Dia de los Muertos 2021

In the spirit of the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos I am pausing to reflect on three souls who dedicated their lives to community, who touched me in their transit across the firmament, and whose brightness dipped below the horizon in the last 12 months:

Linda Joseph • passed May 31 (age 68 )

Although Linda and I were of a similar age and shared a burning desire to promote community, our paths were mostly parallel rather than intersecting. She invested in the ENA (Ecovillage Network of the Americas, a subsidiary of the Global Ecovillage Network) while I sailed under the flag of the FIC. While FIC focused on intentional communities of all stripes in North America, ENA focused on hemispheric connections that emphasized ecological values. While I lived at Sandhill Farm, a homesteading community in northeast Missouri, Linda pioneered EarthArt Village in the high plains of southern CO. Both of us lived in rural communities dedicated to exploring self-sufficiency and resource conservation (think downwardly mobile).

Linda served as a commissioner in Saguache County (2007-15), and was steadfast in her support of GEN and GEN-US (a splinter network from ENA after the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries calved off from ENA circa 2012.

Linda and I had a number of interactions during 2013-15, when there were active conversations about whether it made sense for FIC to assume GEN-US' portfolio, or to continue as two separate organizations. While we ultimately decided not to interweave, it was fruitful to discuss mission and identity, and Linda was very much in the thick of things.

Stan Hildebrand • passed Aug 30 (age 75)

Stan was my long-term fellow traveler at Sandhill Farm, where we lived together for 35 years (1979-2014). I have honored him previously in my blog post of Aug 30, Hildebrand Elegy.

Pat Murphy • passed Oct 1 (age 82)

I first became aware of Pat in the early '90s, when FIC held its fall organizational meetings at the Lama Foundation (San Cristobal NM) and they were attended by Faith Morgan, a third-generation community person whose parents raised her at The Vale in Yellow Springs OH. Faith had married Pat and moved to California to be with him and assist with a tech venture company that Pat had launched.

Eventually the company was sold and the two of them relocated to Yellow Springs, where they could care for Jane (Faith's mother) toward the end of her life, and they became active members of The Vale community (established in 1960). While there, they took over from Jane the management of Community Service, a network organization launched by Faith's grandfather, Arthur Morgan, in 1940. Under Faith and Pat's stewardship, Community Service redefined its mission from a focus on small community to one on Peak Oil and what Pat styled "Plan C," by which he meant community as a solution to society's main challenges. In the process they tweaked the name to become Community Solutions. Pat wrote books and articles while Faith did videos, notably The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil and The Passive House Revolution.

This dynamic marriage continued its leadership at Community Solutions until 2015, when Susan Jennings replaced them as Executive Director and the name was changed yet again to its current incarnation: the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.

• • •

Farewell to you three, one and all. I salute your lifetime of service to making a better world.

Spring Meetings Are in the Air

I'm in Lawrence KS, where the FIC Board is gathering for our semi-annual organizational meetings, starting Friday and running through Sunday. We're being graciously hosted by Delaware St Cohousing, and the timing couldn't be better: our last snow shower of the winter (he wrote hopefully) blew through northeast Missouri Monday morning and now the temps are in the 60s and full of promise for the growing season ahead.

Just as the redbud, forsythia, and ornamental pears are all in full bloom here in eastern Kansas, so is our agenda. Here is what we have on tap for the long weekend:

o  Reviewing negotiations with the Ecovillage Network of the Americas about the possibility of FIC becoming the North American network for the Global Ecovillage Network. In addition to reviewing a proposal about that, FIC's Board will hold a joint conference call with the ENA Task Force looking into how best to proceed.

o  Discussing the 2014 budget and the cash flow squeeze we've been experiencing as a result of delays in completing a major overhaul of our websites, rewriting all our code in WordPress, to take advantage of a widely used language with more off-the-shelf plug-ins.

