Cohousing and Peak Oil Video on Peak Moment TV
Monday, September 15th, 2008Peak Moment TV has a 30 minute video on cohousing featuring Bellingham Cohousing in Bellingham, WA.
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Monday, August 25th, 2008CNN has had two articles on community in the past few weeks, one on simple living and one on eco-communities in the UK.
The simple living article profiles a woman at the Keystone Ecological Urban Center in Chicago.
Keri Rainsberger isn't rich. She works in the nonprofit world for a relatively low-profit salary. Yet, as many Americans are scrimping for every penny, she hardly feels the pinch.
How is this possible?
For starters, she has no car and commutes by bicycle each workday. She also has no mortgage payment and chooses to live in an "intentional community," a partly shared space where $775 a month covers everything from utilities to meals.
Her private quarters -- larger and a bit more expensive than some -- are about 400 square feet, divided into a sitting room, a craft room and a small bedroom. She shares bathrooms, showers, a kitchen and a large dining room with 28 other residents whose ranks include young professionals, professors and retirees.
"It's like a college dormitory, but with better conversation," she often jokes.
The article claims that the poor economy is pushing more people to explore simple and cooperative living:
"The economy starts to tank. People get tired of it," says Daniel Howard, an expert in consumer research and behavior at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. "It's people saying, 'Let's get together and help one another.' And it works."
But those who advocate a simpler, less consumer-driven life say there are lessons in the strategies she and other intentional communities use.
By buying their food in bulk, for instance, Rainsberger and her neighbors spend $100 to $150 per person each month for meals. (Consider that the U.S. Department of Agriculture "thrifty plan" for a single person is $200 a month.)
The article comes around to point out someof the non-tangible benefits of community:
Rainsberger, whose closest family is in Ohio, savors the camaraderie.
"For me, to be able to walk out my door and have everybody in the hall know me, that's a really great experience," she says. "And if anything happens to me, I know there's somebody next door who'll take care of me."
The article on Eco-Communities stresses the sustainability focus of many intentional communities:
Communities that put an emphasis on green values range from isolated eco villages to sophisticated co-housing projects.
But where co-housing projects were once primarily intended as a return to a more collective, less isolated way of living, new projects often place an emphasis on sustainable living.
They mention Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm in New Hampshire and the UK community Living Villages. They go on to look at how widespread eco-communities might become:
Inherent to eco communities is their small scale. Not only does it provide the social glue that holds them together, it allows communal facilities and equipment, such as lawnmowers, to be shared, reducing the community's carbon footprint. But in a crowded world that size restriction limits how widespread these developments can become.
While these communities will never be for everyone, Berger maintains co-housing is a model for the future. "A lot of the basic concepts behind co-housing are applicable to larger housing developments," she says.
"Some of the principles could be woven in to conventional developments -- things like having the residential area car free, having a common house where you can eat communally from time to time, hold events, and have a children's room and games room for teenagers.
Read the Simple Living Article on CNN
Read the Eco Communities article on CNN
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Aquittal in Ganas Shooting
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008Becky James, the woman accused of shooting Ganas member Jeff Gross, was aquitted on all charges by a New York Jury.
A woman was cleared of all charges Monday in the shooting of a commune founder nearly killed by a shadowy figure on the stairwell of his compound.
The jury took less than five hours to acquit Rebekah Johnson of attempted murder and lesser charges in the May 2006 shooting of Jeffrey Gross. Johnson disappeared for nearly a year after the attack, setting off a huge manhunt and garnering five appearances on Fox's "America's Most Wanted."
If convicted, Johnson had faced up to 25 years in prison.
On May 29, 2006, Gross returned home from a movie, and in the dull light of a nearby lamp, he saw a gun pointed at him. He was shot six times, prosecutors said. The shooter apparently stepped over Gross before walking away.
Gross was convinced that Johnson fired the shots. Prosecutors said he was capable of identifying Johnson because he'd known her nearly 20 years, even though the stairwell was barely lit the night of the shooting.
