Welcome to the third edition of Dirt & Dreams, the FEC E-Newsletter! In this edition we talk about summer events here in our communities. Twin Oaks is hosting the Communities Conference this year in August, Acorn is organizing the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello in August, Sandhill is having another sorghum festival in September. We also have an update from Skyhouse, which includes an announcement of the creation of a new vegan cooking blog, EcoVegan. Twin Oaks just celebrated its 40th Year of existence. In celebration of this event several members have written about their experiences living at Twin Oaks, both past and present. We have also resurrected some old articles from our archives. The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America. We range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group houses. We share a set of core principles including nonviolence, egalitarianism, and participatory decision-making. Dirt and Dreams is our E-mail newsletter where we will bring to you news about our communities, articles about our values, and clips of our art and culture. You can view this edition on the web at the following address: http://twinoakstofu.com/FEC/2007.2/ You can subscribe or un-subscribe at the bottom of this website: http://thefec.org/ Table of Contents Sandhill News by Stan Sandhill Saturn returns: My twenty-eight year cycle? by Jake Kawatski ('79-'06) Skyhouse Update by Juan A Day in the Life of a Twin Oaks Break-up by Matt Galllup This Ones for the Birds! by Ezra The Next Generation Moves In by Sky Eulogy for a Feline Friend by Meredith All Tied Up: Reflections of a Hammock Shop Manager by Kathryn Home-schooling With Dragons by Bucket Twin Oaks As A Social Experiment By Pam Come to the 2007 Communities Conference! The Communities Conference is a networking and learning opportunity for anyone interested or involved in co-operative or communal lifestyles. Join us for a weekend of sharing and celebration! Friday August 17 - Sunday August 19, 2007 (Not Labor Day Weekend) $85 (sliding scale) includes meals and camping With workshops and events focused on: Intentional relationships, Group process, Collective child raising, Creating culture, Forming communities, Sustainability, Appropriate technology, Community economics, Music, Dancing, Slide shows, Campfires, Swimming, Magic & More! Contact us at: http://CommunitiesConference.org Twin Oaks Communities Conference 138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, Virginia 23093 540-894-5126 Email us at: conference@twinoaks.org Sandhill news - 7/19/07 by Stan Sandhill The heat & humidity are always a challenge in the middle of mizzourah summers; and so it is this year. Another constant topic is rainfall - we have been very dry again - but recently had welcome showers. As always, our gardens are very productive and are well taken care of: in fact, I can't remember our gardens and general landscaping looking this good this time of year (read: we are keeping up with weeds!). The bummer is that poison ivy seems to be spreading around here - this year, Michael had a bad case of it that lasted for weeks. We are having a fantastic intern year: 3 of 4 are from other FEC communities: Apple from Twin Oaks, Emmet from East Wind, and Thea from Emma Goldman's (she ended membership there when she came here). Having FEC folks as interns is such a joy: they integrate easily into our lifestyle, daily routine, do meetings, check-ins, take on responsibility, etc. Greg, Stefanie, & Greg's 14 yr old son, Dakota, visited earlier this spring. Greg and Stefanie have been back here for a month and just became provisional members. HURRAY! We are very excited. Dakota is coming in a few weeks. We are building a greenhouse! After 33 years on the land we are actually doing it! Gigi is the designer/honcho and it is being a great community effort. The foundation is made of gravel bags, and then earth bags for a couple feet up - we are in the process of plastering them now. It's great to have folks at DR and red earth to consult with on these earth building techniques. Our bees have not experienced the new colony collapse syndrome (we have plenty of the old colony collapse - we lost half our hives to mites again last winter). They were slow in getting started this spring and are making up for it now. Laird got married to Ma'ikwe (formerly of East Wind) last april in Albuquerque - where Ma'ikwe continues to reside with her son, Jibran. It was a 4 day affair and several of us from the tri-community area here (Sandhill, Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth) took the train out and had a great time sharing the festivities and experience with many community folx. We are looking forward to another great sorghum harvest again this year - beginning mid-Sept. Y'ALL COME NOW, Y'HEAR? Life in an Organic Vegan Food Co-op Read about Life in an Organic Vegan Food Co-op! We at Skyhouse eat in a food co-op that focuses on locally-grown and organic vegan dishes. Hosted by Skyhouse, an income sharing pod of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in rural Missouri. Click Here to visit EcoVegan. Saturn returns: My twenty-eight year cycle? by Jake Kawatski ('79-'06) I first came to Twin Oaks as a young adult of 28 and am leaving again shortly after I turn 56. I am making plans to join George Wilson, my partner of six years, in his adventures in Savannah, Georgia, for the next phase of our lives together. We'll be renovating a big old house near the city center with enough space for (at least) three other adults (potentially kids too) so I am leaving Twin Oaks but plan to continue my "alternative lifestyle" on a smaller scale. Prior to Twin Oaks, both George and I had been involved with communal households (he in Atlanta, I in Oregon and Florida), so between the two of us we will bring a lot of experience to this new urban enterprise. Just prior to Twin Oaks (late 