Twin Oaks Community

This note would have you believe we store our bread in filing cabinets, which is untrue

If you look very closely, you can see this was written on an old-school people finder page. Our brand of behaviorism includes starting the week on Friday instead of Sunday.

[Trigger warning.  This post including images of graphic violence against women and  "rape jokes".]

Last week i got banned from the Reddit polyamory page and lost my friending privileges on Facebook.  Neither of these were intentional results, but rather my failings to read the appropriate user manuals for operating these long lever technologies.

My relation with Reddit has been troubled from the start.  They dont actually want users like me, who are posting content (my blog and other stuff) more than they are commenting on and reading the posts that other people have put up.  So when i put up on the polyamory subreddit the link to the clever polyamory comic by Tekvah, i exceeded some unpublished magic ratio of posts to comments and got permanently banned.

Facebook was more forgiving.  I was emailing participants to the new, improved Loud Love event next weekend.  Because i was not current FB friend with all the people i was writing i tripped some spam protection filter and got banned from emailing non-friends but just for a week.

i have occasionally said “We know that community is the answer, we are just trying to figure out what the question is.”  There is a parallel joke about social networks, we recognize there is incredible potential, but tapping it remains oft illusive.  Though this week i have be seeing several likely possibilities.

So many of the original participants were unhappy with the organizes cancelling the Loud Love event we have decided to put on a simpler, smaller, cheaper and safer event.  It will be the same dates and location as the original.

It is simpler in that it uses entirely open space technology.  This means we are not bringing in any expert presenters, tho some are still coming and the group which attends the event will decide what types of workshops they want, based on the offerings made by all the participants.

This event is likely to be much smaller, perhaps 25 to 35 people than what we had originally planned for.  We will probably only run a couple of workshops at a time and the atmosphere will probably be even more informal than the original event, as we push more responsibility onto the participants. 

Because we are not paying out of town presenters and we are no longer reimbursing anyones travel cost, because we are not providing food, because all the “organizers” have to pay the registration fee, the per person cost for the weekend will be $25, for camping on site and if you want to stay in the bunk beds in the air conditions conference building it will cost you $75.  This is basically our cost of housing to Sofia House.  Thus the event is much cheaper than originially planned.

The event is safer from an organizers perspective because there is not a minimum number of paid registrants needed to “break even”, Sofia House rents us the space on a per person basis, so even if the event is tiny we will be okay.

You should still register for the event so we know you are coming, and plan to talk and perhaps even present on the sexy consent and healthy relationship topics that Loud Love still wants to explore. 

I think there are three principal classes of what i call catastrophic risk technologies:  nuclear, genetic modification, nanotechnology.  In each of these three cases the technopiles and capitalists are mostly winning, though we are pushing back in nuclear.  In each of these three cases, relatively accessible mistakes can have global detrimental impacts.

we are what we eat

As of this writing there are 395 protests worldwide scheduled for this May 25th (this coming Saturday) against Monsanto for its work on genetically modified organisms.   Of these 230 are in the US, which seems appropriate given Monsanto is a US creation.  Fortunately, i will be able to go to the protest in Washington DC.  [Which in this case is especially aptly called Death City]. Stay tuned for pictures of this protest.

Things look bad.  We are at 400 ppm carbon in the atmosphere.  The Syrian civil war hurls clusters of lit matches into the tinder box of the Middle East.  And fear of terrorism in the US allows cities to be shut down while the police search for a crazed teenager.

But despite this, and many more depressing examples, there are compelling cases to be made to be hopeful.  Especially, if that hopefulness gets you off your chair and into action.  The case for hope is well made by Rebecca Solnit, who is the sister of my dear friend and activist titan Davd Solnit.

In her new book Too Soon to Tell, the Case for Hope she makes the following point.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

I moved to Twin Oaks about 12 years ago, and about four years in, it became apparent to me that I was going to be a parent (the rapidly swelling midsection of my partner helped to tip me off).  So I figured, as long as I was going to be raising a kid or two on the farm, they might as well be farm kids.  

I moved to Twin Oaks about 12 years ago, and about four years in, it became apparent to me that I was going to be a parent (the rapidly swelling midsection of my partner helped to tip me off).  So I figured, as long as I was going to be raising a kid or two on the farm, they might as well be farm kids.  In my mind, I had visions of old fashioned rural existence, with all the little ones pitching in to slop the hogs and weed the ‘tater patch.

