Twin Oaks Community

Out of Jail

Upon returning to Twin Oaks Cameron asked me "How as jail?" i quipped
"i'd rather be in jail than in a bad community meeting." Which is true but beside the point.

i got lucky. For what ever reason they decided to place me in the trusterdy cell block (which is block K at the Central Virgina Regional Jail). This means most of the people in the cell are working in the jail - laundry, cooking, cleaning the building. They are doing this to reduce their time. If you are sentenced to a year on a misdemeanor charge, you only serve 6 months. If you work while you are there you can cut it in half again. These inmates have a vested interest in not screwing up their jail time with petty nonsense with the likes of me. This made the entire experience pretty comfortable.

The food was horrible (as in - skip meals for variety), my blanket was too small, the TV was on more than half of the day (even after lights our which i found weird, the matrass gave me a sore back, there were 60 guys in my cell. And the overall experience was great.

After much waiting, I've finally been sentenced for my trespassing charges in connection with the 2008 Southeast Climate Convergence. Twenty people demonstrated at the information center for Dominion Power's North Anna nuclear facility and six of us were arrested for peacefully refusing to leave the property. Most everyone else got off with fines and community service, but being identified as the ring leader, the Virginia Commonwealth Attorney was hoping the jury would give me months in jail--even though the original sentence I was appealing was just two weeks.

But the jury was not interested in draconian punishments and seemed sympathetic. Instead of months, I got five days in jail and I'll serve two. It's a complicated math--you only serve half your sentence for misdemeanors and I'd already served a day when I was arrested. So it all starts today and I'll be free again on Saturday.

Lot's of people have asked how they can support me while I'm in jail--offers of demonstrating against my incarceration and informing the public of it being not uncommon. But, if you really want to support me, help push along the projects that are really important to me.

• Go to www.villagesinthesky.org read what we're up to and make comments, start discussions.
• Go to www.brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects and vote three times for Villages in the Sky by tomorrow--Friday the 15th
• Check out the article published about my sentencing at www.tinyurl.com/paxinjail and post comments
• Or just leave a comment here

It turns out the revolution is an elaborate dialogue. Don't mourn, organize.

Andy, Sara and i left East Wind this afternoon to drive the thousand miles back east. Last night we had our last Villages in Sky meeting and got the survey initial survey results. 15 out of 16 as Winders felt good about the project, including a number of long time members and heavy hitters. i'm happy.

In the car today we finished the Phantom Tollbooth and again dramatically with poetic demons on his heals the ordinary kid Milo manages to rescue the banished princesses Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason (depicted above). Sara was bemused by my flood of tears as i read the last couple dozen pages in Shana's Subaru flying across Indiana.

The central msg is that the quest was impossible, but they succeeded anyway and i have a bit this feeling with everything from festival organizing to the negotiations in Copenhagen. We might pull it off, but if you were a betting person, you would not be putting money on us. Fortunately, that is not the crowd i seem to be hanging with these days.

This is a fairly strong statement on climate change agreed to by 56 newspapers from 40 countries around the world in 20 languages. Many of these papers, including the Guardian fromt he UK (which drafted the piece) printed this editorial on the front page. Check it out

http://tinyurl.com/newspapersoncopenhagen

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

Part of the Villages in the Sky organizing team (Sara, Paxus and Bean) have traveled off to East Wind which will be hosting the event for a week of site inspection, meetings and negotiations. The community has been very welcoming, despite some quite difficult times they are going thru. One young member has just found that he has inoperable brain cancer which is growing very fast - he is only 25. The FDA is requiring a whole host of safety improvements and additional paperwork for their nut butters business (this is part of a trend across the food industry and Twin Oaks Tofu business will likely have to make similar expensive upgrades as a function of the soon to be passed Food Safety Act which is designed by the huge food processing corporations like Kraft).

T

There have been lots of interesting late night
conversations since we have been here and of course one of the things which comes up often is the differences between Twin Oaks and East Wind. Last night Les (who was a member at both Acorn and Twin Oaks before moving out to East Wind) put it well. "Twin Oaks is more of a socialist/communist orientation and East Wind is more anarchist. TO is burdened with the bureaucracy of these political systems, but pretty reliably stuff gets done. East Wind offers its members significant freedoms and often that comes at the cost of unfinished projects and important work going undone."

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

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

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

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

There was an irreversible turning point. And this is what funologists hunt.

Sabrina had been dragged away from reading her book to come to the party which was happening in the compost cafe (the small smokers lounge in the courtyard of the community). Firefly got her, apparently promising there was dancing. What there was was a lovely collection of mostly young people and mostly oakers. The few outsiders were Adam who had lived at East Wind and is well liked and appreciated here and Sara Tansey who seems to have nearly everyone fall in love with her nearly everywhere she goes.

"There is not even any dancing. You got me out of bed for this?" Sabrina complains in a whine that is so uncharacteristic of her normal stoic nature, the universe tilts.

"We absolutely did" replies Shiloh and within a minute almost all the room is standing and Sparkles ipod shuffle has taken over the sound system and dancing ensues.

Trout is anxious for another game of chess with me, when the music tones down a bit he asks if i am willing to leave the party. But i can not "This is a funologists wet dream" i say, certain that i will be misunderstood and mocked. And immediately i am.

Six years ago a specialist told Danele, who had just been diagnosed with Cushing's disease, that she had six months to live. Danele was having none of it.