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Sustainability Education at Findhorn Ecovillage
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008The Times Educational Supplement, a publication for teachers in the UK, has an article about the educational opportunities at Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland. The article starts with a brief nod to Findhorn's legendary gardens and faerie/angel culture but mostly focuses on the ecovillage's sustainability education programs. Here's an excerpt:
The Findhorn Foundation is a charitable trust earning income from activities as an education and conference centre, focusing on spiritual self-discovery, teaching how to live sustainably and a range of courses on the arts and healing.
The ecovillage, where community members experiment with new techniques for environmentally friendly living, won Best Practice designation from the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements in 1998. For more than 10 years, the foundation has engaged with the work of the UN as a non-government organisation, offering programmes in line with the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-14.
This community recorded the lowest eco-footprint in the industrialised world last year and is attracting the interest of politicians and others who would have given the place a wide berth until comparatively recently, according to Dawson. When he came here a decade ago, he felt it would have been political suicide for a local figure of substance to have been too closely identified with Findhorn as it was still considered a bit "away with the fairies". But he believes as the sustainability agenda has moved centre-stage, the way of life here doesn't seem quite so whacky to outsiders.
Read the article on Findhorn's sustainability education programs.
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Russian Religious Commune on ABC News
Thursday, June 26th, 2008ABC News' Nightline did a 10 minute spot on a 5,000 person Russian commune of followers of Vissarion, a spiritual leader who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Deep in the heart of Siberia's birch forests lies one of the largest and most remote religious communes of the planet. More than 5,000 people have left their families and their homes to move here and join the Church of the Last Testament, which has more than 10,000 followers worldwide. The church centers on one man. He is known simply as Vissarion, meaning "he who gives new life," or simply as the teacher, and he claims that he is Jesus Christ.
Life here is very basic. Vissarion's followers are strict vegetarians and they don't smoke or drink. The houses and churches are built from wood by hand and most of the energy comes from windmills and solar panels. At the followers' school, little boys are taught how to build model ships and young girls learn crochet and singing.
The villagers in the Abode of Dawn follow an almost entirely vegan diet, largely based on what they can grow themselves. When they move here, they give the church their pensions and whatever possessions they may have. In return they receive basics such as sugar, buckwheat and flour. No money is used within the community but they are given an allowance of 300 rubles, about $12, a month.
The piece has a fairly skeptical tone but the images of the community members show them as happy. Whether you agree with their spirituality or not, the images of a remote 5000 person community are striking and I'm sure it would be fascinating to seehow things work day to day.
See the video and read the article on the Russian Commune of Tiberkul
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Exploring Community in Western Mass
Thursday, June 19th, 2008The Valley Advocate out of Northampton, MA has an extensive article on intentional communities in western Massachusetts. The author starts her exploration in a book about Total Loss Farm, a community formed in the late sixties out of the peace movement. Amid concerns for peak oil and sustainability she heads off to explore a smattering of the current communities in her area.
Intentional communities, groups living in consciously designed and structured dwellings, roles and relationships, are on the rise in the U.S., according to statistics published on the website of the Federation of Intentional Communities. There are, at this writing, 50 intentional communities (14 of these "forming") in Massachusetts. Over a dozen of these are within a 45-minute drive of Northampton.
One stop is Laughing Dog Farm a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm on the site of the former Renaissance Community.
Laughing Dog Farm sits on a steep hillside with a view of the massive, 1970s shingle-style mansion of a dorm that housed many in the Renaissance Community from the mid-'70s to 1988. Daniel and Divya's house, another Renaissance Community relic of '70s architectural optimism and grooviness, is ample and was also built as a dormitory.
Daniel learned organic micro-agriculture farming techniques that produce a wide variety of crops: the integration of multi-use beds that are heavily mulched to retain moisture. He has a 65-foot long hoop-house, an arched tunnel of translucent plastic. The hoop-house produces tomatoes in November. Daniel and his wife Divya grow food for 10 families, who purchase shares of the yearly harvest and collect vegetables all growing season. The operation doesn't pay for itself yet.
They're making it work with sacrifice, and they've learned to grow enough food to live on—in case they need to one day. At one point during my tour I burst out, "But it all seems so hard." Daniel smiled.
