Happy 50th Sandhill Farm!

Today I'm offering a kaleidoscope of memories from my first five years at Sandhill Farm, on the occasion of its Golden Anniversary.

Exactly 50 years ago today, Ann Shrader and I arrived at the 63-acre property two miles west of Rutledge MO (that we had just purchased two weeks prior for the grand price of $13,500) that would be the start of Sandhill Farm. We rendezvoused there with fellow pioneers, Ed Pultz and Wendy Soderlund, who had driven up from their home in Memphis TN to live near Memphis MO (our county seat).

Both red and white spirea were in full bloom, framing the outside of the modest white clapboard, one-bedroom house that the two couples took turns occupying (while the other lived in a tent) until we completed a 16'x30' renovation on the south side that added two bedrooms and expanded the bathroom. Probably its most distinctive feature was the checkerboard pink & black linoleum tiles on the kitchen floor. (Hard to believe that could ever have been in fashion—excepting, perhaps, at a Good & Plenty factory.)

We were full of enthusiasm for our experiment in community living—which was a good thing, given the bottomless pit of our naiveté. As we had arrived just after the frost free date for northern MO, one of our first acts was getting the garden planted. I still recall Ann's and my excitement at seeing the first shoot emerge from our carefully planted rows of vegetable seeds, only to discover later that it was milkweed, not sweet corn. Talk about a rookie error.

While the house stood on the highest point of the property (in the southwest corner), there was a house located directly to our south that was higher still—the home of Edna & Earnest Childers. They were in their 80s and the only remaining residents of Sandhill after Charlie Gilmer died in 1972. Charlie was the last person to have have lived in our house, which we negotiated the purchase of from his surviving son and daughter-in-law, Bob & Lilian.

It's noteworthy that Earnest, our neighbor, was born in that house and had lived there his entire life. Amazingly, he was already two years old when the Santa Fe Railroad laid tracks nearby, in the late 1880s. The town of Rutledge sprang up at that point, as a service stop along the route from Chicago to Kansas City. Though Edna & Earnest both passed away a few years after we arrived, Sandhill has been continuously occupied since the 1850s. (Before that, we understand it was a seasonal camping spot for indigenous Native Americans.) In the years prior to the Show Me State being fully platted and the current county lines defined, Sandhill was something of a regional center, and the location from where a frontier circuit judge would periodically dispense justice in our corner of the state.

While Ann focused on gardening (something she still does today), Ed took charge of overseeing the house extension, working closely with Wendy's father, an experienced builder/architect. I bought a copy of H. P. Richter's Wiring Simplified (for $0.87) from the local Ace Hardware store and became the community's electrician—while we were doing the house extension, we rewired everything (switching from fuses to circuit breakers) and reroofed the entire house. Laying concrete blocks for the extension's foundation was my first foray into cementitious work, which also became a community niche for me. (Over the years I learned to do concrete work, as well as lay block, brick, tile, and tuck pointing—all flowing from that first summer.)

In the early years we tried all manner of homestead things, substituting labor for dollars. Example: raking leaves in the fall from the Childers' massive white oaks (that were sprouts before the arrival of white settlers) and then packing them into circular bins we fashioned from scrap woven wire fencing. After a couple years of rain and snow we had our own leaf mold, for use as a garden soil amendment.

Our first dog was Rochester, a medium-sized stray that showed up unannounced one day and never left. He was with us for nine years and was the only dog in my life that was closer to me than any other human. Our first cat was another stray, Seymour, an orange tabby. I took it as a good omen (for a cooperative community) that the two of them got along famously. Both were outdoor pets and they would huddle together for warmth on an old blanket inside a plywood kennel on the front porch during the winter months. 

Early on we acquired a Jersey milk cow, Rebecca. While we didn't get gobs of milk, it was high in butterfat and we were self-sufficient in butter in those days. (Cream is most readily churned to butter at 62 degrees, and I did it often enough that I could tell by feel when the gallon we had taken out of the fridge had warmed to the right temp.) 