A couple weeks ago Danele passed. Shiloh and Kate, who were part of the team which took care of her in her last days, said that she was the funniest and liveliest she had ever been in those last days. [When Kate offered her a straw to help her drink, replied "nothing says invalid like a straw."]

Danele and i were lovers in the first year i was at Twin Oaks, over a decade ago now. i was given back all the love letters i wrote her yesterday, a little stack of carefully scripted cards, chronicling our unlikely connection.

We had the memorial service for Danele today here at Twin Oaks. She would have been pleased. i managed to miss most of the event because i got up early and rescued a bunch of folding chairs from a rocking church in Richmond in the pouring rain and ended up restarting my illness. [i do sick badly, so i do it little.]

About a week back a new member of Twin Oaks, Allen, took his life. He had wrestled with depression for much of his adult life and his mother said at the community sharing circle that "Twin Oaks had been the happiest month and a half of his life."

The morning before he took his life i was in the tofu hut with Mushroom and in one of those rare moments when there is no one else there but the lone kettle person and the lone trays person she said to me. "Who do you think is the sexiest person on campus?"

"Allen" was my immediately response. He was quiet, diligent, attractive, musical, mechanically inclined. I had hooked him up with ex-member Denny Ray to help with the communities perennial problem of equipment maintenance. They had fixed the Llano refrigerator together and Denny had been impressed by his quick learning and eagerness. They were working on the ice machine together the day he passed.

16 years ago this community was torn apart by Delancies suicide. It was the last one we had and it was completely different. Unlike Allen, there was lots of warning. Unlike Allen there were many who felt the community could have done more. Unlike Allen there were many who were furious with other members perceived insensitivity to mental health problems. Unlike Allen, half a dozen people left and McCune quit work for a year (something our labor system permits for people who have sufficient balance to do so).

Allen's death is a gift to us. We pull together. We support each other. Many people, especially Louisa, his lover of 9 years, are saying "it is this type of support that is the reason i moved to community". In fact the post powerful msg from our sharing circles and healing rituals is "i dont want to go back to normal"
What we want instead is a place where someone can be crying in public space, without anyone feeling put out by it or drawn into it against their will.

My funological comrades and I are in a conversation about what the “central ritual” will be at the Villages in the Sky festival in the Ozarks in 2010. Central rituals play important roles in two of the inspirational events for VIS – Burning Man and the Rainbow Gathering.

At Burning Man there are actually two central rituals. The first (on the Saturday night) is the burning of the man. A 40 foot high effigy is set alight amongst dozens of fire dancers and a host of fireworks displays. Participants run in circles around the burning man and make incredible noise. Crystal actually does not think this is a ritual at all, he prefers to refer to it as “the spectacle” and it certainly is that.

On Sunday night the temple is burned. The temple is further out, and actually much larger overall It is made entirely of wood and is an incredibly intricate art piece. On it participants scribble what ever it is they want to let go of, often sadness about a loved one who passed in the last year (or anytime really). In sharp contrast to the burn of the man, this is a highly somber and quiet. Up close, both of these rituals are physically quite hot. They are also magnificent enuf so that they can be enjoyably viewed from a fairly significant distance.

For those of you who have tuned in late, i am a bit of an odd duck.

The other day i was in Boston helping Keyvah and Gpaul and Benji (a charming newish Oaker) set up for the Natural Food Expo at the convention center. Keyvah has a strange addiction to fancy hotels, so we were staying in the Omni Paker House right downtown.

I have trouble talking quietly on a cell phone, so Keyvah had thrown me out of the room while i was chatting about the Testival (test festival) we are organizing for the tree house launch at Acorn. So i went into the hallway at the Omni on the 8th floor and parked myself in front of the elevators.

i did not even think about it a laydown on the super clean hotel floor with my head propped up against the wall, in my slightly strange shorts and continued talking on the phone. My position looked something like the picture below (without the hat and not asleep).

For perhaps 20 minutes no one comes out of the elevator, but then 2 older couples emerge decked out in very nice clothes having an animated conversation. They are clearly a bit shcoked by my presene and position. i ignore them and continue blabbing.

About 5 minutes later a hotel security guy comes out of the elevator, looking for me. He starts with a confrontive manner, clearly a bit unsure of how to deal with the situation. But he quickly notices i have a hotel key in my hand, and he chills a bit.

He instructs me that you cant lay on the floor in this hotel. i am slightly disbelieving, but he assures me this is so. he then points to the collection of perfectly reasonable chairs which are less than 5 meters away from me and asks if i could continue my phone call from there.

i cave to the pressure and sit in one of the plush chairs.

When explaining Twin Oaks’ core economic agreements, I often tell visitors applying for membership that if they are accepted as provisional members, they can show up at the end of the Twin Oaks driveway completely naked and without a cent to their name, and the community will provide them with everything they need.  This of course gets most people laughing as they picture this in their mind, but that is essentially the core economic agreement: with your contribution of labour, the community will provide you with all your necessities.

Commie Clothes is the somewhat tongue-in-cheek name of Twin Oaks’ system of  community provided clothing.  It is an example of an everyday form of egalitarian resource sharing.

Almost the entire upstairs of the building called Harmony is devoted to Commie Clothes.

