanted to find out what the new generation was up to, after we'd poured new wine into his old bottle.
Kelsey is wonderful and i am going to miss her terribly when she joins her lover in Tanzania soon. She has been a huge help in the Heroes homeschooling game. She asked me if she were a Caucasian person going to a foreign land of a different race how would she best learn to assimilate.
i said ‘Go to an american who has been there for a long time and say “tell me what you think i need to know about these people and this place to fit in and serve.” Listen carefully to what they say and take lots of notes. Then take their story to a respected elder native and tell them what you heard and get them to correct it.’
“That is brilliant” Kelsey exclaimed, which are about my most favorite words.
“That is why i get the big labor credits” i quip and several folx at the table laugh (Roberto and Eva V). i then go on to explain that big labor credits are still only worth one hour each, but they are the oversized credits you get for doing amazing things.
Once upon a time, in this type of conversation i would have said “that is why i make the big bucks.” The joke here being that i make $85/month.
We are facing a vexing world, we need to be clever. And i try to do it when ever i am able, regardless of the compensation.
one of the early options when you google image search for 'brilliant'
There are a couple of stunning errors being made which have my head in a twist, because there are clever well paid people who are supposed to be catching these opportunities.
The recipe for a successful boycott requires an easy way to switch products and cleear branding. The unsuccessful BP boycott has both. Gas consumers can simply drive across the street to buy from another vender and while BP has some subsidiary brands, if a significant number of customers simply avoided their branded stations it would have a further crippling effect on BPs profits.
Why isn’t someone knocking on my door asking me to stop buying until they have paid the $20 billion promised in damages or some other reasonable demand? Why dont we have people dressed as dirty birds or dead fish at BP stations? [Tho there was a wonderful action at the Tate Museum in London.]
Part of the answer is that we are pretending that we can do push button political action and click something on Facebook and move on.
So i am working on a more complex entry perhaps called betrayal and bolo – so stay tuned for that. But i did not want to let more time go by without posting and there is a cute myth story running around the Ta Chai living room with me.
So the myth is that we are poor. Many people in the mainstream, especially friends of members, believe we are in need.
Understandably, they look at our low allowance and generally modest consumption patterns and assume this represents a kind of poverty.
Numerically (which is the most precise and generally least useful) we have a bunch of money in the bank, 450 beautiful acres with a couple dozen high functioning low impact buildings. There is a weight room and a sauna, fresh grown food for most of the year and membership comes with full medical, dental and home care if needed.
But what is more important is that between the commie clothes library and our fleets of bikes and cars, most members (i believe) dont fell strong desires to have more.
But the myth persists, and combined with our friends generosity and sense of humor we get a bunch of presents. Today in what is sometimes called “the State Room” Bochie is running around in a Snow White costume that we are convinced was hand and machine sewn by someones 80 year old grandma, perhaps as th last thing she did on this earth.
There are perhaps 2 dozen pairs of high heels mostly in good shape which will look fabulous on Valerie or Mushroom.
But perhaps the most fun was watching Bochie go hunting thru the boxes of handbags and shoes and art supplies, giggling like a slightly crazy child at their best birthday.
Jess was very excited to make these Chocolate chip bacon cookies. And decided to also make some vegan cookies that are/were gluten free and not sweeten with white sugar for special diets.
Vegan gluten free no white sugar cookies
And as one would guess the Bacon cookies were more tasty than the vegan cookies.
Nightshade and the vegan cookies
Both types of cookies were made at the same time, in the evening after dinner. and when the morning came, there were only vegan cookies left…mmmm…vegan cookies for breakfast….
New Structure at Acorn! Built be one of our full members, Jon. He built this structure in two days, using resources laying around the farm, so at a very minimum cost. The Pallet Chalet, as it is called, is movable via tractor. cool huh? It also features a big door that opens to be a canopy area. It’s so awesome and just in time to provide shelter from the elements since we are getting pretty full at acorn these days. Hope to someday live in a structure very similar to this one, although I do have plans to build a dome structure one of these days.
Someday there will be blueberry bushes at acorn, but until that day we have to find a different source for our blueberry needs. Fortunately for us there is a pick-your-own-blueberry farm that is few miles from us, it’s on blueberry lane. We have had several group trips to this magical place of blueberry plundering and gathering. The blueberries are sold by the quart and I believe collectively we gathered 85 quarts of blueberries. Many were bagged, sealed, and frozen for the winter…others were processed into blueberry jam…and many were eaten raw or in muffins….oh and some lucky blueberries were dried for winter too…
We are in the midst of getting the word out about the Conference.
