it’s been a few weeks since my last post. we’re still doing old-fashioned mondays, i still have a lot of crafty stuff to do. i still have laundry days and wash my things by hand (my clothes now, too, instead of just my cloth wipes), and we’ve had more snow since early december. here are a few photos from the past weeks.

orange and blue sunset

this beautiful horizon was  a nice surprise one evening as i went out back to bring my laundry in before dark. i love the silhoette of trees in the wintertime.

gloves from a cut up old sweater, fixed

i made these fingerless gloves in the winter of 2007 with two then-interns at acorn. we cut up a hole-ridden sweater from commie clothes and used dental floss to make gloves. i knew better than to attempt fingers with cut-up knitting. and now, two years later, the edges were getting awful ragged – and i finally had enough basic knitting skills to just pick up some of the hanging loops to keep it from unraveling further. other places required more creative measures.

This video appeared in the Russian Times website:
http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-12-14/us-american-communist-community.html#

i almost forgot! i meant to share a picture of our first snow. it was a lovely day – bad for driving, but great for staying in and sipping hot cocoa. i walked around late the next day to catch a few pictures. it was cold enough that even two days later patches of snow still lingered in the most shaded areas.

i grew up in rural pennsylvania, and really appreciate a good snowfall. i spent my elementary school years making forts in 5-foot snow drifts and sclupting snow turtles, tromping around in snow clothes knowing that Mom was waiting with hot chocolate when i got home. it’s nice to see snow come back to visit this year… i’ve been living in richmond and alabama for the past ten years, and the snow was… not plentiful, there, to say the least. i’m looking forward to hunkering down at acorn for a snowy winter.

here’s the wood pile outside of heartwood – we’re in the midst of a huge re-siding project, and this is the pile waiting to be de-nailed. needless to say, no de-nailing happened that day.

As the FIC's main administrator, I do a fair number of press interviews—about 2-3/month. Thus, I get a lot of practice coming up with sound bites that nuggetize the essence of community living. Up until recently, my favorite had been:

The essential challenge of cooperative living is learning how to disagree about non-trivial matters and have that be a unifying experience.

While I still like that one, lately I've been test driving a newer model:

Intentional community is about learning how to solve problems without running anyone over or leaving anyone behind—which is fundamentally different than the way problems are addressed in the mainstream culture.

While I reckon these two aphorisms are roughly equivalent, I like how the latter suggests culture shift (where the former has a whiff of mental jujitsu and sleight of hand about it).

As most people know, community comes in a kaleidoscope of sizes and flavors: from so big that you don't know everyone's name, to so few that there's nothing you don't know about each other; from the isolation of rural Wyoming to the urban density of Manhattan; from the sacred to the secular; from celibate to anything-that-moves sexuality. In short, the range is very wide.

One of the lesser appreciated spectra into which intentional communities sort is Degree of Engagement. To be sure, this is somewhat a matter of size (at my community, Sandhill, our five adult members eat dinner together most nights; at nearby Dancing Rabbit there aren't more than a handful of days in the year when all 45 members are on the property at the same time, which means that daily contact among members is necessarily more diffuse). However, there is more subtlety to it than that. It's also a matter of how frequently the group meets, how aligned the members are on the community's common values, and how the group solves problems. It's this last measure that I want to focus on here.

Here's a set of questions I've distilled from 22 years as a group process consultant. The answers, I believe, will be highly predictive of where your group lands on the Degree of Engagement spectrum.

Checklist for How Cooperatively Your Community Solves Problems

1. To what extent does the group welcome emotional input on problems?
As a species, we're hard-wired to have emotional responses. I don't mean we have strong emotional responses all the time; I'm only saying that they're not rare. Yet many groups don't know what to do with emotions when they enter the room, and basically take the ostrich approach—hoping they'll go away if the group pretends they're not there. Most groups have a meeting culture that says, in effect, that expressing strong emotions is immature and inappropriate. In consequence, most groups have brittle conversations about problems, because they're ever vigilant about suppressing strong feelings. Instead of figuring out how to harness passion, they harass it.