A section of Commie Clothes

The system is simple: any member can go up to Commie Clothes, find an article of clothing that works for them, and either put it on right there or take it elsewhere.

There are many things available beyond clothes:

Shoes

Bedding

Towels

When finished with an article of clothing, it can be tossed into one of the laundry bins on the ground level.

One of the assigned jobs that is done almost every day is community laundry.  Typically in two hours shifts, those who sign up for this job wash the clothes in our industrial washer, and hang them out to dry (or use the dryer if needed).  Dry clothes are hung back up in Commie for use by another member.

Clothesline from ground level. Looks like someone was really into the tie-dye this week.

It is possible for people who live at Twin Oaks to rely entirely on Commie Clothes, not own any clothes themselves, and never have to wash their own clothes, or hang them up.  There are a few people who essentially do this.

Clothing at Twin Oaks, as a whole, is also an example of a system with dual levels of ownership: public and personal.  While the community maintains this great system of communal clothing, there are no restrictions on members being able to have their own personal clothing that is not a part of the Commie Clothes system.

When a member takes clothes from Commie, those clothes are considered to have been ‘personalized,’ now in the possession of that member, out of the public system entirely.  That person can basically keep those clothes as long as they want.  Clothes can be worn or just a few hours and then returned to be washed, or they could be kept in one’s personal collection in one’s room, and returned years later (or even never at all).  Most other buildings have a washer, clothesline, and dryer people can use for their personal clothes.  But, they have to do this on their own time, just like most people in dominant culture.

Most members choose to fall somewhere in between total reliance on Commie Clothes and retaining only personal clothes.  It would be difficult to estimate the number of people who regularly use Commie Clothes, and the extent.  Commie clothes often end up becoming privatized, but privatized clothes are then returned to the system.

Some interesting dynamics about the overall system:

Clotheslines viewed from Commie Clothes window

• Doing the laundry, organizing, or mending of Commie Clothes are all official jobs in the community for which one can receive labour credits.  Doing the same for one’s personal clothes is not.  This creates an incentive to favour using the public resources over the private.  People can of course maintain their personal clothes at the level they desire, but they do that in their own free time.
• 
  

  Commie Clothes' industrial sized washer

  Communal systems save time and resources.  Instead of 100 people washing their own clothes every few weeks, one person can get through the typical amount of public clothes in a few hours a day.  Instead of everyone having to purchase their own washing machine and dryer, or rely on laundromats, there is one centralized place that is free to all (plus a few more in some other buildings). Instead o all the associated resource use issues with creating washing machines for 100 people, and the chemicals, water, and energy required to run them, one large industrial washer can instead be used.  And, instead of always using dryers, those who work in Commie Clothes strive to hang stuff up to dry outside when possible instead of wasting electricity on dryers.

• 
  

  Organization signs and some artwork

  Commie Clothes is well organized and maintained, as can be seen in the above pictures.  In the recent past, the similar public clothing system at Acorn community was essentially a pile of clothes in one room.  It still was used by those who needed something, but people only have so much patience for hunting through disorder.  When organization and maintenance decline, so do people’s reliance on public goods.

• 
  

  Some nicer dresses

  For members to keep relying on Commie Clothes, there has to be a wide selection of clothing.  This means different sizes, types, colours, and styles.  It’s not going to work if we only have size 30-34 blue jeans (although we do have a lot of those).  Recently, there has been an influx of ‘business casual’ clothing compared to the past, which are things of the quality of being able to wear to business meetings in dominant culture (which we do more often than one may suspect), so these aren’t just a bunch of poor quality work clothes (although there is also a section for those, which are very useful if one is going to, say, paint a room).

• 
  

  Mending area

  Similar to the above point, there has to be a general influx of new clothing.  We can mend old clothing, but only to a reasonable extent.  Perhaps even more important than the mending is the perception that there will almost always be something new in Commie Clothes.  This gets people in there to ’shop around,’ and keeps up the idea that this is a resource worth using and maintaining. In recent years this hasn’t been an issue: we often get donations, and members moving here often make a large amount of their clothing public when they arrive.  If anything, we’ve had to made donations to goodwill because we have had too many clothes in Commie.

• 
  

  Winter clothing, currently stored far in the back, out of the way

  Like most public goods, Commie Clothes assumes that there will not be an unpredicted or unmanageable rush on goods.  This typically happens when the seasons start to change, although it can also happen at less predictable times.  On the first day after the high temperature has dropped down below something like 70 degrees, there will be many people seeking warmer clothes and blankets.  We can anticipate seasonal changes somewhat, but some areas can look rather decimated for a few days after a quick change in weather.  (Luckily, I’ve already grabbed my winter clothes!)

• 
  

  Costumes, wigs, and other things for parties like Halloween

  Hoarding can be problematic.  Since anyone can personalize clothes by bringing them to their room, the only hard limit for how many clothes one can take from Commie is the cubed area of one’s room.  Some members in the past have used a lot of this space; piles of clothes taller than their height in their room is not much of an exaggeration.  If more than a handful of people do this, the system won’t work.  Most of the above methods can be seen as hoarding prevention.  If there is a well maintained system that consistently has new clothes, people will, in general, not feel the need to privatize many items.  If the system is not well maintained, and people start to have the perception of scarcity, the ‘grab what you can’ mentality will reassert itself, and the system won’t work again until there is a large influx of new clothes of that type.