Another stop is Sirius Community "a 30-year-old ecovillage in Shutesbury." She describes their community center and wind generator and their activities in the town of Shuttesbury where they are actively working through local political channels to get a windmill installed at the Town Hall.
Living in an intentional community does not necessitate giving up on civic participation and the local governmental structure. Rather, the community living ethic is well suited to the collaborative solution of pressing practical problems.
Next the author visits with miyaca (pronounced "me-yah-cha") dawn coyote who is founding a comunity called Healing Grace Sanctuary:
She hopes one day to live on her Shelburne Falls land in an intentional community that is "sacred, sane, and humane." The community of her dreams will adhere to her creed: "We need to become outdoor creatures that occasionally go in, and stop being indoor creatures who occasionally go out." Her ardent description of the future "Healing Grace Sanctuary" on the Intentional Communities web directory led me to her - the first person I met on this journey.
Her next stop is an urban Chirstian community, Nehemiah Community, a community focused on service and social justice:
Members of Nehemiah go out at night, looking for the homeless people that they know. They make sure they have blankets and food if there are no beds in the city's overflow shelters. They are aware of who dies. A new project they are organizing is a quadruplex in Springfield called The Village for single mothers and their children. Jonathan organizes Mission Phoenix, twice-weekly designated art space at Christ Church Cathedral in the Loaves and Fishes kitchen. The program provides free materials and art classes for low-income and homeless people. In 2006 they held the first holiday sale of their art.
She stops in next at Rocky Hill Cohousing:
At the more familiar and bourgeois end of the spectrum of intentional communities is Rocky Hill Cohousing in Florence. A condominium association, the development comprises 28 homes in 15 buildings (mostly handsome duplexes) on 28 acres....
The sequestering of all cars to a parking lot (homes face each other and share common land; residents use carts to bring groceries to their houses) encourages greater freedom for children, who are more apt to play together spontaneously when they see each other outdoors. Arranged play dates are no longer required for kids to play together. One oft-traded commodity there is childcare. Kids my son's age had roamed freely in the woods of the Sirius Community, too.
The article is a very positive portrayal of the variety of communities in the area and in the movement. I like this concluding quote:
Friends living with friends - it just may be the heart of the revolution.
Read the Valley Advocate article on intentional communities in western Massachusetts.
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Back to ‘The Land’ – Sixties Commune Reunion
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008InsideBay Area.com has an article about a group of communities that formed in the hills near Palo Alto, CA in the late sixties and early seventies with such names as Struggle Mountain, Rancho Diablo, Earth Ranch and most famously, "The Land". Most of these communes disbanded in the 70s but members reunited this year for the a 30th anniversary party.
War resisters, Vietnam veterans, 15-year-old runaways, lost souls, upper-class refugees looking for something "real" - these were the people who created The Land's warm embrace and gentle, conscientious lifestyle of simplicity starting in 1971. Singer Joan Baez helped establish the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence there in 1969. She and her husband, David Harris, a celebrated war resister who went to jail for refusing to serve in Vietnam, lived at Struggle Mountain, a commune that still thrives on upper Page Mill Road.
"We were nonconformists. We didn't want to wear suits and ties. We were against the war, we were against capitalism. Everyone wanted a back-to-nature experience, even though most people came from an upper-class experience," said Burns. "We're not living in a community like that anymore. If we had a chance to, I think a lot of people would go back."
They lived without electricity, cut wood to keep warm, and took water from a pure, sweet-tasting natural spring that flowed from the roots of a Bay tree. The front houses near the main barn did have electricity and running water.
Decisions were made by consensus. Residents operated a "cook house" and baked bread, kept chickens and horses. Food was easily earned though a co-op arrangement with a local market. Artisans painted stained-glass windows for the cabins, which were built from recycled wood. A group of men ran a shop where they struggled to keep their old cars, backhoes and tractors alive. They printed their own newsletter, "Barn Talk." They sent their children to a nearby school.
Some of the ideas they embraced, such as recycling and using compost to fertilize their gardens, were ahead of their time, said Thyme Siegel, who lived on The Land. "We lived lightly on the earth before it was a concept. We used gray water, we recycled. We thought we were the village of the future," said Siegel.