It's a double whammy in that we've used our reserve to fund the work, and are depending on its successful completion to replenish our coffers. Part of our willingness to make this gamble was that we have wonderful new products to offer that could not be delivered with our old website—in particular, downloadable PDFs of every issue of Communities magazine ever published, plus a completely revised set of themed reprint packets with 85% new content (also available as PDFs).

o  Developing roll out plans for reorganizing how we list groups in our online Communities Directory. Our intention is to sort all listings into four categories:

A. Established intentional communities
B. Forming intentional communities
C. Dead or unresponsive groups
D. Groups or projects that have an association with community yet are not intentional communities (this is something of a catchall, and might include networks, housing developments that emphasize a community quality, nonprofits that hold community as a core value, research projects that investigate aspects of community, etc)

We'll also be looking closely at: 1) the sort criteria that will determine which category a group is placed into (asking groups to self-select will not produce consistent results); and 2) how best to review our 1600+ listings to get them placed into the appropriate pen. It's a huge undertaking!

o  Balancing the need for general fundraising (which will relieve pressure on our strapped cash flow) with the concomitant need to raise money to replace our aging office facility at our Missouri headquarters.

o  Cooking up ways to attract more subscribers to Communities magazine—the source for ideas and inspiration about cooperative living.

o  Choosing the winner of the 2015 Kozeny Communitarian Award. As we have no shortage of qualified candidates, the anguish here is over whittling it down to only one.

o  Selecting new Board members (which will include a review of how we select Board members).

I'm telling you, there's no end to the fun we're going to have! And if we get done early of an evening, we can go for stroll and smell the freshly mown lawns (instead of the flip chart markers).

A Day in the Life

One of the ironies of living the simple country life—by which I mean an intentionally low-consumption lifestyle that's agrarian based—is that most days are anything but simple. In fact, as a homesteader, community networker, process consultant, and husband (to a wife who lives three miles away and is recovering from Lyme disease), most days are a complex choreography.

Every now and then I have a day where the gear changes are especially nuanced. Yesterday, for example, I rotated through all my hats, some more than once...

o  Right after an eye-opening cup of coffee, I started laundry so that I'd have a clean tablecloth for the Historic Folklife Festival in Hannibal MO this weekend, plus a clean fair shirt that has special meaning for me. This particular shirt was custom made for me by Jules, an ex-partner from 20 years ago, when she lived at Sandhill. The shirt is now frayed a little at the cuffs, but it's still my fair shirt and can't imagine wearing anything else when standing behind our product table.

o  While the laundry whirled, I made a small batch (six jars) of red horseradish, by adding pickled beets to regular horseradish and whooshing it through the Robot Coupe. We'd sold out last weekend in Lawrence and I knew there'd be customers looking for our distinctive red variety in Hannibal. While we'll sell out the first day, at least the early birds will get some and it will set up a great quip for those who ask for it too late: "There are only two kinds of people," I'll deadpan, "the quick and not red."

o  Next I began cleaning the floor in our food processing kitchen (which is also where the laundry machine resides). Our annual organic inspection is coming up this weekend and I agreed to hand scrub the floor—which hadn't been done in many months and had an incredible build up of gunk and food detritus. For some reason, over the years I've gravitated to cleaning floors as a specialty and the community was grateful for my offer at last Thursday's community meeting to tackle this odious job.

o  As I was the cook Thursday night, I was also responsible for Friday's lunch. Thus, I took a break from doing the floor to get the leftovers from the Indian dish I'd prepared into our solar oven, so that the morning sun could be heating it up while I cleaned the Augean stables kitchen floor.

Fortunately, I finished with the floor 15 minutes before noon. That left me with just enough time to empty the dish rack, put out lunch, and clean up the residual breakfast dishes. Whew.

o  After cleaning up the lunch dishes I went down to the FIC Office (a funky 12x60 '70s-era house trailer) and did an office shift for Jacob, who's on his honeymoon. This entailed fulfilling web orders for our publications, followed by a stint screening over 160 records of people (or groups) whose annual membership will be expiring in the next 60 days. Major supporters—anyone whose given $100 or more at one time in the past five years—are singled out for special treatment. While the letters won't go out until next week, I did the culling Friday.