With barely over a month to go, we're posting to relevant websites,
e-mailing friends, and sending a press release. Now is a great time
to tell or remind any of your friends, too, if they might want to
come.
Valerie is putting together the list of workshops and events that will
take place, so if you want to offer an event, it's a great time to get
in touch with her. Meanwhile, we're also continuing to get the site
Goats and Barns? Two unrelated topics that are joined together here for the convenience of having to only make one post.
At Acorn a small crew of us have been hard at work this past month building a new barn. Its two stories tall and 30 by 32 feet. The first floor is framed with post and beams and the second floor is stud wall framing. We are parking tractors and keeping garden tools on the first floor and the second floor is a massive new drying space.
Also, we recently got two goats. We bought them from a nearby goat rancher we are friends with. The breed of goats is Kiko, a type from New Zealand. Whalers would leave goats on the island and in between trips come and harvest the goats for meat. The goats became quiet feral and after a long while they were rounded up and selected for various qualities. The Kiko are very hardy foragers and have high tolerance to worms and wet climates. We keep them in a stationary overnight paddock and we have a rotating day paddock that we bring them too that we move every two days to fresh browse
I recently got an email from my friend Becca Krantz, asking for my views on a bush-full of thorny questions about how to run effective meetings. While the list is somewhat eclectic, they’re all worthy queries and I’m inspired to offer my responses as a blog series. Here’s what she asked:
1. Setting up meeting space—what are the minimally acceptable standards? [See my May 26 blog on Meeting Architecture]
2. Children in meetings—what's appropriate for the children and what’s appropriate for the adults? How might the answer vary by topic? [See my blog of May 29, Asking Children to Play in Traffic]
We are have lots of different types of events here at Twin Oaks. Anniversary is one of my favorites, in part because it is a principally internal affair, with most of the guests being ex-members and the closer friends of community.
This year was a smaller celebration (43 not being an especially significant number) and it was precious. The weather cooperated, the home-grown entertainment (especially Uncle Trout’s Dead cover band) engaging, the food was glorious (see viz Rich’s fabled flame thrower salmon below) and our spirits were high.
Rich viz
uses flame thrower to cook salmon
From a funological perspective, we even had our bonding crisis experience. For the last few songs of the Dead cover bands performance, the wind kicked up and what looked like a serious storm started to blow in. Communards, quick to help jumped up and deployed tarps. I had a precious moment dancing with Mushroom as we both held on of the canopy poles to the ground wrestling the storm winds. And in what perhaps typifies our collective response, as a handful of dancers moved in to secure the stage from the storm, other participants who had been sitting, instead fo getting out of the pending storm jumped up to take the dancers places. The storm blew past the revealers partied on.
telegenic entertainers
As i looked around at the highly telegenic crowd of current communards, each more interesting than the last, i realized that the old adage was true. Kat‘s last book was cleverly called “Is it Utopia yet?” To which we occasionally answer “No, but on a good day you can see it from here.”
When my friend Alline Anderson wants to let others know that she has familiarity with a certain dynamic, she is wont to say, “This isn’t my first rodeo.” Being prone to metaphors, I’ve always cherished that turn of phrase.
A week ago Ma’ikwe and I concluded a round of our two-year training in integrated facilitation that was centered in the Southeast. The training is comprised of eight intensive three-day weekends, spaced approximately three months apart. While most weekends we spend the bulk of the 48 hours from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon prepping, delivering and debriefing live work with the host community, we depart from that routine on the final weekend. The last day of the last weekend (which took place seven days ago in North Carolina), the class meets all day to give each other reflections on how we’ve come to see that person and their development over the past two years. When we warned the class that it would take 6 hours, they scoffed (how much could there be to say?). It turned out the class was right. It took 8.5 hours—and nobody wanted to leave early.
Here’s the way we set it up. After taking care of logistics, 15 of us (13 students plus Ma’ikwe and me) settled into a circle of attention. As people felt called, one by one we assumed the spotlight. After offering some self-reflections about the two-year journey just concluded, that person moved into the center of the circle where they listened without comment as everyone, in turn, offered their concise statements (averaging two minutes each) about how they saw that person.
I had an overnight layover in New Orleans Tuesday, as I switched trains en route from Atlanta to Tucson, and Weekend 5 of my cross country odyssey. That gave me a chance to stroll the streets (always a good change of pace when you’re facing three straight sedentary days on the choo-choo) to see how the BP disaster was affecting oyster offerings in the Crescent City.
