Twin Oaks Community

The way the mainstream media (MSM) reports it the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) foolishly patted down Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissenger on a recent flight from NYC.  From my perspective the only thing which would be more appropriate would be if they had arrested him for acts of terrorism.

The cases against Henry Kissenger are tremendously compelling.

He was involved in the secret bombing of Cambodia, the over throw of the elected government of Chile and decries the restrictions on assassinations.

If TSA had been doing their job, Kissenger would be in jail awaiting trial.

The worlds media eye often looks the wrong way.  In the late 1990?s while the western media was obsessing about daily large demonstrations in Yugoslavia, few were looking at the smaller, but still significant protests in Bulgaria.  The Yugoslav government held on for years, but the scrappy Bulgarian protesters successfully toppled their government.

With Occupy protests starting back up in the US, the Arab Spring and even Occupy Spain hold most of the headlines, my eyes are on Russia and the protests in Moscow.

One of the Russian Special Forces who refused to arrest protesters

The above picture is of a riot cop who refused to arrest non-violent protesters, claiming that what they were doing was not illegal and thus there was not grounds for arrest.  This does not happen much in highly hierarchical cultures like Russia.  For in the confusion Russian riot police were looking for both protestors and riot police who were refusing to arrest them.

A chatty visitor asked me about my ring.  I explained that it was not really mine.  That i was holding it for Willow until he decided to leave and then it would become his.

My animated conversational partner then asked “Well, what if he decides never to leave?”

“Well, then i certainly get to keep the ring!” i replied

Willow and Hawina and i have a Wednesday night hammocks date.  It is left over from when we were rushing to make our production goals and both on the farm parents wanted to be helping and that meant Willow came along.  He is slowly learning different tasks in the hammock shop – shuttle winding, harness threading.  He cleaned up the scrap rope from the  hammock shop floor yesterday, but i must confess he lacks the work ethic i was hoping he might embrace.  After this hammocks date, Willow and i went up to Keith’s stag party up at the conference site.

Marriages are not often highly celebrated here (perhaps 5 large ones since i have been here – including this summers 2) and this is the first bachelor party in my 14 years here.  It was also Willows first ever and he loved it.

it was too dark to see these, but we certainly heard something

Part of his enthusiasm was Ezra had acquired several different types of meat and barbeque sticks that we deliciously marinated.  There were two big fires to cook over.

I make an annual pilgrimage to the Dominion Resources shareholders meeting.  I own two stocks so i can ask questions and be lied to by senior management.  Before the meeting there is a continental breakfast in the fancy hotel (this year we were in Pittsburgh) where various CEO’s for Dominion (it has several) tell me things that are not true.  They tell me they never give out the information about how much the reactor has cost over the past year, in fact they gave it to me for years, without complaint.  They told me that the new reactor design the APWR) had already been built at Millstone 3 in Connecticut (Millstone was completed in 1974, North Anna 3 is supposed to be a 3rd generation plant, with a much newer design).  And the big lie was that they are all still optimistic about building another reactor near my home.

The text below in bold is what i said. The text in italics i wrote in advance and choose not to use.

Right now every one of 54 reactors in Japan sits idle. Some of these reactors may come back on line again, but it is safe to say the prospects for new reactor construction in Japan are vanishing, since restarting completed reactors will always be cheaper than new build.  These means the best nuclear engineers in Japan are seeking other work, including those engineers at Mitsubishi which is proposed designer for the new third reactor at North Anna.

Turns out Godzilla’s middle name is Fukushima

i occasionally joke that if you believe my anarchist maxim that you can do what ever you want, as long as you take responsibility for it. And you buy into the new age principal that we create our own reality, then you have a political obligation to be an optimist, because otherwise you are creating the wrong reality.

i am thinking about new community a lot these days, it is like waking up from a long sleep and feeling something alive in me wanting to come out.  i am talking a lot with people about best practices, about examining the gems from various different communities and considering fusing them.

