Residents of Missouri's Dancing Rabbit test the limits of green living

Missouri is home to more than 50 "intentional communities," a broad term that includes communes, co-housing, and student co-ops.

Ecovillages also fall under that umbrella, but what sets them apart is residents' dedication to an intensely green lifestyle. At Dancing Rabbit, for example, residents grow their own food, shun private vehicle ownership and live off the grid in homes powered by solar and wind energy generated on site...

Homes at Dancing Rabbit range from the modest - one resident lives in a renovated school bus named Aubergine - to more ornate straw bale homes complete with full kitchens.

Read the full article here.

And check out the companion video presentation here.

JOHANNA BRONK wants to make communal vegetarian meals and keep chickens. Mariel Berger hopes for social, artistic and political collaborations. Harmony Hazard is into hula hooping, book groups and anarchism....The impetus for the group home or collective they hope to form is less about finances - though it is true that pooling resources yields better real estate - and more about community building.

Read the full article here.

A San Francisco couple's 12,000-mile bicycle tour around the country has connected them to a simpler life. It is also teaching them how to live a more sustainable lifestyle, a lesson they hope to spread via a feature-length documentary they are producing.

During their "bikepacking" journey, Mandy Creighton and Ryan Mlynarczyk are visiting more than 100 sustainable communities and co-ops, where they will be living and working alongside the residents, while also filming footage for a documentary titled "Within Reach."

Read the full article here.

Dubbed a "model village for the 21st century", Owenstown is the first attempt by the Scottish charity, the Hometown Foundation, to set up a sustainable community built on the twin pillars of cooperative governance and ecological sensitivity.

The 2000-acre greenfield site purchased by Robert Durward, one of the foundation's four trustees, is expected eventually to support an "optimum" population of around 20,000, generating some 8000 jobs as it grows.

Read the full article here.

A 'village' in upstate New York shows that you can nurture community values and tread lightly on the planet without forgoing modern living.

Read full article here.

When the Milepost 5 dream - a development where artists could work, and rent or buy affordable condos - took flight in 2007, Portland's condo market was still healthy. City leaders were getting serious about supporting the "creative class" considered essential to Portland's identity and economy. Milepost 5 represented an unprecedented marriage of private money and nonprofit idealism.

In the beginning, two buildings along Northeast 82nd Avenue were to be converted from their retirement-home origins into a utopia for artists who never dreamed of owning homes. In this "intentional community," residents would shape what Milepost 5 would become. This experiment would be the launching pad for other such projects around the city. When the first phase of the development was completed in April 2008, hopes were high. The sky was the limit.

Read the full article here.

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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

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.

New York Times

Associate Press

Staten Island Advance

Laird's Blog Entry

Visiting the Community Project on a sunny summer's day, it is easy to appreciate the appeal. The setting is idyllic - the buildings look out over a green valley, narrow paths wind between rambling undergrowth and abundant vegetation, while three horses in a paddock swish their tails lazily against the flies. Come teatime, the place is swarming with children conducting water-gun fights and larking about.

"It's awesome for kids," says Jed Novick, 49, a lecturer in journalism who moved here two years ago with his wife, Gilly Smith, 45, and their two daughters, Ellie, 12, and Loulou, 9. "They have such freedom and independence here, within safe walls."

Such a lifestyle appeals to many people, and the article also mentions the potential for the development of more co-housing projects in the future. A training center for would be co-housing founders, Threshold Centre at Cole Street Farm. The Times writes:

Fancy the idea of living communally? You could always found your own cohousing community. Alan Heeks, an ex-businessman with an MBA from Harvard, set up the Threshold Centre at Cole Street Farm, near Gillingham, Dorset, with a group of six like-minded friends in 2004, and runs regular workshops for those interested in cohousing. The basic principles are the same, although there are differences: the eight members share everything from home-grown vegetables to the washing machine, and are required to give 5% of the value of their property to the project when they sell.

Given the balanced article, I am suprised at its name, "Cohousing is the new name for commune living". Perhaps "commune" isn't such a charged word in the UK as it is in the US?

Read the full article here.

Boston.com, WFAA-8 (the ABC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth), and the Baltimore Sun are among the news outlets running an Associated Press article highlighting market trends toward "green" building. Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm, a co-housing development that just began construction in New Hampshire, is used as an example of what to expect in the future. They report:

Recent market research by McGraw-Hill Construction projects that the green building market could account for $20 billion in sales, or 10 percent of the overall homebuilding market, this year. Those figures are expected to double within five years.

Starting next year, the U.S. Green Building Council will begin applying a version of its Leadership in Energy Environmental Design rating system to entire neighborhoods rather than single buildings. A pilot program launched early last year attracted so much interest that officials accepted more than 200 proposals, twice the number they sought.

Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm is not part of the pilot program, but its 29 homes are being built to the council's highest certification standards.

Read more here [boston.com], here [WFAA-8], or here [Baltimore Sun].