As a personal aside, when I was in college, living in a student co-op at Stanford, a former resident of one of these communes spoke to us and was describing how hard it was to get everyone together to make decisions, saying "To them, the revolution meant 'no meetings'". I'll never forget that quote, and it runs through my head every time someone complains about too many meetings.
One of these Palo Alto Hills communities is still around:
The last remaining commune at Struggle Mountain today includes 10 residents, including some boarders who help pay the rent. They eat together less often than they used to, and many have jobs outside the commune, but they still make decisions by consensus. It's a touchstone for an entire generation and a place for artists and musicians to share their work, said Mark Schneider, a longtime resident.
Read the whole article about The Land and other Palo Alto communes
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Cohousing News From Around the World
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 
In honor of the National Cohousing Conference which starts tomorrow in Boston, MA we'll do a little round up of cohousing in the news lately. This will also help me catch up on the news as I've gotten a little behind lately, in no small part due to the success of cohousing and its mainstream media appeal.
We'll start with the local Boston news. The Boston Metro News had a quick piece about the conference and highlights Jamaica Plain Cohousing.
This weekend, Bentley College in Waltham will host the 2008 National Cohousing Conference, an event that will focus on the growing number of cohousing communities - close-knit "mini-neighborhoods" that share common space, are environmentally-friendly and whose residents help each other out.
JP Cohousing consists of two buildings that house 30 multigenerational households in individual units, as well as a common house with dining rooms, a kitchen, offices and other communal areas, which resident Jeanne Goodman calls "an extension of our homes."
The common space helps to lower the community's carbon footprint, as well as to engender closeness and cooperation amongst the residents.
In Charlottesville, VA the C-ville paper has a nice piece about Blue Ridge Cohousing and some of the opposition they have faced from local neighbors:
Blue Ridge is a typical cohousing development. It consists of 26 houses, each individually owned, bought and sold. However, cars will be parked away from the houses, which are built close together. A historic house will serve as common space for meals and activities, and everything is pedestrian friendly. In many ways, the idea of cohousing exists as a cross between a traditional subdivision and a college dorm.
But during the approval process, some neighbors argued that 26 houses on the six-acre site was too dense for the outskirts of Crozet, which has already seen brisk growth. The nature of cohousing, putting housing close together to increase walking and preserve more green space, lends itself to being more dense than other traditional developments.
In Dallas, TX the Dallas Morning News had an extensive article about Wildflower Village the first senior cohousing community in Texas (ie only for older adults).
The Cedar Hill couple had considered other active-adult and senior-living communities where they might retire, but they were disappointed to find places that were too big or impersonal. That's when they joined a group of kindred spirits to build a close-knit community from scratch.
"We've planned for our retirement in reverse, I guess," Mr. Klipp said. "Typically, people pick out a community and then take their chances with the neighbors. Here, we've gotten to know our future neighbors as we've sat down to design our community."
The Nuwire Investor has an article, The Cohousing Life: Developments Bringing People Together which praises cohousing in general and has quotes from CoHo Ecovillage in Corvallis, OR and Puget Ridge Cohousing in Seattle, WA.
"It's all about community," said Colleen Dyrud of CoHo Ecovillage in Corvallis, Ore. "Not only knowing your neighbors, but sharing a piece of your life with them."
Forming a cohousing development is a process that can take several years. "It's been great so far, but it is still a long process," O'Brien said. "There is a big learning curve for a small group of us with no experience trying to put together a $12 million project."
Meanwhile in Sydney Australia the Sydney Morning Herald laments how cohousing has been slow to take off in Australia.
If Sydney co-housing follows the international model, it will not just be for hippies. In Sweden, everyone from doctors to teachers and lawyers chooses co-operative housing, with high status attached to membership. But while more than 360,000 Swedish apartments are part of co-housing, and the United States has more than 100 co-housing communities and 100 more being developed, it has been slow to take off in Australia.
So if you are at the cohousing conference, have fun, and if not you've got plenty of articles to read.