Personal shelters and robust commie clothes from East Wind, the consensus decision making and no labor tracking from Acorn, the robust sharing systems and transparency groups from Twin Oaks, off the grid like Dancing Rabbit, ecological transition covenant borrowed from the Living Energy Farm, the activism commitment from Little Flower, the radical hospitality mandate from Casa Robina, pro-kid like Fussen, and the dumpster ethic from the Keep in Death City.

best practices feedback loop

Feonix and Steve live in the collective house in Washington DC (aka Death City) with the uber Cool Aries former Twin Oaks visitor.  This place is called the Keep.  And they do serious dumpstering.  And it makes me clear that part of what i want to be doing with this new community is dumpster/food rescue.

Today the last of the 54 reactors in Japan shut down.  This is more for cultural reasons than technical reasons.  Most of these reactors are fully able to operate, at least two of them have passed the government stress tests and have all the needed government approvals.  Japan has long used and informal “consensus” process in which local mayors and governments have a voice in the decision making process.  Before the Fukushima triple meltdown, local governments generally saw nuclear utilities are the sources of jobs and tax revenues.  There was some anti-nuclear protest activity in Japan, but the “realists” won the day.  Japan has very little indigenous fossil fuel production and it has a high energy per capita appetite ranked 28th of 190 countries.   Japan is one of the largest renewable energy producers in the world, ranked at 9 over all.

This is a guest post by the always fabulous Angie.

Disclaimers and clarifications:  I’m not telling people how to be an ally or how to interact with allies- I’m sharing my experiences.  I’m also talking about how I would like my allies to interact with me.  For the purposes of this post I’m going to use the term “oppression” as a catch-all term, covering but  not exclusive to: racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination based on religion, survivors of sexual assault, rape, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, incest, the experiences of those who have developmental or physical disabilities, the experiences of those who struggle with mental illness or are non-neurotypical, and almost certainly a bunch of things I forgot.  Oppression is not the best word to cover this rather large list, but it’s the best I’ve got at the moment- I am very open to suggestions for a better word.  Now for the actual post.  Many thanks to Abigail and Sara for their edits and support.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Pax’s Victim Blaming 101 post and the comments which followed.  I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a good ally, both from my own experiences working with allies and my experiences being an ally.

Being involved in anti-oppression work is tricky (massive understatement).  It’s tricky because we all swim in a sea of interlocking oppressions and privileges. It’s tricky because being part of the sea means it’s hard for us to examine it, and when we try we’re still part of the sea and directly impacting how it moves.  It’s tricky because hearing “you are looking at this issue from a place of privilege” is hard and scary, because it’s easy to interpret this as “you’re a bad person.”  It’s tricky because you are almost guaranteed to hurt someone you care about without intending to, or even understanding how it happened.

Russia Today has produced there second video on Twin Oaks.

Though i have only been able to watch the first half because of slow internet connection, i am pretty pleased with the piece.  There is no narration, so if there are things i wont like, they will be representations from Oakers of things in the community which i disagree with.

What i do find somewhat surprising is that even though there are only about 8,000 hits to this YouTube post over the last 3 days, there are almost 400 comments on the video.  Having scanned about half of them, this is what i found.

About 1/3 of them were people who were upset with something.  Often this was the notion of communism, or about Russia Today which produced the piece.  [Russia Today is a 24 hour/day non-commercial news station which is financed by the Kremlin].  Most of these comments had very little to do with Twin Oaks, and regularly they were about how industrial communism had destroyed their country or some part of the world.

There were many critics and a number of admirers.  Some people claiming we kick out people who get old (which we certainly dont), others saying we are missing the point of capitalism (which perhaps we are).  Someone was amused by Ezra’s bathrobe.

Even if our viewership is relatively low, we certainly seem to be able to spark some conversation.

Self proclaimed “peace keeper” gassing innocents and inciting violence in Seattle

A group of self-proclaimed “police officers” brought mayhem to downtown Seattle Tuesday, blocking cars and letting off toxic chemicals in streets crowded with holiday-goers. Many were dressed in blue, with their faces obscured by visors. The group, affiliated with the nationwide “1%” movement, has drawn widespread criticism for their refusal to renounce the use of violence to achieve their political aims.

[This is not my piece, the author is unknown, it was liberated by activist, musician Jess Grant.]