For those with high emotional intelligence (by which I mean they know things and respond more accurately in the emotional realm than rationally), meetings are stressful because they are not allowed to use their best language. If it's bad enough (maybe they're not bilingual), they'll stop coming to meetings. Worse, the group might take comfort in that development.

2. How dedicated is the group to hearing from everyone before entertaining proposed solutions?
Problem solving will both be more inclusive and more effective if the group develops the habit of making sure that everyone who wants to has had the chance to help define the problem before the group starts batting around potential solutions. When proposals are allowed to enter the conversation at any time (or worse, are encouraged at the outset as part of the introduction of the topic), those members who are slower to organize their thoughts, or who struggle to get air space may give up. To them, they face a Hobson's choice of either betraying their nature by pushing into the conversation, or giving up and trusting that the quicker and more assertive will take their unvoiced considerations into account. Good luck with that.

3. To what extent has the group been successful in creating an atmosphere of curiosity in the face of disagreement?
The essence of cooperative culture is encouraging a full expression of viewpoints (under the assumption that if everything is out on the table, then it will be easier to weigh and balance factors appropriately). If however, opposing opinions are met with resistance or hostility—rather than curiosity—then the speaker must gird their loin in preparation for an onslaught. Sometimes it won't be worth it, and alternate viewpoints will not surface.

4. How often do you hear "But… " as a person's first word in response to another's statement?
In the mainstream culture, we're used to doing battle when someone disagrees with our position (the most appalling tactics can be categorized under the euphemistic heading "healthy debate"), either through a vigorous defense or an aggressive counter-attack, challenging their premises or the flow of their logic. The key to inclusivity is responding to alternate opinions with openness and interest with the possibility in view that your mind might be changed (rather than fear that you'll be publicly humiliated as a consequence of another's idea being found superior to yours). Does the group understand the importance of creating a culture of curiosity in those moments?

5. Does the group have facilitators capable of consistently bridging between conflicted parties?
In the heat of the moment, we tend to revert to our deepest conditioning, rather than responding from of our loftiest ideals. In other words, if it appears that some matter close to the bone is not going our way, we tend to fight rather than cooperate, and it can make all the difference whether you have the capacity among your in-house facilitators to bridge between conflicted parties and help guide everyone back—with honor—from the brink of a fight that no one really wants.

6. How frequently does the community meet?
This is a loaded question. The facile answer should be, "as often as needed," yet the question beneath this is whether the group is avoiding meetings because they have no confidence in their going well. The group may be ducking issues, or loathe to tackle them with everyone in the room. if so, this is not a good sign and will surely indicate weakness in the group's cohesion.

7. Does the community regularly evaluate managers and committees?
While it may not be obvious why this indicator is on the list, many groups fall into a trap of allowing long-term members to remain in the same position of responsibility for years at a time without examination. While this is not inherently bad, it can be trouble if there is no way to discuss dissatisfaction with performance, or to review what the community really wants out of that position. When people become entrenched in positions of power and create fiefdoms, it leads to demoralization and undercuts the will to engage.

8. What effort is made to integrate new members into the community's culture?
Over time, communities inevitably create their own idiosyncratic culture. There becomes a "normal way things are done around here." For long-term members, this become second nature and is the air they breathe. For new folks this is all very mysterious, and it can be exhausting worrying over the possibility of committing a social faux pas that was never explained to them. It's like walking through a mine field blind. If new members are obliged to walk through that mine field alone, it takes an exceptionally tough person to weather more than few explosions and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Many will tend to get less venturesome. At best, this retards the integration process and prolongs the power gap between old and new. At worst, you'll lose the new person.
• • •
How did your group measure up? While it's up to the members of each group to decide for themselves how much they want to be in each other's lives, I've offered the Checklist above as a aid for groups to be able to achieve the level they want, rather than the best they can stumble into, guided only by good intentions.

If you like, think of it as a way to solve problems about how you solve problems.
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For three days this week, Terry O'Keefe (of Asheville NC) and I were visiting Acorn, an income-sharing community in central Virginia which operates Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a mail order business specializing in heirloom and organic vegetable seeds. We were conducting a preliminary examination of SESE operations with an eye toward seeing if we could offer them substantial help in improving both their bottom line and their member satisfaction. It was the initial field trial for GREEN EGGS—Guild for Relational Economics: Experts in Neighborly & Entrepreneurial Growth that is Green & Sustainable [see my blogs of July 26 & Oct 17, 2009 for more on this budding consortium].