Milking time was one of the highlights of the day for both Seymour and Rochester. Seymour would follow the milker down to the barn, where he could depend on getting some squirts of fresh milk for his trouble. While the distance from house to barn was only about 50 yards, as soon as Seymour headed down there, Rochester would make a game of overtaking the cat and putting his entire head in his mouth. Seymour would patiently wait until Rochester released him and then would travel several more yards until Rochester did it again. By the time Seymour made it to the barn, his head would be covered in dog slobber.

While the cost of living in our area was low (hence the bargain land prices), so were the opportunities for employment, and we scrambled to figure out a way to make ends meet. At one time or another, in the early years all of us took jobs off the farm. Some taught, some worked for the extension service, some did work for neighbors. As I recall, that first summer Ed drove a tractor for a neighbor, earning the not-so-handsome wage of $60 for a 40-hour week. After that we never worked for less than $2/hour (hard bargainers that we were).

For most of its existence, Sandhill's signature product was organic sorghum, a traditional sweetener in the Midwest and South. The seed for that was planted when Ann & I stopped by the homestead of Joe Pearl & Eva Grover (a mile or two south of Memphis) to buy some sorghum during the fall of 1975. We stayed long enough to watch it being made and were fascinated by the process. They were in their 70s and it was obvious the work was tiring for them. We offered to help, and before we knew it we were back every day, lending a hand. They would only make about 7 gallons a day, yet it impressed us that every drop was sold about as fast as it was made.

Thinking that this might be a specialty product for Sandhill, we planted some cane the next year and traded our labor in 1976 for the use of the Grover's equipment to process it. That went well enough that we took it another step in 1977 and had stainless steel cooking pans made for us at a metal fabrication shop in Quincy IL. We bought a sorghum mill to do our own pressing, and had labels made announcing the availability of Sandhill Sorghum. While we were somewhat concerned about being in competition with the Grovers (we didn't want to bite that hand), it happened that Joe Pearl had a stroke in 1977 and they never made sorghum again, and thus we became the sole sorghum producers in Scotland County. For a period of more than 40 years, sorghum was the flagship product of the community's agricultural portfolio.

Community was a tenuous concept the first five years, as Ann & I struggled to get beyond being one couple living with others who tried it out for a year or two and then moved on. Following Ed & Wendy, there was Pamela Johnston & Michael Almon. Then we had Jesse Evans, Lin McGee, and Linda Joseph (all from Texas, for some reason). It was something of a revolving door in the early years. After five years, it was down to just three of us: Ann, Tim Jost, and me.

Our breakthrough in stability came circa 1979, when Stan Hildebrand, Grady Holley, and Thea Page arrived. Over the ensuing five years the only change in personnel was Clarissa Gyorgy (who came to us from Twin Oaks in Virginia) while Thea moved to Twin Oaks, along with her 2-year old daughter, Shining. After that we were never fewer than 5, and it felt like we'd crossed the line into being a stable intentional community. Whew.

While losing members was always hard, those early years are largely happy memories, and I look back with amazement at what we were able to accomplish with sufficient pluck and luck.

Being Touched in Community

Being touched has many meanings.

1. Heart Connection
as in being affected by someone's plea or pitch

As humans, I believe we are hard-wired to want connection to each other. However, our societal conditioning doesn't necessarily reinforce this. In many ways, the hunger for community is fueled by this unmet need: both to be touched by others and to have others touched by us. I think we all want to be seen and held by those around us, and intentional community is, in part, an attempt to surround ourselves with people who care about the same things—making it easier to in touch.

This is more than others understanding and working respectfully with our ideas; it's about being seen for who we are and known for what matters to us, where meaning is deepest. I want to be clear that the essence of my focus is on being cared about and taken into account—not necessarily that you're agreed with.

2. Slightly Crazy
as in being influenced by wildness or spirit in mysterious or unbalanced ways

For most of us it takes courage to create or join an intentional community. It is far off the beaten path and looked upon as something rather exotic by most in the mainstream. In fact, one of the challenges for people living in community is being taken seriously. Many political activists, for instance, believe that living in intentional community is hiding out—creating a safe enclave out in the boondocks instead of engaging on real issues. (While I don't share that view, I've heard it plenty.)