1970s), I was a technical director and scene designer in a community theatre (Sarasota, Florida) and all through my years here continued to be involved in many of the theatrical events; I was holiday manager for a number of years as well. I have a degree in art, and shortly after we moved into our new kitchen-dining complex (Zhankoye) in 1985, spent many happy hours of my free time, filling the empty wall space with color. A half dozen of my paintings and fabric art still hang there. My life here has mostly been defined by the work I've done: I was deeply involved in the childcare program as metta (childcare worker) for six years in the 80s, a child board member and teacher. I still enjoy being around children, and hope to make them part of my future life. Food service has been another focus: I managed food processing (canning and preserving the harvest), cooked lunch or dinner at least once a week for most of my life here, spent six years as milker (in both old and new barns), played cheez wiz (cheese making manager for two years), and most seriously, was garden manager for nine years in that same decade. I was fortunate to have grown up in a large family on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, and so, from my earliest years, I've been comfortable with children, home grown food, gardens, soil and manure. Cleaning up after children ain't so very different from cleaning up after the cows! I haven't been here continuously since 1979, but have left twice to gain perspective and appreciation of the rural village that is Twin Oaks. In 1982-1984, I left with a small group of life-minded folks with plans to start a life together in rural Oregon. Our plans went awry, but I stayed in wet coastal mountains of Oregon at Alpha Farm, gardening mostly for nine months, before returning (via Sandhill sorghum harvest) to take on the mantle of planner and gardening management. My most recent break (1994-1997) started with a three month stint as head cook for a boy scout camp (I was glad when that was over!) followed by two wonderful winters in Poland teaching English. (I returned to Twin Oaks in the summer breaks and worked in the garden.) After a serious heel injury (1992) turned arthritic, I was forced to look for more sedentary work. I moved into indexing work and filled the vacancy in management for the last 8 years. I have always enjoyed the mix of mental and physical work possible here. (Still wishing there were more options in the "mental" category than there are currently, as most of us are overeducated for the tedious "blue-collar" hammocks and tofu work.) Over my twenty some years at Twin Oaks, I have also enjoyed the larger "Yanceyville" community, (the remnants of an old village that borders Twin Oaks), and sang with their church choir on and off for most of twenty years, especially in the period when George Payne (their choir director) came to Twin Oaks weekly to direct our choir here (c. 1985-1995). I will miss that connection when I leave Virginia. It was challenging 4-part choral singing that only rarely happened in Twin Oaks "rock and roll music culture". We performed original music by George and Kat Kinkade, and traveled with various musical programs, performing at churches and events in Virginia. In 2000, came major changes in my life at the Oaks: my favorite brother Jay (aka Woody) came to live here just months after I had met George and enticed him to live here. George is 14 years my senior, but still has the energy and ambition of a much younger person. I am mildly surprised that our years together have passed so quickly. His family has been wonderful (there are two other gay couples in his immediate family) and I look forward to being closer to all of them in whatever time remains of our "sunset" years together. If I have any regrets, I wish I had allowed more time for art! But I imagine when I move to the city, there will be more inspiration in that area, as Savannah is home to a major art school. Intern at Sandhill Farm An Internship at Sandhill Farm is an opportunity to be a part of a group of adults and children growing organic food, building intentional community, and endeavoring to live a sustainable lifestyle. Interns participate, as non-members, in all aspects of the community for the length of their stay. This includes our meetings and consensus decision making process, cooking for the community, spending time with children and creative problem solving for projects. We expect interns to be open to dialoguing about what they say or do as a part of the group. Our community norms align with feminism, egalitarianism and nonviolence. Interns often become part of our extended family of friends. We enjoy hosting interns! They bring new energy to our community and we deeply appreciate the help they offer. It is important to us to share our lifestyle and what we are learning of sustainable living. We also look forward to the social aspect of having more people and diversity on the farm. Click Here to Apply!
Skyhouse Update By Juan A lot has happened at Skyhouse this year. Maybe the biggest thing that happened was Cecil's decision to leave Skyhouse. In searching for a change, Cecil found New York City. He now lives in the city and has taken his Dancing Rabbit ecological awareness into his new environment; he found a job as the Director of Sustainability at NYU. We wish him well and continue to be open to his return. The 2007 edition of the Communities Directory has been sent to the printer. Like last edition, this project took up a great deal of time and energy from Amy and Tony for several months. But now it's in, and another edition is on the shelves. The two of them have expressed that this may be the last time Skyhouse takes on The Directory for a while. On the food front, we accepted some new folks into our food co-op Bobolink. This influx of new energy has seen our garden take off - it's positively huge. Further energy