Acorn is a community of about 23 members. It was started in 1993 as a spin-off of Twin Oaks, when that well-established income-sharing community was full to overflowing in the midst of the nation-wide surge of interest in community living in the early '90s (which was the last surge before the one that erupted in 2005 and continues today). Rather than build another residence, Twin Oaks decided to build another community—and Acorn was the offspring of that inspiration. Located just seven miles away, Acorn is an easy bike ride away from the mother ship.

One of my big attractions to Twin Oaks is that it is a place which inspires people to do things that other people are not even thinking about doing. To do things which some people think are impossible or at least incomprehensible. Caroline and Keyvah are doing such a thing today. Pairs of women get hitched all the time these days, but like their heterosexual counterparts, their primary motivation is their romantic connection to each other and secondary is their desire to have family together.

Both of these amazing women are key players in my son, Willow's life. And as only a parent can, i see their influence on him, Caroline's theatrics in the quirky YouTube videos they make together, Keyvah's "bored kid does complex math" tricks. And in a kind of spooky transference, Willow now seems to be able to tell when i am going to leave the room, moments before i actually get up and go - an art Caroline and Keyvah perfected sometime back.

And through this unorthodox home schooling they have built something Caroline coined "Framily". A fusion of friends and family. It turns out that the Nigerian proverb is right and it takes a village to raise a kid. But unlike the politicians and educators who spout this phrase i have seen it happen with my son and these amazing women and our fluidly designed framily.

And i am excited to be on this journey with them and know they will help guide their own extraordinary kids.

Hi everyone. This is Alline with this week’s update from Dancing Rabbit.

Ten years ago when I was living in a city in a mild climate, the weather didn’t affect me much. I went from my home to my car to whatever building I was going to. The weather was something that I observed from inside, through a window. It never snowed, was never icy, rarely flooded, rarely was very hot. Only a few weeks a year, when I went backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains did I really pay attention to the weather. There I learned to read the clouds, and familiarized myself with weather patterns and storm conditions. My safety depended on it and I found it really interesting. However, back in the city, this information went largely unused.

Now that I live in rural Northeastern Missouri all of that has changed. Weather has become an integral component to so much of what we do. We watch the clouds, listen to the weather report, and some of us even have the NOAA weather on the startup pages of our computers. We’ve all become like stereotypical “old folks,” always talking about the weather. Our power systems depend on sun and wind – when it is sunny and windy, our batteries are full and happy. Much of our food depends upon the weather - too much or too little of rain or sun or wind may mean the difference between an abundant harvest and a puny one (I have developed new empathy for farmers – what a wild ride they go on every single growing season!). We hang our laundry out to dry (we choose not to use electric or gas clothes dryers here, as they use a lot of power), utilize passive solar food dehydrators, and eat our meals outside whenever possible. Building season is also weather dependent – only interior work can be done in the rain, and we don’t like the straw bales with which we’re building to get wet, either.

Last weekend I was working with a 36-year-old community in northern California that was founded by Quaker activists. Among other things they wanted to spend half the weekend refining how they work with consensus. It's a great topic, and one that I wished more groups devoted time to—especially groups who supposedly operate by consensus.

Here are the four consensus questions the group wanted to tackle:

1. How to get back on track once the consideration veers into negative or unproductive behavior?

2. How do we define "blocking" and "standing aside," and what are individual and group rights & responsibilities when these surface?

3. When working a topic on which there's substantive disagreement about how to proceed, how do we work constructively with differences and foster an atmosphere of appreciation for people willing to surface their concerns?

4. How can we discern when our input is based on what's best for the group, in contrast with personal preferences?

Well, we didn't run out of things to talk about. In today's blog I want to share some insights that surfaced for me in connection with addressing Question #2—in particular, about how blocking is viewed. In subsequent blogs, I'll try to address the other questions.

