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.