I am an acorn that has wandered quite far from the tree from which I fell—so much so that my fellow nuts have a hard time conceiving of an oak growing out of my seed. As if the journey to new soil is not perilous in and of itself, I must also bear the stigmata of familial disapprobation or confusion. It is hard leaving the herd.

3. Physical Contact
as in bodies together

I had an experience of this last Sunday, at the end of Men's Group. After sharing that I was planning to take a leave of absence from Dancing Rabbit and try living with friends in NC, the evening concluded with the group giving me a "cinnamon roll." Starting in a circle with everyone holding hands, I dropped my left hand and then spiraled inward while continuing to hold the hand of the person on my right. The results was a spiral with me in the middle. I was acutely aware of both the smells and touch of the other men—and how seldom I feel that.

Because our culture tends to overlay almost all touch with sexual innuendo, there is a strong tendency to discourage touch excepting across the bonds of immediate family or where there is mutual consent to enter into the realm of sexual exploration. The upshot of this taboo is that people are starved for touch. Even where there is scientific evidence that touch is a necessary feature of health, we physically connect with one another seldom and often as carefully as handling porcelain when we do—as if we might break.

Among the many things I miss as a consequence of being estranged from Ma'ikwe is her touch: holding hands on walks, her touching my shoulder lightly when delivering me a cup of coffee at my desk, cuddling as our last act of consciousness at night.

At its best, community is about everyone being in touch.

Paid Versus Volunteer Labor in Cooperative Culture

When intentional communities start out, there is generally no end of the work and limited funds to hire its completion. If the group survives its start-up, then it will eventually transition from the hurly-burly rush of Pioneer Phase into the more measured pace of Settler Phase, where the unending punch list of things that needed to be done yesterday has finally been tamed and the group begins to taste of what "normal" means. Then things get interesting.

In the salad days, everything is typically accomplished through volunteerism fueled by idealistic zeal and the unbridled enthusiasm of the newly converted. Over time, however, that predictably wanes. Staying up into the night scrubbing god-knows-what off the walls of the used house trailer you've purchased (for a song) to handle overflow housing during your construction pushes no longer seems like fun. Now you want to pay someone to shovel snow off the solar panels so that you can spend the evening with your family and friends watching Bones.

Here's what you can predict will characterize a built community:

A. While everyone had to meet a certain minimum standard of financial wherewithal in order to catch the bottom rung of the ladder, over time the range of financial positions among members will tend to widen (some will feel flush and some will feel flushed). What happens is that life intervenes, and everyone is not dealt the same cards.

Some residents will retire and be managing on a fixed income. Others will see their income climb as their careers advance, kids graduate from college, and the mortgage gets paid off. Some will lose their jobs, and will be scrambling to meet their HOA dues. Others have trust funds and never worry about money. It's a mixed bag.

If you have money, then time tends to be the limiting factor. If you're underemployed, then labor is abundant and dollars are dear.

B. Almost all groups ask residents to contribute volunteer labor to the betterment of the community. Sometimes it's quantified; sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's recorded; sometimes it's on the honor system. But everyone is encouraged to have their oar in the water.

It's tricky setting a target for hours/month because:
o  People's availability and capacity for contributing are all over the map.
o  You don't want to set a minimum that's so high that many residents will struggle to meet it.
o  You don't want to set a maximum because it's an advantage to have residents contribute extra if they're inclined (Caution: That said, you don't want martyrs—people working beyond the expected amount and then complaining about it).
o  You don't want a large gap between those contributing least and those contributing most because it leads to guilt and feeling taken advantage of.

To the extent that community labor is about getting the work done (saving the group the expense of hiring), it makes no difference whether residents do the work themselves or pay someone else to do it for them. However, that's not the whole picture. To the extent possible (through work days and project teams) groups also promote working together, to build esprit de corps and enhance connections. Paying someone else to cover your work shift doesn't help with that.