Consensus (in some form or other) is the most common way that intentional communities make decisions. As a process consultant I'm often hired to help groups learn more deeply how consensus works and how to develop the culture in which it can flourish. (Unfortunately, many groups make the commitment to using consensus without acquiring a deep understanding or investing in training, and they get indifferent results.) How to understand and work with blocks is one of the most frequent questions about consensus that I field.

This past weekend I participated in the annual Twin Oaks Communities Conference, held Aug 14-16. Though the attendance was down markedly from past years (we didn't quite reach 100, and there have been years where we topped 250), it was nonetheless a solid event.

I've been going to this perennial wingding for more than a decade and it's a regular feature on my dance card. It's a terrific opportunity for seekers and wannabe communities to find each other and to be inspired by the stories of the 20 or so established communities who send representatives. For the newbies, it's a chance to be energized in the presence of people who are actually living the dream. For the veterans, it's a relaxed setting for renewing acquaintances, and slowing life down enough for in-depth conversations with thoughtful folks who have traveled all the way to the backwoods of rural Louisa County in an effort to make sense out of life.

[Years ago, when I was first making my appearance on the community circuit as a networker, the Twin Oaks conference stood out as a major deal. My life would accelerate into the chance to be on stage, talking about what we were learning at Sandhill about cooperative culture. It was like going to the circus, with all the attendant excitement and foment. Now, 30 years into it, I am thoroughly comfortable in my identity as a networker, and I experience the Twin Oaks conference as a time to relax and savor. What a shift! This past weekend I conducted three workshops, led singing at the Saturday morning opening circle, offered a public overview of FIC and Sandhill, helped run the benefit auction Saturday night, operated the conference bookstore (with the able help of my daughter Jo and my ex-partner Elke), and made sure I had about half a dozen conversations with fellow networkers. Today, I savor the Twin Oaks conference because of the ample opportunities around the edges—almost the exact opposite reason for which I used to protect the time. That's amusing.]

There had been some doubt about whether this year's event was going to happen, and a firm decision to continue wasn't made until two weeks before the event—which is pretty late in the day. The two people who had been coordinating the conference in recent years had both stepped back and there was a vacuum of leadership until Bucket (a Twin Oaks member) stepped forward at the last minute. As marketing was one of the casualties of the ambiguity, it's not surprising that attendance was down (even though interest in information about community living is at an all-time high). Bucket & Company did a great job however, at tailoring the event to the audience. With numbers down, they offered a stripped down menu of workshops and each one enjoyed the 10-25 participants it usually had. In whole-group circles, it took less time to do Go Rounds, where everyone added a piece about how the weekend was going for them.

The weather was gorgeous: no rain and temperatures below historic averages for August in the Virginia Piedmont (80s instead of 90s). As parking snafus tend to multiply in geometric proportion to attendance, this year was a breeze. The food lines were blessedly shorter. The coffee pot sustained its ability to dispense caffeine longer. Small can indeed be beautiful.

In recent years I've developed a workshop I style "Should You Join a Community or Start One?" and it was one of the three I offered last weekend. While it never attracts a large crowd, it tends to draw the people whose lives are dominated by that very question and I love doing it. One woman had knowledge of a large chunk of land available for "a song" in West Virginia, and she was anxious to seize the time. I assured her that in troubled times (while I'm not sure there is ever any other kind, there's no doubt that we're in them now) that there would be a plethora of properties available at distressed prices—that's what happens in hard times. I urged her to focus on the people, not the property. She was reassured, and it may have been the best thing I did all weekend.
• • •
At FIC we've learned not to attempt events unless we have coordinators in place in whom we have confidence. Twin Oaks is going through some soul-searching about what economic mix it wants in order to balance its budget and conferencing is one of the prospects they're considering for expansion. While I'm hoping that someone (Bucket?) steps forward to manage the conferencing business at Twin Oaks and I can continue to enjoy opportunities to pass along the tools and inspiration of community living, in the end, I respect Twin Oaks' need to wrestle with the question of whether this is who they want to be.

I don't know whether last weekend was a swan song or a point of celebration on the road to resurgence. It'll be intersting to see.
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Sandhill is heading for some changes. We're expecting a membership inversion this fall, and we've started talking about where we are and where we want to be, which is a compelling conversation.