entered the garden in the form of work-exchangers. Since the Milkweed Mercantile is under construction, the Milkweeds have been attracting numbers of people here for a short stint (one or two months) to work on their construction. Several of them have also ended up working in our garden. This is without a doubt the most person-hours I've seen our garden get since I moved here. We're going to have a busy fall processing all this food for the winter. We are also expanding our food presence out onto the web. Bobolink, Skyhouse's food co-op has started a food blog (a web journal) about the food we grow, prepare and eat here, at http://ecovegan.blogspot.com. Every night at dinner someone "plates" the food, it gets photographed and by bedtime it is posted on the blog. We're hoping that it will show people that eating a sustainable diet can be delicious and satisfying -- and maybe even attract some new members. Amy is also spending a little over a month at a Catholic Worker House in Toronto. There, she's teaching them how to can and dry food for the winter as well as helping strengthen community bonds through things like community-wide meals and other activities. In exchange, she gets to spend some time soaking up all the culture a big city like Toronto has to offer. On the business side of things, with Cecil's departure and Amy's absence, Skyhouse Consulting has decided not to take on new customers. This is not to say we aren't busy; our existing customers have lots for us to do, including new websites. Finally, our construction scene this year has been less dramatic than in past years, but no less impressive. We've acquired our own washing machine, and we've hired Papa Bear (formerly Tony B) from Ironweed to make our staircase child-safe. Tony (the Skyhouser) is also working on building a greenhouse on the south side of the house with the help of two LEXers from Twin Oaks. When completed, this will allow us to start our gardening earlier, and have fresh produce for more of the year. I'm looking forward to it. Acorn Community hosts the Heritiage Harvest Festival at Monticello HERITAGE HARVEST FESTIVAL at Monticello's Tufton Farm Saturday September 8, 2007 10am - 4pm Acorn Community is happy to sponsor the Heritage Harvest Festival. Come explore the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at at Monticello's Tufton Farm, learn from national experts and local natural/organic growers, and take home seeds, plants, garlic, apples and other produce from local growers and the extensive collection of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION A day in the life of a Twin Oaks break-up by Matt Galllup I thought I'd share a little of my life at Twin Oaks in honor of the 40th anniversary. I came to T.O. with my girlfriend at the time. We soon broke up and thus ensued the most painful nine months of my life. In retrospect, it was the most intense period of spiritual development I'd had up until that point. What follows is a brief description of my day. For the record, everything turned out fine. 8am; Wake up in my room at Tupelo. Hear birds singing. Smell the forest. Notice diffuse and lovely light of the sun warming my young body. 8:05am; Remember that I am alone in bed. Feel uncomfortable burn in heart region. Fully remember painful breakup in strange new place. Flash of about a dozen painful memories and what I SHOULD have done to change things. Heart burning now very uncomfortable. 8:15am; Go back to sleep. 9:00am; Drag pathetic ass out of bed. Avoid fellow Tupeloids, half of which are having emotional breakdowns of their own. Ask God again why I came all the way from Colorado to live in hell. Remember hammock-weaving date with Brian. 9:30am; Collapse in martyred agony on logging road between Tupelo and ZK, "As long as she's happy, sniff, I'll be okay." Back path affords only safety of not seeing HER. 9:35am; See HER at ZK, Dam! Put on happy face. Despite break up we still are very warm with each other. Burning in heart on medium high now. Choke down delicious breakfast of fresh bread, homemade butter, organic apples, and yes, organic oats. Community in salad days. Pier One still ordering hammocks. Organic grains for all. 10am; Meet Brian in courtyard for weaving date. Brian greets me with a warm "Duuuuuuuude!" He is as old as my father, divorced and could be an angel in disguise. Brian hands down sage advice, humor, and heart-felt sympathy. After an hour of weaving we hug, part and I feel a bit better. Suddenly remember weaving date with Rita. 11:10am; Meet Rita on other side of courtyard where she's been for the whole time, wondering if I'd remember. In retrospect, my forgetfulness only increases over the years at T.O. Cause? I'm not sure. Will have to ask Pele. She notices things. 11:45am; Am sobbing on hammock with Rita. She is as old as my mother and is definitely an angel in disguise. Again, she has led me to the place in my mind that is telling me bad things about the breakup and helped me to see that they are not true. How did she do that? We hug. I'm feeling a lot better. I go to pond to skinny dip before lunch. It's like 100 degrees out. Hallelujah I'm a neekid hippy in Virginia. Jake is weeding the flowerbeds around pond, neekid. A mother is playing with her baby, neekid. As I look at the other neekid hippies like me I think, "Maybe it's not so bad being single." 12:15am: Arrive at ZK for perfect garden grown organic lunch. See HER at table with new friends, new... boy friends? No, couldn't be, we made an Agreement. The last Mediation went so well... shit! The time period is up by about 3 weeks now! Oh my GOD, she could be dating any one of those guys. Those evil bad men, NO! They're not bad, they're my new friends. We grew so close in the sweat lodge last week. Must get away, too confusing, too confusing. 