Articles Quoted:
Cohousing catching on in the Bay State - Boston Metro News
Cohousing creates community (and density) - Cville News and Arts
Dallas-Fort Worth group creating 1st Texas cohousing community - Dallas Morning News
The Cohousing Life: Developments Bringing People Together - NuWire Investor
Together to live better, yet still apart - Sydney Morning Herald
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City of Cleveland Promotes Cohousing
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008City officials in Cleveland, Ohio hosted a workshop with cohousing architect Chuck Durrett to explore the possibility of cohousing in Cleveland. This is a great step for the aging industrial city that is also the home of a burgeoning ecovillage project. Most cohousing is initiated by future residents or more recently by professional cohousing developers, but this is the first I've heard of a major city working to promote cohousing and help coalesce a forming group. They even have economic incentives in place that could help a group get started.
Cleveland officials and Cleveland State University are hosting a workshop today about the cooperative lifestyle in hopes cohousing will be part of the city's future.
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The idea for today's seminar began with Cleveland city planner Kim Scott, who first heard about cohousing eight years ago. The idea sounded appealing, especially as the divorced mother of six struggled to juggle commitments and relocate her aging mother.
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The city already offers some incentives, including 15-year tax abatement and $1 vacant lots for new homes that might attract groups interested in cohousing. Federal grants also are available for green and affordable communities.
Read the article on Cohousing in Cleveland
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Praise for Vibrant Neighborhoods
Thursday, June 5th, 2008While this blog generally focuses on intentional communities, we also try to promote creating community in whatever place you happen to live. These two articles caught our attention, as the extol the virtues of their authors neighborhoods and the sense of community they enjoy there.
Ruth Ann Smalley writes in the Schenectady, NY Daily Gazette about her neighborhood:
I came home one day just in time to catch my neighbor planting flowers in my front garden. I had admired several of his plants, and asked him if they would do well in shade and among tenacious tree roots. Little did I know he’d be so obliging!
We chose our neighborhood because of its reputation for being an old-fashioned neighborhood, where kids run in and out of each other’s houses. Since we’ve been here, we’ve been to ice cream socials, a children’s talent show, and all kinds of seasonal celebrations. One family hosts an annual August “Kid Wash,” where children in swimsuits soap up, and enjoy being sprayed by adults with garden hoses.
On a more serious note, last year 10 of us met for nine months to discuss sustainability issues, using a course packet from the Northwest Earth Institute. As a result, we started a neighborhood vegetable garden. A book club formed this year, as well as a “band” of about eight, who gather to play guitar, ukulele, hammered dulcimer, fiddle and flute.
Patricia Mikkelson writes on the neighborhood survival blog:
I feel so grateful for my Brown Farm Neighborhood. It has taken me a decade to appreciate this place. I have tried to move so many times it is not funny. I have wanted it to be something it might never be...an intentional community set up as a land trust. And, it is possible that some day it might happen. But for now, I bask in the glow of my wonderful neighborhood with all it’s imperfections and loveliness.
Let me give you an example of a few days in the life of my neighborhood, which is rich with opportunities to build a sense of community every day. A few days ago I came home to a note on my door from Alex, my next door neighbor. Alex is the daughter of people I used to know when we lived in Chimes 33 years ago. She offered to give me some plants if I wanted them. We got together the next day and I gratefully accepted the tomato, pepper and broccoli plants which she carefully planted from seed, varieties which were unique-ones that she found to be most successful. Wow! What a gift.
I went over to Martha and Josh Brown family house to see if I could get my weekly ration of left over food. We have an agreement that Martha cleans out her refrigerator of things that might go to waste otherwise, and I come up with all kinds of little treats that I normally wouldn’t use.
It has taken me a decade to learn to appreciate my neighborhood instead of focusing on the negative. The more that I appreciate the goodness of my neighborhood, the more good it becomes! At times, when I feel dissatisfied with my relationships with my neighbors, instead of complaining to others as I have in the past, I pray for them, appreciate the good things they do, and just remind myself that we all have needs we are trying to get met. I pray that all of our needs can get met, and that the barriers we have to love each other unconditionally will dissolve.
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