See Change
While we've enjoyed remarkable stability over the course of our 35-year history, we'll be losing Käthe & Michael Nicosia this October. After seven years with us, they're returning to a piece of property they own in southern Missouri, where they used to live before coming north to join Sandhill in 2002. Käthe's son is builidng a home for them there and it's conveniently located between Käthe's two adult children: Andrew in northern Arkansas, and Molina in central Missouri.

Going the other way, we're expecting Joe & Trish (a couple in their late 20s) to join us this winter, along with their infant son. So although we're only be four adults and Renay (Gigi's 13-year-old who splits time between Sandhill and her father nearby) come October, we're fully expecting to be six adults and two children by next spring.

Last week, for the first time, the four members who will be the remaining adult core—Stan, Gigi, Apple, and me—met for the first time alone, to dip our collective toes into the water of Galadriel's mirror, peering into Sandhill's past, present, and future.

Knowing that we'll be seeing change, each of us painted a picture of what we wanted Sandhill to look like in five years. Not surprisingly, the responses substantially affirmed much of what we're now doing. We intend to stay the course when it comes to our strong commitment to growing our own organic food. We intend to remain small enough that we're more of an intentional family than a village. Still, there were some important departures from the status quo.

Sea Change
Stan and Apple voiced a clear desire that we return to a deeper level of engagement with one another—harkening back to what we'd created in the mid-90s, when we'd typically explore some modality of personal growth work as part of our annual retreat. In recent years we'd drifted away from working at a deeper level in meetings, and had even held fewer meetings. Much decision-making was handled on the fly over morning coffee, or during dinner on the front porch. Check-ins had gradually become more superficial (often more about agricultural observations than intimate disclosures).

In particular, there was less reliance on the group to create a container in which to resolve interpersonal tensions. Instead, there was more emphasis on being nice (or toughing it out when triggered by something another had done).

C Change
While I had an immediate positive response to Stan & Apple's request for more engagement among the members, Gigi was more cautious. She's been at Sandhill for 15 years and does not look back on the days of greater intensity with fondness. Reasonably enough, Gigi was translating the request for greater engagement as an invitation to work conflicts more regularly in the group, and this didn't excite her. She was thinking of "C" as in "Conflict," and altering our culture to intentionally spend more time in the lion's den did not feel safe.

Over the last decade, by far the prickliest dynamic among the membership has been between Gigi and me. We have substantially different styles, are fairly out there in expressing our views, and have frequently run afoul of each other. Our attempts to express this and sort it out in the group have not commonly gone well, and this informs Gigi's coolness about an invitation to "return to battle." In Gigi's view, we've tried a number of ways to help sort things out constructively and nothing has proven particularly effective. Why do it more?

While I substantially agree with Gigi's assessment of how successful we've been at working conflict in the past (meaning not very good), I have two reasons for being much more optimistic about doing better now: Stan and Apple.

In my experience, a group is much more likely to be successful in engaging with conflict if it has members with the gumption and skill to navigate emotional distress when they are not key stakeholders on the presenting issues. For the last decade, we've rarely had that. Now perhaps we do. And I'm eager to put this in place before Joe & Trish arrive.

[Ironically, working conflict is one of the bread-and-butter aspects of my group process consulting business. My experience in this volatile arena is one of most frequent reasons I get hired to work with groups, and yet this is of almost no value when I'm one of the players in the soup. While I'd know how to work with me, for most of the last 10 years at Sandhill there has been no one sufficiently neutral, skilled, and motivated to manage the dynamics that Gigi and I have manifested. As a result, there's a been a lot of suffering and it's no wonder that Gigi is chary of returning to the crucible.]

I'm buoyed by Stan & Apple's paired request that we shift the community's culture to disclose more with one another. While they're no doubt picturing this as a much richer stew than just devoting more time to working interpersonal tensions, there's also no doubt that they realize that conflict comes with the territory. The fact that they're willing to give is an exciting prospect for me.
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On September 12th,  Acorn’s seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, will once again present the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello on Montalto, the “High Mountain” over-looking Thomas Jefferson’s historic gardens. In conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, the day long festival will offer food tastings, a seed swap, and hands-on workshops and demonstrations.