Our Beltane ritual was rain delayed by a day.   i went to Willow and asked him when the event was rescheduled for and he replied:

We are telling people to assemble at 1 and that the procession is 2, but we really dont think we will leave until 2:30

This was amusing to me. It is the way organizers talk with each other all the time.  Which makes sense because for the first time he is really claiming this event as his, he is playing a staring role in it.  And he hears this type of conversation all the time from his parents who all identify as organizers.

Willow plays fire elemental at Beltane 2012

Almost all pagan celebrations call in the four directions and the linked four elements.  Willow had been excited since last years Beltane ritual at the prospect of presenting the fire element and doing some pyrotechnics to a friendly audience.  He made his two sentence invocation and threw flour into the grill which appears behind him in the above picture, that then ignited in a slightly dramatically manner.

And with this he initiates himself into the world of deciding about which rituals and realities he will be involved in.

willow in the center of the spiral

i name my months.  i get that this is a bit odd.  And it gives me the chance to celebrate extraordinary events, like children of my friends being born or honor heroes passing (had he died earlier April might have been called “Bye Ernest” after recently passed Ernest Callenbach who wrote the visionary novel Ecotopia).

May 2012 will be “Nuclear Free Japan”.  This is a “slam dunk” as predictions go, since we have known for a while that 53 of the 54 reactors were closed down and the last would close on May 6th.  It has become clear in the last few weeks that the efforts of the central government to rush the restart the Ohi reactors (the only ones to make it thru the new Stress Tests) were meeting to significant resistance to make the May 6th deadline.

These are some of the pictures Janel shots of yesterdays festivities

Rejoice Acorn doing Murdock Acorns hair for the festivities

Valerie getting her face painted

Winooski and Hawthorne played goddess and god with requisite romantic excitement between them

Willow was fire, Sky had graphics appropriate for the dad of fire

So I have a bunch of standard raps I give about the community when giving Saturday tours and talks at schools. This is the one about how we share vehicles.

The average group of 100 US Americans has 67 cars. We have 17. Not buying, insuring and maintaining 50 vehicles represents a significant chunk of change. But the question you should be asking is “Does this limited number of vehicles actually serve the transportation needs of this large group?” Fortunately, badly behaved communards test the system and I am badly behaved. But before we talk about me, let’s look under the hood of this beauty.

If you look at how most people in this country use vehicles, you can tell something about our strategy. The single largest use for cars in the US is commuting to work. We work and live in the same place, number one use down.

The second largest vehicle use is discretionary shopping. We have developed a tripper system which is so complete that almost all members use it instead of shopping themselves. It is the job of one member each day to drive into town with a bunch of pre-formatted slips which instruct them what to buy, where to buy it, what substitutes (if any) are available, where to charge it and where to deliver it. Unless you love the act of shopping, this system will transform your relationship with buying things. 6 days a week we send a tripper to the nearest local town, which is Louisa, then 3 times a week a different tripper goes to the nearest big city, which is Charlottesville and once a week we go to the state capital of Richmond.

I’ve estimated for about 2 months that i would hit 100,000 hits for the life of this blog just before May of this year.  It will happen actually right after this is posted.   What is surprising is that i got 68 hits from Japan out of first 200 hits of the day.  Well if you read here regularly you would know because of Fukushima i write regularly about Japan, but none of the top pages for the day are on Japan or nukes.  My only guess is people are coming to the blog and then reading lots of posts within it and they are Japanese.

So what i am thinking about doing between 100,000 and 250,000 hots – which should be by year end.

1) Start posting paper copies of the blog here at Twin Oaks in my mailbox.  i have long resisted this and i think it is time to let go and print it so people who dont want to read online or are bored in the ZK lounge can read them.