1pm; Manage to pull off entire rope making shift on machine called The State. Operating the antiquated machine is totally involving and, at times, perilous. I focus my mind on River, the master of The State. No one runs this thing like river. He is the glue that holds this place together, I'm sure of it. Suddenly remember I have a Mediation scheduled with Hawina at five. My heart sinks to the sound of the bobbins spinning madly. I see my life twisting like the polypro fibers that fly through the machine I operate. The question is; will I become strong and supportive like the rope that I am creating? Or will I fray and snap. Clogging the machine. Possibly breaking a spindle arm of the state. Calling down the wrath of Jack, Phillip, and Alder, the Elder Gods of this commune who will have to fix whatever mess I make of my work and my life. No, I will be strong. 5pm; Mediation with Hawina and HER. First breakthrough, I agree to call Her, her with a lower case. Second break through, I agree to give her space as I've been sort of following her around and sticking too close to her at social functions. Third break through, wow, Hawina is amazing, I ask her to stay out of ZK for the first 15 minutes of lunch and dinner so I can just get my food and get out of there before I have to see or hear her and the stabbing searing pain of my heart makes it impossible to eat. Score! I negotiate a whole week of no ex-girlfriend in the food line. Fourth break through, we unload weeks of breakup feelings to each other and come to a new place of understanding and intimacy. 5:45pm; I feel great. I have been heard and my feelings validated. She and I walk up hill from Morningstar to ZK hand in hand. A shining example of how two people can survive a breakup at, hands down, the worst place in the world to break up. 6:45pm; Playing Hacky sack after perfect dinner of amazing organic like-no-where-else-in-America food. Sky pulls of tricky jester hack move. Kate dropkicks it onto the roof of ZK. Dexter the dog herds the group and grabs hack repeatedly, John accidentally kicks Jonah in the head. Jonah is fine. John needs group support to stop crying and continue playing, I invent a new move called 'The Matrix'. The hack circle swells to fifteen people. Rapture! I've never been so happy. 7:30pm: Catch Coyote before he goes to bed. After much good conversation and wisdom slinging, Coyote agrees to be my illegitimate father which is not so far fetched. After hanging out with Coyote I always feel a whole hell of a lot better. 8:30pm; I go to a "Cuddle Puddle" in Mary's room. She vehemently denies that this is a light sex party. I am wearing nothing but a tiny silk skirt and a g-string. The heat has dropped to only 98 degrees with 90 percent humidity. The party starts slowly with wine in a box and cheese on crackers. Someone pulls out a chocolate bar. The party picks up. Soon we are a mass of sweaty smelly bodies all over Mary's room. Someone is touching my assÂ….Frodo? Whatever, I like him anyway. After all, I'm learning to shed my notions of what is appropriate behavior for a hetero man that were pounded into my head by mainstream society. I'm a Twin Oaker now. I shamelessly give long hugs to my male friends. I'm not shy at the pond. And hey, if, after a long night of Yuen-Ling and box wine I end up making out with some magical German dude who is feeding me mangos, then I'm okay with that. 9:45pm I drag my sweaty mango stuffed self back toward Tupelo. The cuddle puddle was getting a little too intense and I sensed some real boundary-pushing coming on. I'm starting to get the feeling that everyone has already been with everyone else here. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that there are people here who are romantically involved with more then one person here. I'll have to ask Pax about this. 10:30pm; Neekid in the pond with several nameless visitor girls and my Life Dance Guru, Piankey. All these people are new to me yet I find that I really love them all. Is this what it is to be a flower child? The scene is too beautiful to describe. We are up to our necks in cool water. The frogs and crickets are blasting us with a wall of natural psychedelic sound, the stars are all out in hyper real brightness. Piankey is singing one of his own songs in a high quavering voice. The moonlight makes our skin glow. I think one of the visitor girls, Rachel, no, Sarah, I can't remember, is flirting with me. There are like twelve women in this visitor group. It's always this way. I hear that Valerie controls the male to female ratio of visitors. The community has found that things work better with more women and less men. Valerie is very wise and I trust her judgment. 12pm; I walk through the dark back to Tupelo. All is quiet. I hear the sounds of lovers coming from somewhere in Tupelo. I feel so good I don't mind. There's no real privacy here anyway. You just have to get used to it. I rummage through the refrigerator and eat some yogurt and left over popcorn. As I walk to my room I nearly run into herÂ…I mean HER. We say "hi" and awkwardly keep walking. Wait a minute... what's she doing here? Is she sleeping over with someone in Tupelo!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!! 12:30pm I am brutally reminded that I am still living in Hell. All the emotional progress of the day is flushed down the toilet and on it's way to the STP. The pain in my heart returns full force and I wonder how long I will last until I snap and become a little frayed and burnt wad of poly pro that Shal will find on the hammock shop floor and carefully put into the rope-recycling bin. Why, God, why does her new boyfriend live in MY building? I'm going to need another mediation. I gotta get off this farm. But I have no money and no vacation time saved up. Damn! 1am; as I drift off to sleep I struggle with the conflict of both loving and hating this place. I resolve to stay and become stronger. I know that with the help of my friends and lots of wine in a box that I will make it. And when my six-month review comes up, there will not be one piece of negative feedback.