Another green community is generating attention in Israel. The Jerusalem Post featured an article on Kibbutz Lotan's green environmental strategies, and communal social ethic. The eco-friendly policies are highlighted as a central feature of this kibbutz:

Everyone seems to share a commitment to the creative ecology that's become Lotan's hallmark. Its famous Center for Creative Ecology, with its recycled water-wetlands, the bird reserve, straw-bale building construction technology and a host of other recycling projects have attracted favorable attention the world over. Even the UN recognized Lotan's Ecovillage Design Education curriculum, a part of its Green Apprenticeship Program that attracts students for 10-week stints, housing them in straw-bale geodesic domes.

The article delves into some of the specific eco-friendly techniques implemented at Kibbutz Lotan.

In 1986, Lotan made the critical decision to go green. "I was a big recycler from the beginning," Alex says. "The kibbutz itself didn't start until later. Our first effort was to separate out organic waste for composting - and we immediately got into trouble. The regional authority came to empty our garbage cans, and they were empty. 'We're not coming in!' they warned us. They learned to love us - we reduced our waste by 70 percent. After that, we started getting more creative, recycling all kinds of things."

Water is among the things they recycle, not just once, but over and over. "For drinking water, recycled filters from the Eilat desalination plant are used in a reverse osmosis desalination plant that Mekorot - the national water company - maintains. Every house has two faucets: one for RO drinking water; the other for salty water, pumped from the aquifer. Everything that grows is watered with salty or recycled water. When water is short, you have to be creative."

In terms of building materials, creative doesn't begin to describe it. Here, buildings, benches and artistic flourishes of all kinds are constructed from recycled waste. Old tires packed tight with non-degradable plastic containers form the base, which is then covered with rock-hard "cement," local mud mixed with straw. It dries, and then several coats of Lotan's secret ingredient - used falafel oil - are painted on as a sealer. The result is incredibly beautiful. If it weren't for an occasional "truth window" - exposed parts showing the inside - it would be hard to believe what's underneath.

I imagine that a geodesic dome built from straw bales is a sight to behold!  Read the entire article here.

On the other hand, not every community labeled as "eco-friendly" is actually such. Buzz Blog reported on the UK's plan to build carbon-neutral "ecotowns" in February. The UK government's plan is to build town centers around sources of renewable energy, so that they have less of a carbon footprint. Opposition to this plan has cropped up from rural residents, who are upset that their rolling countryside and views of farms will be ruined by these new towns, and that they will have many new neighbors. Further, they argue that towns remote from work sites will increase commuter miles driven in cars.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

... the innovative plan is pitting urbanites' vision of green utopia against the ire of rural England, whose residents are loath to let their pristine environs be despoiled.

"This is completely the wrong site," says Pete Seaward of Weston, a village in Oxfordshire shortlisted as an ecotown. He holds up a scenic picture of a local lake. "If they're saying that it is 'eco' to build on and fill in a lake like that, they are dreaming."

Ron Field, chairman of the parish council at Ford, another site on the eco-village shortlist, adds that there is huge local concern that this is just another ruse to allow developers to make money.

"We don't want it because it's plunked in the middle of a small hamlet in between two coastal towns which they spent millions and millions of pounds trying to regenerate," he says.

"They're building it on 600 acres of green field land which is used for growing food crops to feed the people that live in our area, and it's all done as far as we can see for money."

I find it hard to believe a lake would be drained to build an ecovillage, and wonder whether these are exaggerations on the part of villagers irate about something else. I wonder whether there is any other analysis of these "eco-towns".

Both articles highlight these accomplishments, as well as Kinkade's move in and out of the communes she helped form. The New York Times wrote of Kinkade's involvement in the early years of Twin Oaks:

It was not easy. The farm's well ran dry, cows starved over the winter and rammed-earth bricks did not generate the kind of revenue that the founders had hoped for. Pot-smoking hippies who drifted into the commune found themselves at odds with work-ethic missionaries like Ms. Kinkade, whose blunt practicality and executive talent - rare qualities in the counterculture - helped the stumbling colony achieve not just self-sufficiency but something resembling prosperity.

"She was the Hillary Clinton of Twin Oaks," her daughter said.

Ultimately, Twin Oaks succeeded, and Kinkade put her energy into founding other communities. The Washington Post wrote:

Unlike thousands of other communes that sprang up in the 1960s only to succumb to the perplexities of shared living, Twin Oaks gradually began to flourish, despite early hardship and dissension. It grew to almost a hundred communards, became a self-sustaining land trust of 450 efficiently managed acres and began to thrive financially when it signed a long-term contract with Pier 1 for its hammocks.

Although she was involved in founding two other income-sharing communities -- in Missouri and Virginia -- she told The Post in 1998 that communal life had not measured up to her expectations.

"My mother was disappointed that Twin Oaks did not turn out to be the model for what the rest of our society would be," said her daughter, Dr. Josie Kinkade of Louisa, Va. "When she found out that it was really just a nice place for some middle-class people to live, she was disappointed."

Although, I suspect that few kitchens in middle-class homes contain a cross-stitch sampler reading, "From each according to their need, to each according to their ability".

Read the full articles here [New York Times] and here [Washington Post].

Hundredfold Farm is a co-housing community in Adams County. It is a neighborhood created at first as a way to preserve farmland.