On the one hand, the pay or play option with regard to work expectations provides flexibility, such that residents can protect whichever resource—time or money—is most precious to them. On the other, it allows an easy out for the well to do, undercutting camaraderie and the we're-all-in-this-together attitude that prevailed during Pioneer Days.

C. Despite B, there is always more work that's needed (or at least desired) than there is resident labor that's sufficiently available, skilled, and motivated to cover it. While outside hiring is a no brainer for some jobs (because the work is so odious—pumping out the septic tank; so skilled—structural engineering for the common house trusses; or so esoteric—teaching tae bo to the teens and tweens) there will almost certainly be some amount of desired work that is not covered by volunteerism yet residents are capable of covering. 

This naturally leads to the idea of hiring internally to cover the shortfall. In fact, it may be a preference to do so (why support strangers over neighbors?) To be sure, there is predictable awkwardness about simultaneously being: a) on equal footing with someone as a fellow resident in the community; and b) in an employer/employee relationship in the context of the hired work. But let's suppose you've figured all that out. There's still a further problem: hiring erodes enthusiasm for volunteering.

Once residents start getting paid, why would anyone contribute above and beyond as a volunteer? Work that people were willing to do for free when everyone was volunteering, suddenly becomes drudgery if money is available for labor and you're not getting any.

The tone shifts from "Let's pull together and get this done" to "Just do your expected hours and then start filling out invoices for anything beyond that." And it gets worse. There is often not enough funding to cover all the desired work not being covered by volunteers, which leads to tenderness around why some work gets paid and other work doesn't. When there was no money for internal compensation, there was little squabbling; now that there's money, there's bickering.

Here are some questions that will need to be addressed if you travel down this road:

o  How (and by whom) will it be decided which jobs get paid, and which will have to wait for additional funding?
o  Should all work done by residents by paid the same (analogous to the way volunteer labor is valued), paid market rate, or something in between?

o  How will you maintain a culture of volunteerism in the face of increased remuneration for community work?

o  Will you be able to hold residents accountable as employees (in ways that are nearly impossible when every is a volunteer)?

Ironically, in an effort to move toward economic sustainability, hiring community members can place considerable pressure on social sustainability.

The Bag Ladies (and Gentlemen) of St Louis

Yesterday I attended the Homegrown Urban Country Fair in St Louis—celebrating local food, wholesome food, Farm Aid, and, apparently, oxymorons.

Excepting the part where I had to get up at 2 am (after going to bed at 1 am) in order to get there in time to set up, and the part where it was in the low 40s in St Louis at dawn and we had to wait around in the shade for a couple hours before the customers started showing up—rendering an ordinarily simple task like making change a challenge in dexterity, it was a fun day. The sun, shy in the morning, finally made its full appearance in the afternoon and the temperature obediently rose into the more congenial (and less congealing) 60s. The crowd was boisterous, and we were just the right distance from the amplifiers to enjoy the live music without having it disrupt customer conversations.

The fair was an amplification of the Tower Grove Farmers' Market, which is a regular feature of Saturday mornings in St Louis during the growing season, and Sandhill Farm was invited as part of the expanded vendor list. While you might reasonably question whether food grown 175 miles away still qualifies as "local," at least we were in state. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the main coordinator (the self-styled Homegrown Shepherdess), Cornelia, is based out of Massachusetts! It was a day of contrasts.

As an intentional community committed to sustainability—especially when it comes to food—Sandhill participates in many weekend festivals during the harvest season (next weekend we'll be in Keosauqua IA for the Fall Scenic Drive Festival, and the one after that in Hannibal MO for Historic Folklife Festival). For economic, as well as sustainability reasons, we mostly stick close to home and driving to St Louis for a half-day event was a stretch. However, I made the most of it, delivering two buckets of organic sorghum to Black Bear Bakery, giving a ride down to a farm organizer named Severin (also from Massachusetts, oddly enough) who was tabling at the fair, and giving a ride back to Jon, who will be visiting nearby Dancing Rabbit for a week. (Given how little sleep I'd had the night before, it was a godsend that Jon was with me on the return. The fair adrenaline had worn off by 4 pm and I gratefully turned the wheel over to him for most of the drive north.)