This Ones for the Birds! by Ezra Every so often, I am asked "what are your favorite things about Twin Oaks?" Sometimes it's during a dinner conversation with a guest, on a garden shift with a visitor, or in a survey put out by a member or visiting academic. On such occasions, I know what the "correct" answer might be: our organic food, our communal lifestyle, what a safe and supportive place Twin Oaks is to raise a small child. But the truth is that -with the possible exception of my son- nothing at Twin Oaks gives me more pleasure than the birdfeeder hanging outside of my window. I love the woodpeckers - downy, hairy and redbellied and the nuthatches - white-breasted and red-breasted. I love my birdfeeder in the winter, when clouds of purple finches battle for the feeding perches, and flocks of dark-eyed juncos gather on the ground below waiting for the seeds they spill. I love it in the spring, when the Goldfinches exchange their dull winter plumage for the bright yellow of the breeding season, and the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks drop in during their spring migration. I love it in the summer when the Indigo Buntings arrive, and I can sit on the outside deck and watch the birds flitting up for a late-afternoon snack, oblivious to the noisy joyful humans just a few feet away. And I love it in the fall when... well, you get the picture. I began fantasizing about a birdfeeder soon after I moved to Twin Oaks. The day I moved into my room in Beechside, I realized that I had found the perfect location. A feeder hung there would be close to the forest, and high in the air, but would be directly outside of my window. The small deck just outside of the second story door was a perfect place to attach one end of a pulley, allowing me to pull the feeder back and forth and re-fill it with ease. My original plan involved attaching the other end of the pulley to the building itself, so that the feeder, a cheap plastic tube-type affair, hung just inches outside of the window. It seemed like an ideal arrangement, but it didn't take long for the squirrels to figure out that there was a free lunch within easy reach. Soon, they were scampering all up and down the side of the building and across the outside of my windowsill. Their loud scritch-scritch-scritching, at all hours of day and night began to drive me insane. Naively, I tried anchoring the other end of the pulley on a long rod that held the feeder a foot or so away from the window. This didn't faze the squirrels at all. They would leap from the ledge onto the feeder and casually, mockingly even-- munch on my expensive birdfeed (this was during austerity, mind you!) This was too much to take, so I climbed onto a high ladder and moved the other end of the pulley to a nearby tree. The feeder would hang further from the window, but would hopefully be squirrel proof. It wasn't. The nasty little creatures simply ran along the string and hung upside down, gorging themselves on the finest black-oil sunflower seeds that $60 a month could buy. I tried hanging round plastic disks beneath the line to shield the feeder. I tried sheathing the line itself with slippery spinny plastic so that the squirrels couldn't run along the line. I tried pruning back branches from the nearby trees. I hung so much armor on my feeder that it looked like a hanging junkyard! Each new technique would confuse them for a week or so, but they would soon regain the upper hand. They gnawed holes in my birdfeeder for easier access. They even began to eat the plastic bucket that I kept the birdseed in. I would open the lid to find a pile of empty seed shells and squirrel poop. Oh how I raged! I would run outside in a frenzy and shake the rope to dislodge the vermin, hoping to send them plunging to their deaths. When, in my frustration, I shook the rope so hard that I pulled the feeder clear off of the tree, I realized that I needed a better plan. Today, I am at peace with the squirrels. With my superior human technology (a 'squirrel-proof' feeder with a spring-mounted steel cage, and a galvanized bucket for the feed), I have bested their gnawing teeth and scurrying claws. They don't even try anymore. I can sit in my bed with my Sibley Field (sic) Guide to Eastern Birds and my binoculars, and watch the charming antics of my feathered friends. Almost every week this year, I have experienced the sublime thrill of identifying a new species just outside my window - 20 different types so far (I saw an Eastern Bluebird there for the first time last week!), and I'm sure there are far more that I've seen but not identified. I delight in re-filling the feeder nearly every day, satisfying some deep nurturing instinct. This spring, I have been sharing my obsession with my son Zadek, and it has been quite delightful to see him standing on the bed, pointing and saying "bird..big bird... yellow bird," and knowing that he is just as excited about them as I am. The Next Generation Moves In by Sky When I moved to Twin Oaks in 1999, I was one of 5 members in their twenties. In my membership interview I was asked, "what's your biggest concern about moving to Twin Oaks?" My answer was, "I'll have no peer group." My interviewers replied by saying, "if you move here, more young people will move here." It seems they were right. The twenty-somethings have been our biggest age group for about 3 years running, while the older population, much to the surprise of our members, has been declining. It was in the early nineties that the community recognized that the population was aging; the average age had increased ever year since the founding of the community - the first year it decreased was 200X. Folks realized that that this might pose some problems, particularly in our labor scene and its repercussions on our income-generating abilities. Additionally, the community recognized it wasn't