A few months passed, and I found myself the father of a son.  A few more years passed, and I found myself the father of a second son.  A few more years passed, and I realized that it can be easier to envision having the kids help out on the farm than it is to actualize that vision.  For one, Twin Oaks can be a daunting place for child agricultural labor.  The garden is not in fact a particularly child-friendly area.  Our “farm” area is full of scary machinery and whirring blades, the cows are enormous and stompy, and the milking area is also full of intimidating machinery.  Plus, in order to get the kids involved with these areas, I would also have to be involved in the areas, which (aside from the occasional garden shift) wasn’t the way my work scene seemed to be working out.

Then, I had a revelation– chickens!  Chickens are far less intimidating than cows, far more durable than tender seedlings.  They’re cute (if you’re into that sort of thing), tasty, and provide eggs (which have provided roughly half of my kids’ total caloric intake over the course of their lives). Plus, taking care of the chickens worked well with my childcare schedule– I’d have the kids on my “chicken chore” days, and chicken chores on my “me & the kids” days.  And what could be more ideal farm-childhood-picturesque than hardworking children feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, and generally making themselves useful?

We’re cutting hay! In order to support our cattle over the winter when fresh grass isn’t so plentiful, we make hay in the summer. The first hay cutting, of three, usually takes place in early May, as soon as there’s a window of dry weather forecasted. It always feels like it should be a holiday, celebrated with a little festival. Warmth! Bounty! Tractors! It’s fun, though I don’t know if most people are as excited by it as I am.

I’ve only helped out with hay a little in the past, but being on the regular crew is a dream job of mine. Making hay is a four-step process: mowing, tedding, raking, and baling. Mowing is simply cutting the long grass. Tedding involves an implement that roughly resembles several big spiders, with “legs” that revolve rapidly, agitating the grass so that it dries out more quickly. The grass is then raked into windrows, which are formed into bales by the baler.

Here’s what this year’s first cutting looked like:

Tall grass fed by all the spring rain, ready to be hayed.

The mower

High South pasture after being mowed

Not all reactors are created equal.  In the global fight against nuclear power, there are some especially dangerous reactor types which clean energy activists take unusual pleasure in shutting down.  I remember the day (in June of 1997) i heard that the French SuperFenix breeder reactor was going to be shut down permanently.  I whooped so loud the folks in the WISE office all looked at me funny.

Monju – It took a fault line and 3 meltdowns to kill it

It looks like it will be time for another loud noise soon.  Japan’s Monju breeder reactor is sitting on top of an active fault line and this plus the countries new more strict nuclear regulator plus the unusually poor management of the plant, might just be enough to shut it down.

I hear there’s a list on the Today Board, about twenty names long, of those on the farm known to have the recent plague.  Mostly people started in the middle of the night, but there have been some later cases.  I know I was lying in bed, sleepless and moaning, wondering whether it was from the dumpstered iced coffee or unwashed hands on salad greens.  In morning, I found out I was not alone, though thankfully I didn’t have to vie for toilet time in my SLG the way they did in Harmony.

Symptoms (that I know of): nausea, puking, diarrhea, stomach cramps, headache, body ache, lethargy.  Side effects of dehydration and hunger.  Prevailing theory says virus.

Lucky for me, a few people checked in on me, and someone brought me dinner and my labor sheet.  Turns out someone also made an afternoon town trip to buy saltine crackers, ginger ale, and rehydration beverage for all the sickies.  In my one trip to the kitchen today, I saw the crackers with the masking tape label, “SICK.”  It was sort of adorable, and I might have got my camera for a photograph if it didn’t require an extra trip of slowly shuffling along between buildings while clutching myself.

Continuing to stay in bed is a good decision.

I have been a terrible mood for the last few days, which i will write about in a another post.  But this article on Buycott really made me smile.  The short version is this app (written by a lone 26 year old over the last 16 months) has the capacity to scan a bar code on something you are thinking of buying with your cell phone and see the corporate lineage of what you are considering buying.

This answers the question, which has been asked recently “How do i boycott the Koch Brothers or Monsanto?”

partial display of buycott screen example.

What is exciting (but potentially deceptive) is that this app reached number 10 in the downloads nationally within hours of it being released (tho they had to ultimately pull the droid version because of some bug).  The Forbes article points out that for some things (like conventional breakfast) nasty corporate domination as set in, in a way which will make it difficult to have any conventional breakfast.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

Twice now I've scheduled time to dehorn the newest round of calves (we cauterize them).  Both times, Mushroom has wrangled them and held them down while I give lidocaine injections (which is rather stressful, really).  And then!  Ugh!  And then we call it off.

The first time, the vet showed up.  I had called her earlier in the day, and she showed up when she could without  a callback. 

Read more… 108 more words

One of the pieces of community life i dont touch, but i appreciate those who do. A story of when the dairy program gets rough.