While it's true that sustainability was one of the themes of yesterday's fair and you'd expect the crowd to have a greener, above-average crunchy granola flavor to them than those who typically attend your plain old vanilla fall festival, something happened yesterday that I didn't expect to see in my lifetime: not a single person asked for a bag for their purchases. I was blown away. It figure it was the equivalent of walking along a mile of highway and not finding a single aluminum can.

I've been doing fairs for more than 30 years (which translates roughly to 100 events), and that has never occurred before. In fact, we are so used to the request that we stockpile all the plastic bags that inevitably accompany our mainstream purchases during the year just so that we'll be able to reuse them during the fall fair season. Yesterday I had a large supply of recycled plastic tote sacks on hand, and I didn't use a single one of them. True, two people accepted an empty cardboard box to hold their booty, but nobody wanted plastic. I think there's hope.

• • •

I have one more story about the fair. We were given the option to have our booth fee waived if we committed to giving a public talk during the event, and I jumped right on it. Cornelia asked me to talk about intentional community for 15-20 minutes, which is something I can more or less do in my sleep. As it turned out, my turn at the mic followed a discourse on vermiculture. While the "crowd" for my talk (encouraged by public announcements and a ring of straw bales placed suggestively around the stage) barely outnumbered the media recording it, I'm pleased to say that I easily outdrew the worm lecture.

That said, it's an open question who got upstaged by whom. Later in the day, Cornelia came by with a tape recorder and cameraman, hoping to get interviews of interesting people. Having appreciated my talk, she approached our booth and made her request (I graciously agreed, of course), and was just about to get started when she suddenly realized that her crew needed to dash off for another opportunity—a worm race.

Adding insult to injury, the race was apparently sufficiently distracting that she never did make it back for that interview. Sigh. Such is the ephemeral quality of fame.

Dimensions of Community: Party of One

For the next stretch of blog entries, I'll be presenting a series on the Dimensions of Community. It was inspired by an animated plenary conversation on Creating Cmty Where You Are during the last day of the FIC organizational mtgs—just concluded at Hummingbird Cmty in the rarified air of northern NM. (If I'm any good at channeling the ideas and excitement of that conversation, perhaps, at least this once, you won't have had to have been there.)

• • •

For this series, I will not be using "community" as shorthand for "intentional cmty." Instead, I'll be purposefully exploring and defining cmty in its fullest and broadest sense. So think expansively (I am). As part of my FIC elevator speech, I tell people that, "We're in the cmty business." This series is meant as a journey of discovery about all that that can mean.

In essence, cmty is about association. It's about connection and affiliation. While it implies consciousness and reciprocity, I will assume neither.

• • •

This first offering will focus on community and the individual: Party of One

For a connection to occur, two (or more) things need to be linked. One end of that is yourself, and today I'll confine my remarks to just that single terminus. What does it take to be available for cmty?

Premise #1: Cmty is strengthened and enhanced by self-awareness. To be sure, the "knowing" may come in a wide variety of intelligences: the main channels being rational, emotional, intuitive, spiritual, and kinesthetic. And the permuttations explode when you take into account that these are often packaged in combination.

Almost immediately, this leads to two underlying questions: 1) How do you know you know?; and its corollary, 2) How do you accurately assess self-awareness in others? While it is relatively common to judge another's understanding of self based on their ability to articulate what they know about themselves, one's ability to describe or communicate their self-knowing is not at all the same as their self-knowing. Your knowings may be of different kinds; you may be using different "languages"; you may be assigning different meanings to similar terms—there are all kinds of ways that people can miss each other in the attempt to understand. If you rely on other's reflections to refine your sense of your own self-awareness, you must wrestle with distinguishing between the extent to which you are blind or ignorant, versus misunderstood or projected upon. The waters muddy quickly.

A spin-off of this first premise is that you can be desirous of cmty, yet minimally available for it. Tragically, you can know that cmty will be good for you, yet not present a terminus that is easily built to or from. (Some of the most trenchant and poignant dynamics involving difficult people in intentional cmty are of this nature.)