• 
  

  Shelf of underwear and such. It's all clean, but still seems sort of...eww...

  There are limits to what can be effectively shared.  While there are a large number of shoes, there are probably only a few choices for that person who wears size 13.  It’s also difficult for those of us who wear more common sizes to find shoes that actually fit completely right, or heavy duty boots for things like construction work.  The community therefore offers each member a yearly subsidy through Commie Clothes to buy shoes, which doesn’t cover the entire cost, but it enables people to purchase them more easily.  Similarly, not many people seem to want to rely on the bins of public underwear or mismatched socks, mostly due to typical biases about wearing those items that other people have worn.  Subsidies are offered for those as well.

Most of these dynamics can also be seen in other types of public/communal sharing systems.

Tagged: economics, egalitarianism, resource sharing, technics, Twin Oaks

Part of the communities agreements is that children will do small amounts of work for the collective good. The amount they are asked to do is based on age and for a 7 year old, only here part time (because Willow spends part of each week in Cville with Sky) is one hour per week. Next year it will be two hours per week.

For a while we often did part of Willow's quota in the hammock shop. He was getting pretty good at winding shuttles and toddling them over to the welding station. But the economy and our own inability to market hammocks swept the business and now the hammock shop is nearly closed. Hawina has been having Willow do a bit of food processing (where we preserve our harvest for later in the year) and he has been unloading the dishwashers are Tupelo and MorningStar. While we continue to seek places to find labor credits for him.

We had an argument about it yesterday.

Our clothes were up to dry outside MorningStar and Willow and i were taking them down. "You can take labor credits for this." i replied casually. "No i cant." replied my clever son. "These are our clothes and not community clothes" And i realized he understood the system better than i had given him credit for. Indeed, normally one can not take labor credits for work which just benefits ones self.

Burning Man was quite the bust this year. We had an amazing team and an interesting project to hype. But dear friends were caught up in this crazy sting/entrapment escapade and much of our energy was defused in getting them sprung.

Ironically, with all the amazing art and bizarre contraptions on the Playa, the best part of this years Burning Man for me was a set of conversations i had with my dear friend Crystal which could have just as easily be held in a Santa Cruz coffee shop.

Crystal wants to build an international camp at next years burn. US nationals could participate, but everyone who is there must pass a short admissions test, which is in it's entirety the question "Are you a revolutionary?"

There are 17 people at East Wind (including 3 on their way) who will be deploying the Villages in the Sky Burning Man equipment. After a Herculean effort, we finally found an affordable truck to carry all the stuff (thanks Keyvah, yeah Sara). It is an impressive array of stuff:

1) Circus/Revival tent 20' but 60'
2) A Healix tower with two wind turbines on the top
3) A mobile kitchen
4) A small tent village
5) a somewhat undefined collection of vehicles

We are at 6:45 and Fossil. If you are coming to Burning Man you should definitely stop by and especially for the funological brainstorm and naming party on Friday at dusk.

This is getting exciting.

And yesterday East Wind approved the hosting of the Villages in the Sky festival in June 2010. We have a home, at least for a couple of years.

According to the bylaws of Twin Oaks, one of the main purposes of the community is to create:

“A system of internal economics that holds all land, labor, and other resources in common, and makes the material benefits of the Community available to all members equally or according to need.”

I have already argued that this is one of the core principles of the Social Contract of the community.

Holding resources in common is an old concept, which seems to have existed throughout written history ever since humans were first organized into hierarchical societies, dominated by an elite warrior/priest alliance, where resource distribution was an inegalitarian system based on social class that the colonized world has functioned under ever since.  Many reform or revolutionary movements in history held the sharing of resources to be one of the primary ways they wanted to organize differently from dominant culture, such as several Christian reform movements (almost all reforms over two millennia start with a move more towards Omnia sunt Communia of the apostles before they become corrupted to varying degrees), and more modern political movements like socialism, communism, and some forms of anarchism.

On my way to the Yaffa Cafe (where Tobias and i are now geeking) this morning i asked myself "Why am i going there?"

There are 2 bazillion great places it eat in NYC. It appears that industrial capitalism, which i dont have much good to say about, really works for Manhattan - the average restaurant is better than the national average, by a lot. In this hyper competitive/information rich environment only the great survive.

It is not the charming wait staff, who rolled with it when i said "if you touch that i will hurt you" when the waitress tried to take my nearly empty plate.

The mock leopard skin chair covers and table designs are cute, but actually i had not noticed them before today.

No, it is that it is open all night, every night. Of course it is not at all a strange for Manhattan and i am not currently using this feature, because it is the middle of the day. But i want to support outfits which keep the odd hours i do.

My big complaint about most of the cities i love (Am*dam, San Francisco, even Berlin) is that they roll up the streets between midnight and 2 AM. What is up with that ? i want to be in the city (which as Mz DiFranco calls it) "never shuts up".

In one of the many late night metaphysical rants Modok and i shared in Santa Cruz, he once said to me "You need to live your life like your are trying to keep the reader of your biography engaged." It has been a good few weeks for my fictitious biography readers. I can't really do justice to any of the topics i am going to hit on - but things are just going to get worse if i dont do some chronicling - so off we go.