fully equipped to deal with the debilitating conditions that often accompany advanced age. The Aging and Fire Fund was started in 199X (the principle of the fund broke $1 million in early 2007). Nashoba, designed for members with limited-mobility, was built in 199X. In 199X the Aging in Utopia report was produced, which covered myriad issues related to an aging population and made suggestions for how to address them. Then, just months before my visitor period in '99, the community instituted an age-cap of 54 years for new members. Around that time the Recruiting team was given a mandate to recruit more young people. In 2001 the weather changed and a deluge of young people hit the community. Having done lots of outreach and promotion work in my time here, I've come to realize the futility of trying to find out how people find out about the community and the best avenues for reaching the masses. In this case, certainly there was a feedback loop created: as more young people joined it became more attractive for other young people to join. Also, it seems like friends of young members tend to come visit more often. But why so many young people started coming seems less important than the impact it has had on the community. When I joined, not only where there few young people, but the community was at a population low point of 65 members. Despite the higher turnover rate brought by a younger population, the influx was so large that the population kept growing. In 2003 we started approaching pop cap (population capacity) for the first time since the mid-nineties. While this meant more hands-on-deck to get things done, it meant more time spent training and a lower overall level of skill in various areas. It also meant a large disparity between the skill levels of different members and the ability of different members to find or create satisfying work scenes for themselves. Additionally, many of our young, new members were not accustom to working so much. Several new members in '02 and '03 had their provisional membership extended because they didn't have a positive labor balance, or just barely managed to have a positive balance by their full member poll. In many ways, what we were facing was a problem of how to better integrate new members. But because the age range of new members tended to be low it also became something of a generation conflict. This was exacerbated by the effect so many new, younger members had on the Twin Oaks social scene. Starting in 2003, with their peer group dwindling and feeling alienated by the new dominate social group, a number of fifty-something members started putting out a call to repeal the age cap. In the last couple years we've hit a new phase in our evolving age demographic, with accompanying effects. Most of the young new members of recent years have moved on, but a number have stayed, learned skills, taken positions of responsibility, and become solid, respected, and influential. And as they have aged and matured, both personally and as members, the social gap has begun to decrease. Eulogy for a Feline Friend by Meredith It is impossible to write about being a dairy manager without writing about the creatures that I care for and learn from. Here is the story of one of them. He was the cat of many names. Emily called him Gris-gris. I called him Smokey. Most people just referred to "the grey cat that hangs around the barn". This phenomenon was an apt description of who he was, because he was a half-wild animal and never knew himself by any name. This cat belonged to no one, associated with no one, and yet at the same time, he was part of Twin Oaks every bit as much as you or I. He appeared at the north end of the property a couple years ago, near the hay barn where the chickens were kept. He lived among the hens, in apparent harmony; he didn't try to eat them and the ladies seemed to accept his presence. His two yellow eyes would look out from beneath the old wood storage area by the compost while chickens ruffled their feathers, settling down in the dust just a few feet away. The first I started paying attention to him was as a little gray tail darting out the dairy barn door. He had discovered that there was free food if only you were willing to risk being seen by bovines and their rubber-booted human caretakers. I didn't like the idea of feeding this cat. We already had Tang, our sweet orange barn cat. Besides, I said, farm cats should eat mice and spare milk. But my heart softened with time, and eventually I even stopped taking the cat food away from him. I thought he was an absolutely beautiful cat; he had a deep blue-gray coat with those bright, fearful eyes that always watched me, whenever I was within sight. They would watch even while he drank milk, tongue lapping up the white creamy liquid with eyes peering upwards to keep tabs on me. And if anyone came a bit too close, away he would dart behind the old milk cooler and out the far door. And so he became a sort of permanent guest. He lived at the chickens' area and came in to the dairy barn occasionally when he couldn't find enough mice to eat. Perhaps once a year, he'd disappear for a couple weeks, then return. We never did find out where he went or what he did. So when he got sick a few weeks ago and it was apparent that something needed to be done, both for his sake and for the sake of those around him, I volunteered to take him to the vet. We stood out a bit, in the waiting room. All the other clients had their pets in fancy cat carriers and nice leashes. The humans were well-groomed or at least wore clean clothes. I walked in wearing mismatched work gloves and cow jeans, carrying a wire cage with chicken feathers and fragrant manure embedded in it. The cat had scratched up his face while trying to escape. In addition to these bloody scratches, mucus and discharge ran down his face from his illness. Nevertheless, the veterinarian and staff treated us like