o  Then it was time to take the laundry off the line and start packing the pickup with product for the trip to Hannibal. That took a couple hours, and I was pleased to finish before dinner (by 15 minutes).

o   It was good to sit down for a bit and pore over the email that had accumulated during the day. While it didn't take long to delete the spam, there were a number of important exchanges I needed to handle before the weekend, including:
—Discussing with FIC's webmaster the importance of coordinating databases with the work being done in Europe by the Global Ecovillage Network. The goal is to make it possible for a community to create one listing that can be used by both groups. The problem is that GEN's database has been created using Drupal and ours uses Word Press. So getting the databases to play nicely together may take some doing.
—Getting the green light from the Ecovillage Network of the Americas Task Force charged with creating a sub-network that focuses on the English and French-speaking countries of North America (essentially the US and Canada) to consider combining efforts with FIC. This is a big deal and I made sure to notify the Board right away. (For more on this see my blog of Sept 16, Cooperation Among Cooperators.)
—Agreeing on a date to conduct a public get-together in Portland OR next month, to generate interest in the capital campaign to raise money for Dancing Rabbit's Green Community Center, which will include office space for FIC (replacing the aforementioned trailer).
—Buying a plane ticket to get to Las Vegas to see me daughter (Jo) and son-in-law (Peter), once I had the fundraising date in Portland settled.
—Giving date guidance for a church in Columbia MO that wants to hire me to work with the congregation on dealing constructively with conflict. They're leaning toward a Sunday in March, but three of the five are already spoken for. I book on a first-come-first-served basis and they're losing wiggle room by proceeding so deliberately.
—Coordinating with McCune in the FIC's Virginia Office about what days I'll be in the Missouri Office to field the web orders he sends my way.
—Responding to an inquiry from an old friend and community veteran in Wisconsin who's considering sponsoring the winter 2014 issue of Communities magazine, with a special focus on sustainability.

o  After roaring through my email, I slurped down two bowls of borscht (featuring a great crop of fall beets and some of the venison we harvested last November) and then jumped into the shower.

o  All clean, I headed over to Dancing Rabbit in the packed pickup, to spend the night with Ma'ikwe—who is not just of the fair sex, she's my fair partner as well—so that we could get an early start this morning for the 75-mile drive to Hannibal.

o  It was a pleasure to sit down in a easy chair next to a wood fire in Ma'ikwe's living and simply relax. After a bit of yakking, I made a cup of tea, shelled some pistachios, and we made a serious dent in a New York Times Sunday crossword. Partway through, Ma'ikwe's son, Jibran, stopped in our bedroom to relate how his day had gone, which also featured some careful scheduling. It was enjoyable to see him get excited, as a 16 year old, developing self-discipline about how he uses his time. It's a life skill he'll never regret.

o  When Ma'ikwe cashed in (circa 9 pm) I lingered near the wood stove for another 90 minutes and banged out this blog entry (since I knew I wouldn't have time today).

• • •

Thus, I went from homesteader, to FIC Office worker, to fair honcho, to community networker (with a dab of logistical work for process consulting, public speaking, and travel arrangements), to husband, to writer.

Though a bit schizophrenic at times, it's my life and I enjoy the dance.

Bombs Bursting in Air

Today is a national holiday, celebrating the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While there won't be mail service and we can expect more noise and bursts of bright light in the night sky than usual, my attention is mainly focused on my marriage and a 37-day educational adventure that starts tomorrow, for which I'm serving as Ma'ikwe's main assistant on the teaching side.

Tomorrow starts the Ecovillage Education course at Dancing Rabbit. We have 10 students (which was the magic number that we'd established in January as our must-have minimum to produce the course; below that the budget doesn't work), including six from the US (Josi, Ted, David, Natalia, Erin, and Fiona) and one each from Canada (Miguel), South Korea (Myung), India (Manasi), and Australia (Marita). 