Summer Camp: Network for a New Culture does several camps in the US each year. My take on the these events is they are efforts to look at what kind of culture we want to have in a better world we want to be part of. There is an eclectic mix of topics at summer camp, but the ones around crafting a sex positive culture are the ones which get the most attention. A significant number of people who go to summer camps have a transformative experience, especially people who go as first time participants (interestingly, these revelations usually don't have to do with sex, or at least not primarily so). This years camp did the most radical workshop i have ever been in.

Paul who does work with imprisoned sex offenders in Washington state lead a workshop that didn't just take on the myths about sex offenders. Included in these myths is that sex offenders cant change - when in reality, if fully treated sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate of any major crime except murder. But the big myth (which i bought into until this camp) was that sex offenders are different from us, that we could perhaps tell them if we were close to them and that they are conveniently "other-able".

This blog has already cited several written policies, agreements, and other documents from Twin Oaks.  Referring to written documents will likely continue.  However, it is also important to explore the relationship between what is written and what is actually practiced, and the continual dynamics between the two.

Written documents, as have already been referred to in previous posts, can tell us a lot about the structure of a given society and their culture.  However, there are many limits to what we can know from written documents:

Intentional communities differ from most other communities in dominant culture because they are organized for specific purposes.  These purposes can range from a low level of integration, such as simply living in the same location with some expense sharing, to almost complete integration, such as a common spiritual path, complete resource sharing, and local governmental/organizational systems.

Those who support the State also claim that it is organized for specific purposes.  However, despite various theories like the Social Contract that often claim that the State exists for more benevolent reasons, most modern States still have at their core the absolutist form of government of Europe of the late middle ages: massive hierarchical military structures, centralized administration, and disproportional resource distribution.  Most social programs and limits on governmental power, despite contract theorists arguments, come from social struggle of sectors of the population to achieve those goals, which are only later formally added into constitutions or laws of the State.  Taking off the blinders of nationalism, most States are extremely similar at their core, and cannot truly be said to be organized for specific goals or purposes in the same way that intentional communities can.

Communities organized for specific purposes typically have these goals listed in their fundamental documents.  Having a clear vision is extremely important for these communities because such visions:

There is often much focus on the types and uses of technology in analyzing the conditions of a society.  Technology, however, only gives us a part of the picture of productive processes, as it actually has a fairly narrow focus, despite the almost ubiquitous effect it seems to have on our modern life.

A more complete analysis would focus more on what Lewis Mumford called “technics.”  Technology is a part of technics, but it is only one part.  The “wishes, habits, ideas, goals” also need to be taken into account in a more complete view of production, in addition to the technology itself.  It is important not to just look at a specific machine to see what it does under traditional economic criteria, such as efficiency, cost, and productivity, but also to examine all of the social causes and consequences of that machine.  What were the goals of creating such a machine in the first place?  Why was the existing technology seen to be inadequate?  What performances are now necessary for those operating the machine?  What were the material costs in the production of the machine, and do these outweigh the benefits it produces?  And so on.

From the perspective of technics, it is possible to have a complex society that is extremely developed, in terms of meeting what they perceive to be the needs of their society and how they try to meet those needs, yet has what we would consider a low level of technology.

Much of modern political philosophy has focused on the concept of the Social Contract.  The Social Contract is a philosophical attempt to explain why people form and maintain a given social order, why people would give up various individual freedoms to join a society, and what the society provides for them in return.  It is, essentially, the fundamental agreements between the individual and the organization of society.

Social Contracts are usually not the fundamental documents of a given society.  They are usually philosophical concepts that explain why individuals should obey the fundamental order of society, and all the regulations that lawfully come out of that process.  Some influential examples:

Thomas Hobbes essentially believed that people needed to be ruled by an absolute sovereign because we would otherwise all kill each other, both justifying in his mind why society was formed and why it should be maintained.  John Locke had a similar view of human nature as Hobbes, but thought that people could choose what specific freedoms to give up to the State (the right to kill other, for example), and the State would only exist for specific, limited reasons, mainly neutral protection of everyone’s life, liberty, and property.  Rousseau believed that through some magical process, citizens meeting in popular assemblies could create something called the General Will, and since the General Will came from this process of popular sovereignty, it was everyone’s duty to obey (or be forced to obey) it.

Modern radical political theory suffers from a lack of vision.  There are many extremely well written analyses of the problems of modern societies.  However, there are comparatively few works describing the specifics of what a better future would look like.

Most works about new societies or better ways of organizing specific aspects of our current one are often filled with vague descriptions.  Most often, they describe their societies as the lack of certain negative qualities of our current world: no war, racism, sexism, hunger, poverty, etc.  But what do these worlds actually look like?  What would people’s day-to-day existence consist of?  Would a world lacking all these negative qualities be a utopia, or would there still be many unresolved social problems?

There is already a wealth of information about what a Post-Revolutionary society would look like from looking at intentional communities.  Many of these communities were formed specifically to address the elimination of many of the negative aspects of dominant culture, and have over decades of work established many systems and structures to that end.  This blog will focus on many of those systems.

If we had played by the rules, they likely would never have been permitted to come.

But because i was characteristically sloppy, Voice of America came to do a features piece at Twin Oaks. A recruiting manager who was on top of their game would have posted the emails that VOA sent requesting they come and cover the commune weeks before their arrival. And quite likely had i done that the members of the community who had concerns would have rallied enuf upset to chase off the propaganda arm of the US government. But i surprised people with them and they were already on campus before a few people expressed their upset at their presence.