The answer: bivalves are still plentiful, if a bit smaller and not as firm as those succulent R-month darlings I remember lovingly from prior trips. My testing ground is the Acme Oyster House on Iberville in the French Quarter (which is surely where Wiley Coyote would have frequented if he’d gone for oysters with anything like the dertmination he displayed for road runners). I was impressed that there was a waiting line on the sidewalk (backed up by a New Orleans policeman) even at 9 pm on a Tuesday night in June. Talk about a solid reputation.
As I sandwiched myself onto a stool at the raw bar, I watched the Celtics claw back from a 12-point halftime deficit in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on their own parquet floor. I sucked down two glasses of Abita’s seasonal offering on tap, a bowl of chicken & andouille gumbo, two dozen raw oysters, and then topped it all off with a third dozen charbroiled and sprinkled with parmesan. Yum! I was feeling pretty good about my gustatory prowess until I glanced at the wall and noticed that you have to consume at least 30 dozen in one sitting to get your name mentioned, and the king of the hill was some dude from nearby Hammond who managed to slurp down 42-1/2 dozen (and still walk). Ufda. I wasn’t even within an order of magnitude of honorable mention!
I recently got an email from my friend Becca Krantz, asking for my views on a bush-full of thorny questions about how to run effective meetings. While the list is somewhat eclectic, they’re all worthy queries and I’m inspired to offer my responses as a blog series. Here’s what she asked:
1. Setting up meeting space—what are the minimally acceptable standards? [See my May 26 blog on Meeting Architecture]
2. Children in meetings—what's appropriate for the children and what’s appropriate for the adults? How might the answer vary by topic? [See my blog of May 29, Asking Children to Play in Traffic]
3. What considerations should be taken into account when determining how informally or formally to run meetings?
4. What can be done about getting input from and building consensus with people who don't come to meetings?
5. What are the pros and cons of rules in community?
Today I'll respond to the third question, examining the pros and cons of formality in how meetings are run.
Ma'ikwe and I just launched a two-year facilitation training in the Mid-Atlantic States this past weekend, and mostly it went well. At the outset there were a handful of participants unsure whether they wanted to commit to the full two years, and most of them converted after experiencing a dynamic opening weekend. Note however that I said "most" and not "all." There was one person sampling the training who came to the opposite conclusion, and I want to write today about her, about how my work can fall short even when it's mostly landing long.
Style Clash Partly our misfit was a matter of communication styles. Where I tend to be more orderly and disciplined about how I work with topics (image a honeybee systematically working a patch of white clover), this woman was more comfortable with a meandering and non-linear way of exchanging information (think butterfly flitting among the blossoms in a random pattern), where an agreed upon topic was more a point of departure than a destination.
After repeatedly experiencing my redirecting her comments to the topic at hand, she felt hemmed in and disrespected. I was reining in her enthusiasm and undercutting much of what she found pleasurable about meaningful discourse.
In addition, there was tension between us around pace. While I work purposefully with groups on how to speak on topic and as non-repetitively as possible (to respect time and preserve the opportunities for others to contribute to the conversation), this woman preferred spaciousness when it was her turn, so that she could present her ideas and relate her experiences in her own style and in multiple ways. Where I saw redundancy, she saw richness and nuance. Where I thought I was protecting the group (emphasizing balance and focus), she thought I was needing to be in control.
Acorn Community
Founded: 1993
Location: rural Virginia
Population: 16 adults, 3 children A community of work and play, and distributing rare heirloom seed varieties.
East Wind
Founded: 1973
Location: rural Missouri
Population: 65 adults, 11 children Doing things ourselves, individual freedom, stewarding our beautiful land.
Emma Goldman Finishing School
Founded: 1996
Location: urban Seattle
Population: 10 adults A social justice commune in the heart of Seattle.
Sandhill Farm
Founded: 1974
Location: rural Missouri
Pop: 7 adults, 2 children Organic homestead & child-friendly family of friends. Local and regional outreach projects.
Skyhouse
Founded: 1997
Location: rural Missouri
Population: 4 adults, 1 child An income-sharing group within a larger ecovillage, dedicated to sustainability.
Twin Oaks
Founded: 1967
Location: rural Virginia
Population: 90 adults, 13 children A long-term, stable community based on rich culture and diverse economy.
Dirt and Dreams is the E-mail Newsletter of the FEC. Dirt and Dreams will bring to you news about our communities, articles about our values, and clips of our art and culture.