[Alliterative aside: Interestingly, the last member of the matriculation pool to drop out (because he was unable to manifest the money) was Medoune, a male from Senegal—which mentioning makes possible the metaphysical observation that we have mainly been a magnet for foreign students whose monikers begin with "M." What do you suppose it might mean? Meditating on this for a moment, my mischievous mind suggests a mystical connection between the year (2013) and M being the 13th letter in the alphabet. Mmm, maybe.]

For Ma'ikwe this is big: she has dreamed of doing the course at Dancing Rabbit ever since she joined in 2008 (right on the heels of her participation as a member of the four-person organizing and teaching team in Albuquerque that first delivered the full Global Ecovillage Network's Ecovillage Design Education curriculum in the United States).

While we tried to get this going last summer, we only had four students register by late May and reluctantly we had to cancel the course. This year we made it!

Understandably, in the last week both Ma'ikwe and I have been devoting an increasing fraction of our attention to preparations for the course. While exciting, working out last-minute details has also been frictional, exposing ongoing concerns Ma'ikwe has with me as her partner.

In particular, I failed to meet deadlines she set for when teachers were asked to turn in course outlines and handouts. By not respecting her guidelines I squeezed the time she had available to review materials and make adjustments. She was not happy. Instead of the final prep week being a buoyant time for us a teaching couple, Ma'ikwe was experiencing me as a sea anchor. 

While that wasn't good, it got worse. After we got snarky with each other about my being disrespectful about deadlines, another challenging pattern of mine emerged. Here's how Ma'ikwe describes it:

M: "I don't like that you did X."
L: (hears X plus mentally adds on top of X "she thinks I'm not good enough" = L experiences M's feedback as a much bigger problem than just X; L's sincere attempt to reflect back feels exaggerated or overamped or universalized to M and sounds something like): "You just said you hate working with me," or "You're saying I never do it right," or some other globalized catastrophe.
M: "That's not what I said."
L: "That's what it sounded like. I think that's what you meant."
M: Grrrr... (feels discouraged to bring anything up)

On the one hand, this is an unfortunately accurate description of the pattern (because this isn't a helpful thing that I do). On the other hand, it's a fortunately accurate description (because we can agree on what's happening and because it excited our therapist when she heard about it).

On the conscious level, the good thing I think I'm doing is being diligent about not dismissing critical feedback just because it's uncomfortable. Instead, I tend to dive in and explore how bad it can be. After a time (which used to be days, but with Ma'ikwe's help has now more commonly been shortened to hours, or even minutes), I emerge from the dark side of the moon with a sense of what I can own and what I can do about it. Mind you, I'm not saying I'm always brilliant at this; just that I always come back into the light.

However, even if you agree that there may be a useful side to my pattern (and maybe you don't), there is also an unhelpful side which Ma'ikwe's generic dialog above captures pretty well: my reactivity and exaggerated responses tend to undercut a person's willingness to give me feedback (why bother if I'm just going distort it and use it as a flail?). And when that person is my wife, it's a real problem. 

Essentially, I have a deep groove within me that automatically translates non-trivial feedback into "I'm not good enough." Having been in the presence of this pattern for seven years now, Ma'ikwe has learned to be careful about playing her cards when it comes to giving me feedback. It takes a build-up of steam to trigger her pressure relief valve, which point was reached last Saturday. Then, once the valve has been opened, all kinds of stuff comes spewing out. 

While I experienced this cascade of problems as overwhelming evidence of my unworthiness, our therapist (who we saw on Tuesday) heard something else that totally took me by surprise. She heard Ma'ikwe's complaints as a request for more of me, rather than pushing me away and judging me as unworthy. Wow! I never saw that coming. 

While it's still possible that Ma'ikwe may decide I'm not worth the effort, she's continuing to give me a chance to make meaningful progress on this debilitating pattern. Part of that work will be done by me alone; part will be done by my working with our therapist; and part will be done together (with and without the therapist).

As we're about to embark on a 37-day journey together as teachers and partners, Ma'ikwe painted this picture for me of the request that underlays the anguish in her critical feedback:

What I want more of is the guy I have fun with, and the ways you contribute to my life, whether that is getting projects done, sex, or your simple presence. I want more of our really positive creative juice in teaching and contributing to the world. I also want a deeper sense that we are in our lives together, rather than operating mostly in separate domains and then coming back and reporting on our lives out there. I want more of a sense of making decisions together, and just having more time together period. 