They made no bones about who they were. Calling themselves US propagandists. Offering their own observations of VOA's manipulative behavior, like closing offices in countries they are less interested in. There was a precious moment when they were trying to convince I-P (formerly Piankhy) to let them film him (he was lusciously telegenic with his Asian musical instrument and his rich dark north African skin) by saying that they just reported the facts. I-P was having none of it.

When you are a support person for someone who is in trouble, you run a low level anxiety about when they are going to call you.

We have been trying to get this meeting of my international friends and my fellow communards to possibly start a new community near Twin Oaks. It was quite tricky to find a timing which worked for all the players. So we had spent the early part of the evening at Twin Oaks exploring FEC possibilities and had gone to Acorn where i was finally going to get to relax a bit and enjoy the company of these other people who i wanted to get to know Roberto and Marta.

Then the call came. Just as we were about to walk in. But there was no question, no hesitation. You've said you will be there, it's show time.

At one point when i had gotten into trouble for something Kristen and Keenan were talking about my personality and Kristen helpfully said "i just wish Paxus would follow the rules more." and Keenan replied "Pax is not a following the rules kind of guy. He is the guy you call, when you only have one call."

Tonight i got the call and delivered.

The joke is that because there is no TV on the commune, we create our own soap operas. Even if the proposed origin is incorrect, we certainly have a propensity to rumble emotionally within the bounds of our intense experiment.

Hawina and i have been doing mediation's are a party which went out of control some months back, and the most recent one we did, i was quite worried about. I was afraid because i had worked with both of the people we were mediating with before on romantic relationships stuff and while i care for both of them deeply, i knew that they can both be hard headed and also that the stakes were quite high for this mediation. If we blew it, the cost of failure could potentially be quite high - derailing our hopes of resolving the issues in a one on one basis and instead going to a community level feedback, which would even more certainly go badly.

On top of this, when i had talked to my friend who is aptly named after a volcano goddess a couple of days before the mediation about my concerns, we had ended up spiraling out of control and screaming at each other. Which is pretty rare for me.

And it worked out well, better than well actually it was something of a breakthru. Hawina and i were good, but we never would have made it were it not for the somewhat uncharacteristic vulnerability and compassion of the two people in dialog brought with them.

Amanda had an amazing b-day party and i stayed for as long as i could. Which meant i was showing up in Jamaica Plane after midnight. Bonnie had agreed to let me stay with her, despite me again having offered to visit when i was in town and then rudely blowing her off.

i had called just before 11, she said she was working a long day the next day, so she would not be very animated company. She gave me the combination lock number and said she would unlock the door to her apartment up this pseudo fire escape. My ride from Amanda's party in Glocester took longer than expected and when i finally arrived, decoded the door and braved my way up this cluttered, darkened stairs i made it to her kitchen and i decided it was not fair to climb into bed with her, only to wake her up 3 hours later so i could make my connection.

So i went to sleep in the living room on the new couch.

Just as i was about to crash out, Bonnies flat mates started crashing around in the kitchen. i had never met them before, but i knew they were nice and had a little baby. So i stay in the living room on the couch and no one sees me, no need for awkward introductions. they go to bed, i doze off.

2 AM bonnie calls "Where are you?"
"i am in your living room"
"i was expecting you and could not sleep, come in my room"

so i walk thru the dining room, past the bathroom and open the door to Bonnie's room - which is a kids room. i am in the wrong apartment.

just as i realize this my cell buzzes

i went to visit the curious and eclectic jade netanya beside central park on my way to amandables b-day bash. i found the most charming cafe right beside her house which is called Alice's Tea Cup.

But there was a surreal moment when we drove to jade's synagogue and i ended up across Amsterdam avenue waiting for traffic to pass to catch an open parking space. i crossed and started to back into a space and there was another car which had come later, but was on the right side of the street which had also stopped for the space.

As we backed up into the space he pulled up beside us and expressed his displeasure.

"we were here first" Jade informed him, "we were just on the other side of the street"
"you cant wait on the wrong side and then claim a space" he said with a measured city upset.
there was a moment of silence, i did not pretend to know the nyc street etiquette in this type of situation - jade had already been teasing me about my contry bumpkin ways - cautiously crossing streets, inability to hail cabs effectively, etc. And i was aware that it was quite a good spot for us, close to where we were going and we were basicaly int he spot already at this point.
"you can have it" jade said to the guy, in her generous spirited way
"nahh" he said "you gave it up to easily, you are freaking me out."

this really spun me around. as he drove away i was trying to figure out what was going on in his head. was he looking for a confrontation and we did not provide it? was he afraid that if we left and he parked there we would come back and do something to his car ?

Somehow, over the last couple months, I've found that I'm spending over half my time either gardening or organizing gardening work. I've never gardened before, not seriously anyway, just bits of time helping out here and there.

I didn't start gardening because I was especially interested in it. I started because I think food is important, and increasingly so given the economic and ecological situation we find ourselves in on our cozy little planet. And, I started because Alexis offered use what amounts to a part-time job, lowering our food and housing costs to $200/month each.