PRESENTERS include:
Dr. Amy Goldman – Author of “The Heirloom Tomato” and Seed Savers Exchange Board President
William Woys Weaver – Food historian, author, contributing editor for Mother Earth News and curator of the Roughwood Seed Collection
Peter J. Hatch – Author of “The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello,” “Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture,” and Monticello Director of Gardens and Grounds
Barbara Pleasant – Author of “The Complete Compost Gardening Guide,” and contributing editor for Mother Earth News
Dr. David Bradshaw – Naturalist, professor emeritus of horticulture at Clemson University, and collector of heirloom seeds and their stories
Dr. Jeanine Davis – Author, “Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and other Woodland Medicinals”
Peggy Cornett – Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
Kathleen Maier – Director of Sacred Plant Traditions and Co-founder of Virginia Plant Savers

For updates on the program, news and presenters click here.

We hope to swap seeds with you there!

Last night we had a discussion of feminism at Acorn- it’s a complicated topic for us, for everybody. We call ourselves feminist in our propaganda, and we commit as members of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities to actively fight against oppression in all its forms. Do we do that? Are we feminist?

This took place in our Thursday night meeting- which is dedicated to weekly discussions of the larger issues, policies, and directions we want to take living at Acorn- in these meetings we discuss development, conflict, egalitarianism, the future of the business- one topic a week.

No one said in the meeting they were opposed to being feminist. But, as usual when you explore concepts, deviations arose between us concerning aims and means. What small, practical steps should we take? To what larger understandings should we commit?

One big question is our gender imbalance. We have more men than women members- though, in terms of interns, guests, visitors, and associates we’re pretty even in the number of men and women on the farm at any given time. This is a relatively new phenomenon at Acorn. Any group of small numbers can experience large statistical shifts because two or three people in a single demographic decide to leave- which is what happened here last year.

This is a big question for most communities- theories as to why abound. But, in general the working rule is men join communities much more quickly and in higher numbers than women. Nature, nurture, philosophical, political and social arguments can be made to explain, dispute or verify all of this. That’s not the point of this post.

The point is that we are talking about it. One participant in the discussion kept track of how many times men spoke and how many times women spoke in the meeting and found it proportional- men and women making room for each other, men differing with men, women differing with women, and topics ambling from gender politics to occupational opportunities, and from communication strategies to structural problems and recruitment realities.

Moving forward, we want to look at norms and policies changes, as well as to go deeper into the subject so we can come to a consensus on the main issue- that we are an actively feminist community, dedicated to listening to each other, seeing in ourselves our failings as others see them, and learning together ways out of old and destructive patterns.

We need to keep bringing this subject up- in our meetings, in our meal-time discussions, in the smoke shack, whenever someone feels shunted aside, or shut up by someone else. That’s the commitment we made last night.

Villages in the Sky, a festival in development, is using Acorn as a testbed for treehouse designs. According to the design blog, “The vision is to create a village of treehouses, in age appropriate loops- one for the adults and one for kids- to be enjoyed and played in by all.”  The Acorn project will work out the  kinks for a larger scale project for the week-long Villages in the Sky festival planned for the end of August 2010.

As described to us, Villages in the Sky seems to have three major goals- to be an “air” festival analogous to Burning Man (fire) and the Rainbow Gathering (earth); to promote wind energy as an alternative to nuclear and carbon fuel; and to move beyond the “leave no trace” ethic of those festivals by having a concrete impact- namely, leaving behind fun, attractive energy-generating wind structures.

Pilgrim, formerly of Twin Oaks and East Wind, has been directing a crew  clearing out debris from some old, fallen down trees and preparing the site in the woods behind Heartwood. Meanwhile, Gpaul, Ginger, Shal, and others are working up designs. We expect a lot of bustle this summer building the treehouses and getting ready for the Natural Building Workshop in October. And then a new seed office for SESE in 2010?

We just installed new forum software for the FEC website. Come take part in the discussion at the following link: http://thefec.org/forum

Ask current FEC members questions about their communities. Network with other folks with similar ideas and values. Take part in discussions about forming egalitarian communities!

Please comment with feedback on how we can make this site more useful to you!