Shopping for clothes has become one of my favorite activities living at Twin Oaks, and I get to indulge in it almost daily. Thanks to our sharing technologies, it doesn’t cost a dime. Commie Clothes is a shared bank of clothing at Twin Oaks, made up of donations from members, ex-members, friends of community, and whoever else wants to toss some clothing. The result is a hip, free thrift shop fifty paces from my bedroom. While the community does not begrudge anyone a large personal wardrobe, one is far from necessary. Any member may, as I do, pull clothes off the rack at the beginning of the day and toss them back the next morning, to be washed by a helpful communard fulfilling cos labor requirements for the community. While this creates more work for those doing public laundry, it keeps clothing free for members to use. This is a tradeoff  that follows from this method of sharing.

Twice now I’ve scheduled time to dehorn the newest round of calves (we cauterize them).  Both times, Mushroom has wrangled them and held them down while I give lidocaine injections (which is rather stressful, really).  And then!  Ugh!  And then we call it off.

The first time, the vet showed up.  I had called her earlier in the day, and she showed up when she could without  a callback.  This is usually great!  But not that time.  I was feelin’ so good about doing so many successful injections, and then I had to stop.  Ugh.  Threw me off for hours.

And today, Mushroom and I just happened to have a block of time free, so we decided to dehorn, and the goddamn power was out.  We didn’t notice it until after giving the injections.  Just in the barn!  The rest of the community? Totally fine.

I might even have to hand-milk tonight, which is not what I want to be doing.

Also my pants are covered in cow shit and blood.  Day in the life.

DH has a yellow thing.

Twin Oaks’ writing culture appeals to me. Mostly. We have a variety of structures in place to write to each other here; optimistically, this allows people to get in touch faster, communicate to a broader swath of the community (most of our written infrastructure developed pre-internet, of course). The darker perspective, and one I don’t really buy most of the time, is that we wish to avoid face-to-face communication with one another, so have created elaborate systems to not have to do so.

Woowooealistically, it has been pointed out that Twin Oaks, “born” on June 16th, is a Gemini, which in astrology is the sign noted to be most communicative, especially using written language. (Incidentally, June 16th is also Bloomsday, the date in which James Jocye’s Ulysses is set. On at least one occasion, our anniversary celebrations included a reading from the novel, and one time a group of a few folks, including myself, made vows to read the whole book by the following June 16th. I did not succeed, though it turned out I was in good company in my failure.)

The last day for our Early Bird Discount will by May 31st, so if you know you’re coming you should register by then!

Current rates can be found here.  Basic rates for staying Friday and Saturday nights are $75 for camping, $155 for the Sophia House retreat center, and $175 for the Aurora Visitor Cabin.

This is how you may look if you miss the Early Bird Discount.

Rates will increase by $15 on June 1st! That’s $15 more Friday and Saturday nights.  The additional fees for staying additional nights will also go up by $15 each.

Rates will go up again 1 week before the event.

What is especially satisfying it to bump into an organizer who has complimentary skill sets with another organizer.  So it is with Irena at Acorn.  She is good at staying on task, definitely one of my weaknesses.  We work together on several things, the Communities Conference, the mechanics of the Seed business and most recently on the UVa dumpster dive.

Irena kept pushing me to work with the gal who runs the sustainability program for UVa, and thus got us pre-qualified for Chuck It for Charity, which is UVa’s answer to the growing dumpster diving “problem” that they face at the end of the academic year.  But to understand this “problem” you need some back ground.

All the attire, courtesy of UVa dumpsters.

UVa is a large affluent school in Charlottesville, the nearest big city to Twin Oaks and Acorn.  The academic calendar is design so that the last day of exams is the day before all the students need to be out of their dorm rooms.  So of course all of the students carefully manage their time so that they get their studying done for their exams early enough so they can pack all their stuff in time for the move out deadline.  And if you believe this, you apparently never went to college.

Twin Oaks has many different jobs you can do — indoor and outdoor, domestic and income-producing, manual and sit-down. The diverse work scene is a selling point to many people who decide to move here. They are tired of doing the same job 40 hours per week. At Twin Oaks, almost no one does one job all the time. Still, new members tend to have more diverse work scenes than members who have been around longer. The trajectory seems to be that after a few months, people realize which jobs they like the best and focus on those. Toward the end of my last membership, I was mostly doing tofu packaging and working in our community garden.

sage I labeled for the workshop

Since I am just returning from PAL, I don’t have a “work scene” yet. In the last week, I’ve gotten to do some jobs that I would never had done when I was preoccupied with garden and tofu. For instance, a few days ago, I labeled some plants for Hildegarde’s herb workshop that’s coming up in a few weeks. In my two years of living at Twin Oaks, I’d never worked in the herb garden. It was fun.