Fortunately, I've found that I like it! I look fwd to the mornings when I know I'm going to be out in the garden. In the last couple months I've probably dug up 12 square yards of wire grass, and found it very satisfying. I've learned about double-digging, the basic concepts of soil health, and companion planting (what plants grow well interspersed amongst each other). I like keeping a closer watch on weather patterns, and watching how plant growth is accelerating as the weather warms.

i watch you sleep
eyes creeping across your silhouette like
a tarantula escaped from an old bond flick

now reconfigure
align possibilities
w/ framed realities
and something fades in translation

like thursday misses friday
time seems contagious
unable to take a break
running over memories
too tasty to consider
next thing in the queue
dont miss a beat

more realistic, they say
child safe, no one gets hurt
one size fits all

there is a shoe
stuck in the gears
and its callling your name

It starts with respect. You have to believe that your teacher knows something that you desire to learn and has the capacity to share it with you in a way which you can hear. Their experience, be it lived or learned, has to have taken them to a place you want to go to.

Capacity is a function of shared language. This is not so much about English or algebra, but about assumptions. Do we share a belief in science or magic? Is it about our personal experiences, or the counsel of great minds? Does it matter if it is couched in politically correct terminology or off color jokes?

Finally, for me, it is about being seen. I seek a teacher who both appreciates what i have done and recognizes where their lessons may help me to grow.

Well, it's been so long since I posted anything, I wonder if anyone's still paying attention. But the other day gave a couple priceless moments with Willow that I had to share.

He and I were traveling to California for my brothers wedding and general family get-together. In addition to his trendy elfen coat purchased in amsterdam, he was wearing this totally ostentatious round brimmed hat, all fuzzy, very pink and purple. The best moment was boarding our second flight of the day. We were in the 31st row, and boarded after almost everyone else. I think every person we passed down the aisle who was paying attention did a double-take. Plenty of amused grins and looks of confusion. I was very proud.

As we sat down for our third and final flight of the day Willow said to me, "there's no chance the same thing could happen in Sacramento that happened in Dulles is there?" "Dulles, what happened in Dulles?" I asked. "Um, or was it Dublin?" he said. "You've been on a lot of trips lately haven't you," I asked with a small. He laughed. After two trips to Europe and several back and forth across the country he's probably one of the most well-traveled 7 yr olds out there.

I love him so much.

i gave this talk at the Harvard Memorial Church today at my fathers funeral. It was well received.

I disagree with people for a living. My father was one of the most agreeable people you ever met. And yet it was from him that I learned, if you wanted to be in the conversation, you need to listen deeply and to be able to reflect back what someone else truly believes.

I break the law as part of my work. My father was the most law-abiding man I ever met. And it was from him I learned that you need to have an unwavering moral compass, so that whoever meets you knows what you believe in.

My father built highly functional schools and elegant houses. I stop the construction of inherently dangerous and unnecessary nuclear reactors. It is from him I learned that my role is to serve in the building of a better world.

My father’s father was a large man named “Tiny”. He died when my father was a boy and I believe this helped make my father a careful and cautious man. I was fortunate to have a dedicated and supportive father for 5 decades and I am convinced this security helped make me comfortable taking chances.

When I get up in the morning and look in the mirror before days which tend to be busy and long, as my fathers were, I sometimes see the mirror image of the man, who despite being different, was one of my most important teachers.

i visited my family of origin to go to the burial of my father. While i was there, my mother was excited about me taking a number of things which belonged to my father which were useful to me. His shoes fit, i took a cashmere sweater and a couple of nice jackets.

i also took a watch of his and started to wear it. One of the differences between me and most of the folx in my college graduating class is that for the last 30 years or so, i have not worn a watch. i mostly consider it an oppressive symbol and device. for the past half dozen years or so, i have used my cell phone to cheat and figure out what time it was when i needed to know. Now i have given myself permission to do something different. i wear it in part to think of him and in part to be a bit more organized, something i am thinking a lot about as i head towards a likely jail sentence of 15 days which will be wasted time if i am not more organized than i generally am.

8 years ago my dear friend and spiritual brother Modok convinced me to get a ring. i dont wear jewelry and it was something of a big deal for me, but he sold me on the idea that i was wearing it for Willow, who we were not even sure would exist at that time. When i tried to counter that we had not agreed to have a child yet, Modok (always intellectually quick on his feet) said "if you decide not to have the kid, you can make a small wooden boat, put the ring on it and send it down the river - thus ritualistically letting go of the idea of having a child." When i remained skeptical, he bought it for me and gave it to me.

It is one of these very common "Oh manny padmay ohm" rings, which i think has Sandskit text on it. I have gotten similar ones for Sky and Hawina and Joy and Anissa. But i have kept this one for these years, thinking that i will give it to Willow when he leaves home (also Modok's clever idea). yesterday i lost the ring.

We're visiting Twin Oaks for validation-day (the pc-egalitarian-hippie version of valentine's day, where everyone gets a card and everyone else signs it with something they like about the person). I'm excited to see my oaker buddies that I miss. I'm also excited to go back to Twin Oaks to see what I think about it now that I've been off the farm for a while. The first time I went there I thought it was filthy, but by the time I left I thought it was totally normal (and I thought gas-station bathrooms looked exceptionally clean!). It's interesting how quickly your point of view can change...

I remember when I was little and we moved away from New Orleans, I was SHOCKED to discover that not only did the rest of the country NOT get off of school for the week of mardi gras, but they didn't even CELEBRATE mardi gras! And no one knew what king cake was, and that I was always afraid of them because I thought I would choke on baby Jesus (king cake is an oval cake that people have at mardi gras, with a plastic "baby Jesus" inside somewhere, and whoever gets the Jesus piece wins something). Now that I think about it, New Orleans is totally wack. I have early childhood memories of the policemen stationed around the parades supposedly keeping us safe, all drinking massive amounts of beer.