The more you know yourself, the clearer you'll be able to send out signals, both about who you are and about what you want. The more accurate your signals, the better the chances that you'll attract beneficial connections. Among those who understand this principle, the opportunity to enhance self-knowing is one of their prime motivations for seeking cmty.

Premise #2: Humans, as a species, are hard-wired to crave connection with our own kind. That is, we are born wanting cmty. Unfortunately, that does not mean we are born knowing how to get it. Worse, our mainstream hierarchic and competitive culture actively interferes with our ability to accurately connect. We live in a society that emphasizes differences above similarities; that rewards individual initiative ahead of collective success.

The desire for connection can come from many angles. Those seeking safety, recognition, or identity through cmty tend to pursue a buy-and-hold investment strategy. The key trap for these folks—please note that this is not inevitable—is the temptation to bolster their sense of connection through creating an us/them dynamic, which the mainstream adversarial culture will happily reinforce. It's dangerous because it's a sense of "us" pumped up on steroids, an enlarged self image that comes at the expense of increased alienation from those labeled "other." It sets up a fight (which tends to be a distraction, a distortion, and an energy sink), plus, it diminishes your options for cmty downstream. Yuck.

On the other hand, those approaching cmty looking for inspiration, insight, or stimulation are buying a different package.They're looking for return on their investment. Maybe immediate income; maybe long-term appreciation; maybe both.

It boils down to: are you seeking cmty to look good, or to look for Good? While the motivation for most of us is a mix of the two, it's important to be sensitive to this interplay—because, if you don't have a clue that it's there, you'll never see it.

Premise #3: Connection can be established unilaterally. While that may not be its fullest potential, it may be no less real or valuable for the projecting person. The key thing to understand here is that the individual has complete control of what they intend and it's possible to realize substantial and genuine benefits from such connections, even if the others being connected with have no knowledge of this happening, or actively reject the association from their end.

Please don't misunderstand this point. I am not saying it's better to establish connections unilaterally; I'm only saying it's possible. For most of us, it's a superior experience to feel that connections are reciprocated, yet you still have choices even when your hopes in this regard are not met.

• • •

In sum, I'm trying to make the case that cmty is:
o Enhanced by self-awareness
o Universally desired
o Desired for a mixture of reasons
o Accessible unilaterally

Poignant Parting when Dreams Diverge

I wrote a couple days ago about Ma'ikwe's frustrated attempts to establish an intentional cmty in Albuquerque. Cmties fail all the time (their success rate is similar to restaurants—most don't see their second birthday), yet there were was a special quality about the Albuquerque efforts worth noting.

Over the last two years, I worked professionally (through CANBRIDGE, my process consulting business) with Ma'ikwe's forming group five times. In fact, until a couple months ago, I thought I was going to be living in the group part time as Ma'ikwe's out-of-state consort. So I was highly motivated to pay attention and I knew the group pretty well. While the mix of who was in the group varied, there were nonetheless some interesting themes to their efforts.

Over the course of my 30+ years in the field, it's my sense that the #1 cause for failure among forming cmties is insufficient social skills, by which I mean (listed roughly in ascending order of sophistication) the ability to:

—clearly express thoughts

—clearly identify what topic is being discussed

—minimize repetition in mtgs

—stay on topic in mtgs

—clearly express feelings

—hear accurately what others are expressing

—reflect accurately what others are expressing

—bridge between statements when people mishear each other

—work conflicted moments constructively

What was noteworthy about the Albuquerque group was that they did not suffer from a paucity of social skills. They were, in fact, unusually savvy. Many in the group are practitioners of Avatar, an international personal growth discipline that has helped many become more self-aware and self-actualized. So communicating well was not a limiting factor. 

In this case, the group had a problem coalescing on what kind of cmty to create together. There was enough skilled leadership in the group, but, in the end, not enough flexibility among the leaders to develop a model that all could enthusiastically support. Each had their own dream of cmty, and they didn't fit together easily. One was well defined, with clear boundaries around property and membership. Another was fairly loose, as in a vibrant neighborhood, where there was no common property and people moved in and out of participation as they were motivated and available. A third's vision was about supporting cooperative activities all over the city and region, and didn't want the scope of activities to be too narrowly focused.