While I doubt I could have ever found my way to that translation on my own, it's enormously helpful for me to hold onto as a buoy in stormy seas. It's the message I want to rely on as my mantra whenever there are bombs bursting in air—even if I'm the one who lit the fuse.

I don't expect there to be anything dull about the next 37 days.

My Summer of Sustainability, Part IV

This is my fourth entry in a six-part blog series on sustainability.

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012

My wife, Ma'ikwe, was part of a four-person team that taught the full Ecovillage Design Education curriculum for the first time in the United States. She, Zaida Amaral, Rich Ruster, and Robert Griffin did this in Albuquerque in 2007-08. Sadly, no else has done it since. Many have taught portions of the curriculum but the whole shebang has only been offered in the US the one time… so far.

Next summer, Ma'ikwe plans to deliver this four-course meal for a second time—at her home, Dancing Rabbit, June 30-Aug 5. The deadline to submit applications to be a part of the faculty for this course closed yesterday, and it was satisfying that so many who live in the tri-communities (Dancing Rabbit, Sandhill Farm, and Red Earth Farms—who all share the same zip code) put their hat in the ring. As the lead teacher (or GEESE, standing for Global Ecovillage Educators for a Sustainable Earth), Ma'ikwe will be making the call on who's selected for which roles and then submitting an application to GEN (Global Ecovillage Netwrok) in Sept, hoping to get the course fully authorized.

As GEN has conceived of it, the curriculum is divided into four major components, all of which interrelate: worldview, ecological, social, and economic. Among the most important choices that Ma'ikwe faces will be selecting the coordinators for each of the four dimensions. These people, in turn, will be responsible for choosing the specific topics to be taught in their area and by whom. The aim in each case will be to achieve a breadth of perspectives and a balance of voices and genders.

Even though we're only at the beginning stages, and the 37 days of total immersion are more than 10 months off, it's exciting to commit to a program that builds directly on Dancing Rabbit's intent to be a model of sustainability. All three of the tri-communities have an explicit outreach element in their mission, and this course will be our strongest effort yet to go beyond witnessing to teach the theory and inspiration of sustainability, based on what we're doing.

The beauty of offering this course in the tri-communities is that for many of the teaching points we'll be able to simultaneously offer the thinking and a practical demonstration—in some cases, with examples of how to apply the same principle with variations. We'll also be able to discuss many of the tough choices we've had to face over the years, balancing quality of life, reliance on technologies we cannot maintain fully ourselves, and the desire to minimize resource use.

For all those selected to be part of the delivery team, we'll be getting paid doing work that's both close to our hearts and close to home. How much better can it get?

If this goes well, Ma'ikwe hopes to offer this course on an annual basis. The question will not be whether we have a good enough venue, or a good enough faculty—it's be whether we have enough students. On the plus side, Dancing Rabbit is a prime attraction for people hungry for examples of communities pushing the envelope of resource-conscious self-sufficiency. In addition, most of the faculty will be local and $20/hour in salary goes a long way in northeast Missouri, where the cost of living is quite low.

On the challenging side, it's not easy for people to carve out 37 days. If you have the time by virtue of being a student, or a recent graduate who hasn't located regular employment, then you're less likely to have the financial reserves to be able to afford the course. If you have the time because you're retired, it's daunting to face the prospect of living in a tent smack in the middle of a hot and humid Missouri summer (you may have noticed that my state is a near homophone for "misery"—it's in summer that this occurs to me most frequently).

While Rutledge has become something of a destination for people seeking examples of sustainable rural living, it's not on the way to anywhere, and people don't tend to just wander in. You have to go there on purpose, and the EDE course will be a test of how many will find enough purpose to make the trek next summer. If this purpose pleases you, you can get more information by contacting Ma'ikwe: maikwe@solspace.net.