any other owner and pet. It felt strange to hear the cat referred to as "Smokey" rather than "that gray cat." For the first time in his life, he was treated as much more than a stray. The news was the worst. His runny nose and wheezing were due just to a respiratory illness. However, he also had Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or "Cat HIV". Contagious, incurable, and ultimately fatal. The vet euthanized him while I waited in the parking lot. Standing in the wind, I shed tears for him, this cat who would leave the world as quietly and cautiously as he entered. When I drove home, his body in a cardboard box next to me, I experienced a sorrow so pure, like rain on the grass. I buried him alone the next day, a shallow grave in the yellow flowers behind the chicken coop. It was how it should be; no procession, no words or songs, not even a coffin. This cat would want to end his life like the semi-feral cat he always was. I did, however, plant at the grave a wooden marker shaped like a hen to watch over and keep company with him forever, just as the hens were companions in this life. I hope that I may live a life so wild and beautiful as this cat's. And, if I cannot, it is enough that I have witnessed his.
All Tied Up: Reflections of a Hammock Shop Manager by Kathryn When I joined Twin Oaks, I could not have predicted that I would spend the first few years of my membership as the primary go-to person for problems great and small in the rope products business. I pictured myself building straw bale structures, learning to install solar panels, and growing and eating nothing but home-grown produce, dairy and eggs. But I also wanted to be useful to the community, and, as it turned out, Twin Oaks needed money, perhaps just as much as it needed idealistic people looking to make a better life. So I jumped in, learning everything I could about the rambling behemoth called Twin Oaks Hammocks. There were almost twenty different managers for the production and overhead areas, not to mention assorted project leaders, honchos, and unofficial advisors. Thousands of useful and not-so-useful files stored in over a dozen filing cabinets, forty or fifty cubbies, a few different buildings, several email accounts, and hundreds of network file folders. A communications system based largely on word-of-mouth and assorted scraps of paper tucked, taped, or pinned here and there. A warehouse filled to bursting with supplies and finished products. And (hooray!) a Rolodex full of happy customers. At first, I wanted to clean up, organize, and streamline everything - how else could I make sense of all the chaos? I'm sure I made some hearty attempts, and maybe even organized a thing or two in my first months on the job. But entropy is a strong force in community. Rather than bringing the business into line, I let it bring me into line. I feel enormous appreciation to the people over the years who kept our rope products business running and thriving under Pier One. It must have been an enormous job. In preparing to write this article, I visited the archives to skim some issues of the Leaves from the mid nineties for a glimpse of what Twin Oaks Hammocks was like ten years ago. What struck me most was how busy the rope products business was, and how central to life at Twin Oaks. Nearly every issue contains tales of a major push event, unexpected Pier One orders (or lack thereof), production incentives, new equipment, new products, labor crunches, joint business talks with East Wind, or recruiting other communities to make hammocks. In one push, Oakers got allowance bonuses if we made our production goals, and managers had a $12/day budget to buy treats for workers. Amazing. These days, if we're falling a little behind in hammock production, the problem can usually be remedied by a couple of notes on the 3 x 5 board and a handful of people rearranging their schedule a little bit. If someone wants to serve goodies in the hammock shop, the answer is either "No, we don't need it," or "Only if it doesn't cost money." The rope products business of yesteryear was certainly more exciting, not to mention richer, than today's Twin Oaks Hammocks. The flip side of excitement, however, is stress. Behind all those push events and incentives were hours of meetings, pages of proposals, millions of brain cells, and probably at least a few repetitive strain injuries. I can just imagine the seemingly interminable meetings in which the planners and rope products managers hashed out compromises enabling us to meet the needs of both Pier One and ourselves. I can imagine the person in charge of providing goodies to the hammock shop overhearing someone grumble about the selection; the motivated weaver breaking a sweat at one jig, resenting the person at the next jig, who stops after every row to get a drink; the person on the phone with one of our suppliers, finding out that our raw materials won't arrive on time; the manager who withdraws because of the strain of dealing with folks's resentment about the decisions she helps make. All in all, I think the rope products business under Pier One was more fun for the general population of Twin Oaks. High production goals, a busy hammock shop, and lots of cultural activities centering around the courtyard fostered comraderie and community. And the managers must have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of keeping the business going, at a cost of exhaustion, burn out, and stress. For me, that trade-off would not be worth it. I am glad that I happened to walk in to Twin Oaks Hammocks just when it began to shrink. I get the satisfaction of doing a necessary job, of fulfilling my responsibility to the community, without the level of pressure that previous managers endured. And I get to witness and help shape the changing of our economic picture and our culture as we spend less time in the hammock shop. Home-schooling With Dragons by