The poignant thing was that all of these visions are excellent; all of them are well-rooted in a common value of promoting a more cooperative, sustainable lifestyle; and all of them are needed as antidotes to today's fragmented and alienating society. While no one was the "bad guy," in the end, no two of the three leaders were able to effectively combine energies to fully manifest any of the three models. It has been painful watching the three of them struggle so hard to cooperate in the service of Cooperation. 

While all three remain friends, their paths are now diverging, and they're seeking different allies to build their dreams. Because of their social skills, they all have excellent prospects. It just doesn't appear that it will be happening with each other.

As important as social skills are to a cmty's success, sometimes they are not enough.

When Is It Time to Let Go?

My wife, Ma'ikwe Ludwig, has been trying to start an intentional community in Albuquerque the last four years. We got married last April and the understanding throughout has been that she was committed to being in NM (in addition to her community aspirations and the friends she's attempting this with, the other parents of her two kids live there, and that's where her job connections are concentrated). This winter though, after her fourth attempt at establishing a cmty went down the tubes, she's letting go of Albuquerque and plans to move to Dancing Rabbit this spring. While DR is only three miles from my home at Sandhill Farm—which is orders of magnitude better than her living in another time zone—it was a gut-wrenching decision for her to make.

My response to this news is complex. While there is no question in my mind about her commitment to cmty or her commitment to our partnership, I am unsure of her commitment to DR as a home, and am unsure of whether she's through trying to start a cmty. Thus I'm unsure how excited to get about the prospect of my wife moving next door, because I'm unsure how long it will last and I don't want my heart to be broken.

There are still a number of powerful questions to answer before I'm convinced that Ma'ikwe will be in northeast MIssouri to stay: 

—How will Jibran (her 10-year-old son) fare splitting time between his mother in MO and his father in NM?

—How will Ma'ikwe make a living? While Ma'ikwe has been successful in many areas of her life, manifesting economic abundance has, so far, not been among them. While the cost of living in northeast MO is quite low, so are the prospects for making a living (two sides of the same coin). While I've no question about her ability to get by, where will the money come for building a home, discretionary travel, and Jibran's education?

—Ma'ikwe has been living in cmty for the last 10 years, yet that's included four places and she's never lasted longer in any of them than her tenure in Albuquerque. Why will DR be different?

—Finally, does she still have the cmty founding bug in her?

In my 30+ years as a cmty networker I've become personally acquainted with untold numbers of people with aspirations to start a cmty. Some were dreamers with no practical idea of what they were getting into; some had no social skills and you knew from the get-go that their ship would never leave the dock; some had no money and clung to the naive expectation that the world would provide (because, in their view, their concept was so strong and their intent so pure); some had the people and no land; some had the reverse… and a select few had enough savvy and experience to have a really solid chance. Ma'ikwe was among this last group and I respected her choice to start a cmty in Albuquerque—even though I mostly try to dissuade people from the attempt (it is so much easier to get one's cmty needs met by joining a cmty than starting one).

There's a paradox about the Communities Movement's need to have people start new cmties and the difficulties of succeeding. It is not for the faint of heart. Yet cmty is needed everywhere and the world is unquestionably better off with 50 solid groups of 20 people than a single vibrant cmty of 1000. We need choices and widespread models of how to live together cooperatively; not just a few isolated examples. So there's the networker part of me that doesn't want Ma'ikwe to give up on starting a cmty (even while there's the husband part of me that does).

As much as anything, Ma'ikwe is an organizer (and a good one, too). It's no small part of why we're together, and we both know she's in this world to do stuff, even though it's not always clear just what that should be. In the end, I think her satisfaction with making a home at DR will come down to whether Ma'ikwe will find it a sufficient base for social change work. The ultimate question will be whether she can make her greatest contribution to a more positive, cooperative world by living at DR. And that's a question that can't reasonably be answered before the attempt. Luckily, when signing up for this marriage, I didn't check the box marked "uncomplicated."