The neighborhood sits in the middle of an operating 80 acre Christmas tree farm, which each homeowner, owns an equal part of. With seven homes complete, eventually 14 homes will sit on just six acres of the farm, preserving the rest of the land.

...

The layout of the community is designed after a small village, where neighbors are a close by and close with each other. The idea for the farm was created 10 years ago. This is the first neighborhood of its kind in Pennsylvania.

Read the article (with video).

Hundredfold Farm was mentioned previously on Buzz Blog as a possible campaign stop of Barack Obama during the Democratic primary.  It's unclear whether that stop actually took place.

It has also been featured on FOX 43 News of York, PA in a 2- part viedo series (1) (2)

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.

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

The residents of this 2,000-square-foot house are part of a Christian lifestyle called New Monasticism, reflecting what they think Jesus would do about poverty and consumerism in today's world.

They share bills, chores and prayer and live on limited means. They started a church and give to the poor and travel to serve Third World countries. By pooling their resources in blighted areas, they feel they can accomplish more than they would in the suburbs, alone.

The FIC directory includes at least one mention of this network, a forming community called The Magdaline House, but it appears they are setting up their own directory of communities on their web site.

Read the article in the St. Petersburg Times about Christian Communities

Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don't know the people who live next door?

Maybe my neighbors didn't mind living this way, but I did. I wanted to get to know the people whose houses I passed each day - not just what they do for a living and how many children they have, but the depth of their experience and what kind of people they are.

Frankly, this reminds me precisely of what my parents have done in every neighborhood they've ever lived in. Knock on doors. Invite folks over for dinner. Start a phone list, let everyone know the kid's birthdays. They once held a fundraiser for one man's experimental cancer treatment that was mostly not covered by insurance. A car dealer donated a car for a raffle, and $25 tickets were sold. They've never, as far as I know, gone so far as to invite themselves on a sleepover, but there is a real sense of community that grows in every place they've lived.

Read the article on Creating Community in Your Neighborhood

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.

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

In the foothills of the Tucson Mountains west of town, the residents of Milagro Co-housing have mastered the water-capture business. All the water that falls on Milagro, and all the water used in the 28 homes there, is kept on site by careful design.

Six years after the community was built, the mature landscaping of its common areas has created a climate considerably cooler than the desert that surrounds Milagro and the asphalt-crazy city down the hill.

"In summer, when I wear shorts, I can feel the cold air drainage, like water, flowing on my legs," said Bob Gilby, one of the original residents. "Once you build something like this, the treats come fast, furious and cheap."

Brad Lancaster, who co-designed the water capture systems at Milagro with David Confer, calls that feeling "the bun dance of abundance" in his many presentations to local groups.

Read the article about water conservation at Milagro Cohousing.

The children who were removed and the parents to whom they are returned seem like strangers from a distant world (or time) to you. But not to me. When I listen to the media describing their lives, they feel like distant kin. As the story unfolded, I found that I had more in common with these children than with people bringing me news of them.

Kinkade describes growing up with multiple caregivers and parent-level connections with those not biologically related to her:

Yet like the FLDS children, I grew up in a place where my "normal" was far enough from the average American childhood to make Dick and Jane books read like cultural anthropology. Like the FLDS children, my caregivers were nearly innumerable. Sometimes, it seemed as if nobody in particular was raising us. The most striking similarity between my life and theirs is the sense of division you feel when you grow up somewhere that defines itself as an alternative to the dominant culture. The boundaries of the property become the boundaries of ideology, dividing right from wrong, us from them. I no longer read the division as a moral issue, but I still see a divide. That's why, particularly when the news is of "outsiders," I read the newscasters as closely as the news itself and remember my own childhood.

As a child, the grown-up I was closest to cooked my homemade mac and cheese (before the hippies learned to cook tofu in any edible form) and was the only one who could get me to take a bath. She had two long-term relationships during my childhood and had them simultaneously. Biologically speaking, she wasn't my mother - but saying so is emotionally false. When I woke up from a nightmare (in the room I shared with a girl who is not my sister, but there is no better term to describe the person with whom I shared a room for 10 years and on whom I attempted to blame most of my childhood's high crimes and misdemeanors), I would walk up two flights of stairs to be comforted by the purveyor of mac and cheese, warmth, and safety. On certain days of the week, there would be a black-haired man next to her; on other days, a blond. I knew these men tangentially, knew they were her lovers, and didn't give them much thought. Whichever man it was would shove over. I would crawl under the blankets. She would put an arm around me.

Kinkade gives great commentary on the media's relationship to those whose lives are alien to their own (and those of their viewers/readers):

Underneath the desire to embrace cultural relativism and alternative definitions of family lurks a deep inability to reconcile the children who were taken into state custody with America's picture of itself. Americans might have an extremely generous and expansive notion of alternative lifestyle choices. But our notions of what constitutes an acceptable childhood occupy a very narrow bandwidth. Given the hairline margin for deviation, it isn't really surprising that the state of Texas' desire to protect the FLDS children resulted in chaos.

Its nice to see more public commentary on this topic from those with community experience.

Read the whole Slate article

June 24: This article was republished in the print newspaper, Dallas Morning News.