Here's a picture of Brian and me fingerpainting!!! HORRAY!!!

Our first snow together as a married couple in our own place:

And Brian doin' husband-stuff (AKA attacking me with the vacuum cleaner!!):

The way my dad used to tell the story was he was being interviewed for the job to design the Cornell Campus Book Store and the interviewer asked, "How do you plan to make the architecture of this building fit in with the architecture of the various different styles of the buildings around it?"

The answer which he had not thought of until that moment was
"Put it underground"

He says the answer got him the job, the building is underground and as the picture above shows, it almost vanishes.

But my dad was not an impulsive guy, generally. His dad (the dean of Cornell's college of Agriculture) died when my dad was a young adolescent and this made his life very difficult. And so my father was extremely risk averse. Interestingly, the security and stability that this created in his family life generated two highly risk seeking sons. My brother the rock star and myself.

And i oversimplify, for were he completely risk averse, he would have never started his own company.

i learned a lot of things from my father. Somethings, like my relationship to risk or my views on polyamory or anarchism came from opposing what he believed. We had our disagreements, but he was graceful and for the most part accepting of our differences. This is an area where i am still trying to learn from his model.

kassia and I finished a website compiling our writings and photos from europe this past fall. Here's the URL. Hope you enjoy it!

http://sites.google.com/site/eurocommune/

Part of my job, if finding gifted young people and offering them tools. Aris was an easy find at even at Casa Robino. Amongst all the charming and attractive people who storm thru this adventure in radical hospitality, she stood out. We spoke on the back porch for some hours, about skillsurfers about what she wanted to do with this group and these people. This eloquent, multilingual 19 year old spoke of land in Slovenia that she controlled that she wanted to do collective things with. We spoke of hitching and of how she transended her fear.

Aris has passed. A boat capsized and took her from us. My eyes bleed for this loss.

Over the last few months my mother and I have been having an email exchange on the topic of religion. I thought I'd share my last volley...

Mother Theresa names various social ills and names abortion as their cause. I agree that the problems she named are serious problems. I disagree that abortion, or the legalization of abortion caused them or has exacerbated them. Do you know of any data/studies that support her assertions? I think those problems were developing before abortion was legalized. Abortion is not the problem, or the cause of those problems. Our culture is the problem, and abortion is one of many symptoms.

The mainstream of contemporary western civilization is a culture of hyper-individualism, consumerism, and commercialism. The birth of this culture can be traced back to the advent of hierarchy, because this culture depends on the exploitation of people and natural resources by other people. More recently, look back to European colonialism starting in the 15th century, then to the industrial revolution and the rise of the corporation as a dominant social institution, and in the last 50 years to the rise of global, free-market capitalism as the dominant economic model. (Ironically, the first civilization known to outlaw abortions, the Sumerians, was one of the first to engage in war and slavery on a large scale. - noted in The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner)

Wikipedia has it that when Wam Kat was 18 the doctors told he he had a year left to live. Faced with this horrifying fact he told an affirming solution - he decided to live an entire life in a single year. Then he did not die, nor did he slow down. Now nearly 4 decades later his life could fill several biographies.

Founding of the European Youth Action network EYFA and summer activist gathering Ecotopia. He was also the mastermind behind the differential currency rate conversion based on countries earning power rather than the legal conversion rates - calle dthe Eco-rates. During the Yugoslavian conflict he set up the largest non-state refugee camps in Croatia as well as the Pakrac housing reconstruction project. He's set up email networks, written books on the history and reciepts of the Dutch mobile anarchist kitchen Rampenplan. And won a city counsel seat in Belzig Germany.

Now he wants to do the 20th Ecotopia in Belzig in 2010. since the network he founded seems to have lost interest in the project, fearing it is not action oiented enough and too "life style" in approach.

Wam is a digital pioneer, but did his heavy lifting long before Facebook showed up. So is exploring this as a new organizing/discussion tool.

Wam tells stories and makes up words. "Constantainiously" is one of my favorites. It does not exactly mean constantly + instantaniously, but if you hold this meaning in mind, you will get something of the flavor of what he is trying to say.

When i hear something like "Romania is terrible" in my mind it translates into "we lost our bags and missed our train." As it has oft been ironically noted "all people who generalize are fools." [My experience of Romania, in years long past was it was wonderful.]

This trip has not been without it's troubles - between Hamm and Minden in Germany my backpack disappeared. i think it was stolen, since when the train stopped, i searched every wagon for bag to no avail and due to a communication failure with the conductor ended up getting separated from Angie, Hawina and Willow, who ended up going on to Belzig without me. [i arrived within minutes of them by taking the fast, but expensive ICE - intercity express].

A couple of new years back i resolved to stop packing, i made a number of trips without a bag, borrowing clothes and other key items from comrades on route, which worked okay - but slowly i gravitated back to bringing my own stuff. This bag which was lost, despite being mostly my stuff, was harder for the rest of my party, because it had some of Willows toys and our movies and Angie's clothes and trinkets.

my mentor told me to live like you are trying to keep the rader of your autobiography engdged.