bucket Last winter I agreed to help home school a young boy here on the farm 1 day a week. I've been home-schooling this 6 yr. old for about 6 months now. The first few months were really hard. Before his mother asked me to home school him, he had been in our preschool program, known to us here on the farm as "Pirate Shifts." he had outgrown these play sessions and it was time for his learning to take a more focused format. He sorely missed his time with the other children, and rebelled quite a bit towards the new home-schooling format. He would negotiate and argue for most of our time together. When we had finally settled into lessons, we usually had only 30 to 45 minutes left in our 2 hour sessions together. I went on a little vacation and hatched a plan. I had stumbled across a set of Dungeons and Dragons rule books. He loves the Lord of the Rings and books on knights and dragons. I decided to see if I could create a home-schooling curriculum using Dungeons and Dragons as the medium and reward mechanism. It has worked out great. He will focus really hard on the math problems knowing that there might a new magic wand or treasure behind each puzzle he solves. He's using his creative energy to it's fullest potential and he's creating his own way of solving math problems. We've shot through addition and subtraction in the 1000's, he has had no problems figuring out simple cyphers and finishing number patterns. We've done a lot of pre-algebra and are working on memorizing our multiplication tables. The charts and graphs built into the game draw his interest. He is being constantly drilled in simple addition (he does not have a lot of addition memorized, he mostly uses his fingers for addition) by adding modifiers to constant dice rolls. Furthermore, I am having a blast. it has turned something I've dreaded into something I enjoy. His younger friend has joined him and they sometimes compete to see who can solve the math puzzles first, or cooperate and explain to each other their methods and shortcuts for solving problems. Anyhow.. I'm having fun and it's time to continue our quest to get the Lunar Chain Mail in the ancient temple to Ishtar currently infested by Gnolls (who seek to revive the ancient wyrm Tiamat!) -bucket Twin Oaks As A Social Experiment. By Pam 21 May 2007 The C'ville Weekly claimed we are the country's oldest commune. I doubt it's true, but after 40 years here, Twin Oaks is obviously successful at surviving. How well have we done as a social experiment? We are a group of nearly a hundred members, jointly owning this community and our various "means of production, distribution and exchange". (That's my dictionary's definition of socialism). We do it pretty well. We own and run businesses together, we grow a lot of our own food, and we share a fleet of vehicles. We can each choose from an amazing array of types of work, and each assemble our own portfolio of jobs, with flexible hours to suit our internal clocks. We care for our sick and elderly, and support our children. A lot of the success of our work-sharing is due to our labor credit system. Local currency systems are nothing new to us. We've been valuing an hour of work with one labor credit for a long time. Another part of the success is to base everything on a trust system - expect the best of each other and we nearly always get it. No police, no heavy beaurocracy. A third factor is setting up our decision-making so that people can choose to participate or not, but can't hold up the process if they don't participate. So, that's the outline of what I think works. It does rankle though, to have my lifestyle still called an "experiment". I've been living communally for 34 years, 15 of them at TO. For me, it's my lifestyle, it's not an experiment. By now, I know it works. Why do we hang on to the "social experiment" label? I'm an unabashed socialist. Does the word "socialism" make people uncomfortable? Calling my life an experiment is like telling me it's "just a phase" I'm going through! Actually, one of the things we're not good at here is conducting experiments. I can't think of one piece of policy that we've successfully experimented with. We tried with the nudity policy one summer, experimenting with a looser policy. We failed to follow through in evaluating the experiment and making a conscious decision on what to do next. We drifted for much longer than originally stated, then got a decision from the planners that got an over-ride. While "experimenting" some people got attached to the temporary state and wanted to abandon the agreement. What else hasn't worked, or has changed for the worse? I think we've slid into a wider disparity of wealth than used to be common here. Quite a few people now have a weekly house-cleaning job, or other VE (Vacation Earnings) opportunity. The rules for spending VE are not always followed, so some people live higher on the hog than others. I regret that. Our efforts to address our imbalanced age demographics several years ago led to publicity that deterred over-50's, and outreach that very successfully recruited 20-somethings. We have more of a revolving door now higher turnover. (I know turnover was very high in the formative years, but later it stabilized somewhat). We offer PALs (Personal Affairs Leave) - the right to leave and return within a year without going through membership application process again. It's hard to see friends leave. It's hard training people and then having to train more people. I hope we move more towards encouraging long term membership. We're not great at confronting people who abuse our trust and openness. We mostly shy away from confronting and dealing with those problems. We could use more courage, and less hoping someone else will deal. We're all struggling humans, we'll never be perfect, but we do give it a good try! We're not great at writing articles for deadlines, we tend to hope someone else will do it!
