Posts Tagged ‘communes’
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
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 Meredith Medland of Living Green interviews Diana Leafe Christian on the subject of Ecovillages and Intentional Communities in this 24-minute podcast.
Diana was the editor of Communities Magazine for 14 years and is now the editor of the Ecovillages online newsletter. She is the author of two books Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community and Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities.
Diana shares her immense experience of community living and the communities movement in this interview. Here's some highlights:
I feel like I'm in a network of a lot of brothers and sisters and cousins. I feel like I'm living inside of a family of likeminded people going towards the goals of learning how to live more ecologically and economically and socially sustainably, and also we're learning, we're teaching what we learn to others through classes and workshops.
I got interested in intentional communities because I, like thousands and thousands of people across the country, this is in the early 90's, I began to feel like something was missing and I finally could feel my way to identify that what it was, was community.
Diana goes on to describe "13 kinds of Intentional Communities" including ecovillages, cohousing, communes, christian communities, other spiritual communities, retreat centers, student co-ops, and more.
She even explains how to find the community oyu are looking for:
Well, when you're checking communities out on the internet, and the website you need to know about is directory.ic.org, where you can look up any community by its name alphabetically or you can go to any state or province or country and look up the community. It's North America based, so you'll find most communities in the US and Canada, and then you can read the listing about the community and you can read their website if they've got one. Here's some things to look for: does the community have a lot of people? Do they have land and have they been there for a number of years? That tells me that they actually exist as a community. Read their mission and purpose. Is it in alignment with yours? Could you make a living there? Is it in the part of the country that you're interested in? Is there internal community finances, one that you like, income sharing, independent income? How would you make a living? What are the annuals dues and fees? What's the joining fee? How can you, can you afford it?
Diana gives a vision of the future where community is much more common:
Meredith asks: If you look ahead thirty years from today, what kind of transition and awakenings and new emergings do you think are going to be happening in the co-housing and intentional communities based?
Diana Leafe Christian: Well I think that many, many more people will be living in various kinds of intentional communities, including ecologically oriented ones like Eco Villages in cities and towns out in the country, I think that income sharing communities and independent income communities will be everywhere, and food co-ops and worker owned co-ops will be everywhere. People will be getting around I would say by bicycle and donkey cart and not using petroleum and using all kinds of transportation methods from olden times, people will be growing their own foods in urban areas, on their rooftops, on their balconies and in public parks in the median strips just like in Havana today, and people will be growing most of their food in towns and in rural areas because of the industrial shifts without petroleum.
This podcast is a great overview of intentional communities and a great listen. There are also a ton of community resources in Diana's bio on the site.
Listen to the Ecovillage interview with Diana Leafe Christian (also includes a full transcript).
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, communes, Creating a Life Together, Diana Leafe Christian, ecovillages, Living Green
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
NPR recently did a three part series on a spiritual community from the 60s called The Source. The Source originated as one of the first natural foods restaurant and grew into a spiritual commune with an ex-marine turned charismatic leader called Father Yod.
Founded by ex-Marine Jim Baker nearly four decades ago, the restaurant quickly drew Hollywood's creative elite; John Lennon, Warren Beatty and Paul Mazursky were regulars. Other young men and women from across the country flocked there in search of something "cosmic," and many never left.
Before and after hours, in meditation classes, Source employees were becoming a spiritual family.
Eventually, around 30 staff members and regulars moved into a mansion together in Griffith Park. In their first year at the "Mother House," the family expanded to nearly 200.
Baker, too, was transforming, from his old self to spiritual leader Father Yod. It was the dawn of a new way of life.
The three part series includes over 20 minutes of audio as well as a slideshow and some interesting notes from the reporter who got swept up in the Source reunion:
Even after the Source reunion I'd attended was over, I couldn't wake up after sunrise. Alone at home, I took up the predawn meditation routine Father Yod developed in the '70s: breathing exercises, followed by chanting and a carefully brewed cup of coffee. After a few weeks, I started noticing a shift in my mental state. Father Yod's teachings unexpectedly began to resonate. Suddenly, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to stop eating meat. So I did.
All in all a fascinating look at communal history.
Listen and read the NPR story on the historic commune The Source.
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Related Posts Tags: California, communes, NPR, The Source
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Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Baby boomers are looking at moving into shared living and communal living according to the article Boomers go back to the commune in retirement on BankRate.com. Normally when a headline has the words 'commune' and 'boomers' in it they usually mean cohousing but this article is really about income-sharing communal groups.
FIC's directory lists about 100,000 people around the nation living in some form of purposely organized community, of which, Laird Schaub says, about 1-in-7 to as many as 1-in-6 fulfill the income-sharing requirement that technically defines them as communes. Two-thirds of these communities, he says, are in rural settings.
The article goes on to discuss a forming community, Heliotrope, being started in Oregon by a couple that used to live at Church of the Golden Rule community in northern California.
A grandfather of six whose resume includes stints as an artist, cook, greenhouse constructor, organic farmer and teacher, Burns says he envisions fellow Heliotrope residents as "average middle-class working people whose lives won't be a whole lot different than the way they live now, except that everything will be shared."
The article also discusses non-income-sharing options and highlights the efforts of the National Shared Housing Resource Center and the efforts of a real eastate broker who helps seniors find compatible cooperative arrangments.
Jim Parker, broker-owner of Access Brokerage Real Estate Services, has been looking into types of communal living at the request of a number of people in their mid-50s who have come to him with questions about the possibility of trying this kind of living arrangement as they age.
"A lot of people end up single in retirement," he says. "They may not be well off enough to just go out and buy a house, and they're looking for other choices besides renting."
For these folks, Parker says, some kind of communal arrangement is a practical alternative.
Read the Commune article at BankRate.com
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Related Posts Tags: aging, communes, Income Sharing, seniors
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Thursday, January 17th, 2008
An article posted on the Huffington Post, a progressive news and blog aggregator, suggests communes and cohousing as an option for the current generation's economic and social woes. Looking closer it seems this article comes from Good Magazine.
If it sounds as if I'm calling for a return of the commune, that's because I am--or at least for some alternative to the arid emotional deserts that are our oversized, empty homes. Imagine friends and families living around a courtyard, occasionally sharing meals and keeping an eye on the kids. Cohousing--a movement that's taken off among boomer retirees--aims to do just that. It should go without saying that this way of life has massive environmental benefits. But the case is strong enough if we stick to the question of our cultural and emotional environment.
There are good comments on the article at both sites so its worth checking them both out.
Read the article at Good Magazine.
Read the article at Huffington Post.
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, communes, Good Magazine, Huffington Post
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Indy Media of New Hampshire has a great article on a variety of communes in the Green Mountain area over the past few decades.
Read the article.
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Related Posts Tags: communes, New Hampshire, vermont
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Monday, October 1st, 2007
This article appeared in a collection of small papers in Vermont (http://www.rutlandherald.com, http://www.timesargus.com). They mostly talk about 60s communes but they acknowledge that a lot of intentional communities still make Vermont their home. Quotes from Wavy Gravy and Diana Christian.
Here's a good quote on how communes affected Vermont:
But while nearly all the original Vermont communes and communards have vanished, their legacy remains in the state's green movement, farmers markets, food co-ops and alternative-energy pioneers. Arguably, much of Vermont's current character stems from its commune days.
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Related Posts Tags: communes, vermont, Wavy Gravy
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