2) Continue work on Elephant Journal a) Re-write of the Funological Significance/Dark Side of Burning Man piece B) Re-work of the Radical Car Share piece i will be posting soon and C) New Community Piece

In the Not Forum Transparency group i am in, Marta has just brought these new tools from Emotional Brain Training.  One of the tools form EBT involved using key emotional states in a free flowing style to be more transparent.  Interestingly, you are encouraged to express feelings which need not be factually true “I am sad that no one cares for me” might be an oft classic case.  The more challenging emotions are

• Anger
• Sadness
• Fear
• Guilt

The more comforting emotions are

• Happy
• Proud
• Grateful
• Secure
• Hopeful

Participants are encouraged to produce a free flowing series of emotions using short sentences of the form “I am angry that …”, “I feel Secure that …” and so forth.  You might do this for 6 to 10 minutes.  Just riffing emotionally.  It is incredibly powerful

My personal experience was i got to admit things that i was angry about and then admit my guilt feelings of being angry.  I found mysel proud of learning in the charged dialog mostly with Sara, but facilitated by Abigail about how to be a good ally to sexual assault survivors. And what i heard from others in the room that i can’t tell you about was even more powerfully insightful.  I am glad we are adopting this new tool, i think thre is a lot of power too it.

i dont care about Rush Limbaugh.  When his agent was asked if it was problematic that Rush had completely lost his hearing he replied “Rush does not listen to anyone else anyway.”  And while his incendiary comments about the Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke finally woke up scores of advertisers and caused them to dump him, Rush will continue to blame survivors of sexual violence and advance his racist, misogynist agenda. He does not need to listen to do what he does.

But its not Rush, it is the “well intentioned” men who really get me. Recently, one wrote an article for the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon paper in Eugene, because April is sexual assault awareness month. The author clearly thinks sexual assault is the biggest problem on campus and then in his well intentioned way goes on to blame the women who are targeted by this crime for the problem.

Yesterday Socialist Francios Hollande beat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy by a single percentage point in the first round of the French presidential elections.  This is the first time in over 50 years an incumbent has not commanded the majority in the first round and most political observers thinks this spells the end for Sarkozy who is quite unpopular in his home country.  For nuclear power worldwide this is very good thing.  Sarkozy is the ultimate nuclear sales person, the first head of state to visit Japan after Fukushima, Sarkozy also appears to have tried to sell reactors to Qaddafi before he fell.  Hollande initially agreed with the French Green Party platform of closing 25 reactors by 2025.  It remains to be seen if he will stick with this pledge, but it is the other side of the world from Sarkozy who wanted basically indefinite life extension for these reactors.

But Hollande is more important for Europe than just reactors.  The Socialist has criticized the German backed failed austerity programs which have been imposed on several southern European countries, most notably Greece.  These programs were paradoxically designed to create growth while choking off services and income to the middle and lower classes.  It is an idea so stupid, only very rich people could believe it.  The election which will likely depose Sarkozy is on May 6th

i think the more complex and important ethical questions are the ones where there are conflicts of rights. Abortion, gun control, immigration – and so it is here on the commune.

One of the situations which has come up several times recently is “Who gets to decide who moves into an empty slot in a building, when a member leaves?”  For a long time, the way most residences in the community dealt this was a simple waiting list.  Waiting lists  use a first come first serve sequence.  This maximizes the power of the individual, who if they are responsible or good at forecasting their needs, simple puts their name on the list and when a slot becomes available it is offered to them and if they dont want it, they either drop off the list or to the bottom of it, depending on whether they want to be asked in the future.

Sometimes you just have to wait

What has been happening more recently is that the residences have been deciding they want to have more control over who lands in their building.  Just signing onto a waiting list is insufficient process.  What Tupelo (where i nominally live) just decided to do was to ditch the waiting list. Instead we are asking who ever is interested in living in the building to sign up and then select amongst those candidates.  Central to the thinking is that the house has a culture and a spirit and we hope to select someone who will foster those values.

Two different ground breaking pieces of legislation are moving in Vermont.

Vermont will be the firststate in the country to have a state-wide ban on fracking which the state Senate extended the House’s 3 year ban to make it an indefinite ban.  This legislation needs to be approved by the governor, which is likely.

To be clear, Vermont only has limited shale oil deposits so it is hardly a battle ground state from the oil industries perspective.  Fracking critics point out that this method for extracting natural gas has a number of serious problems.

The most discussed fracking problem is the contamination of drinking water.   The various chemicals forced into the shale deposits to release the gas then end up in ground water and have in some cases made it undrinkable.  Oil industry funded studies show fracking is safe and does not cause ground water pollution.