Commune Life is media made by communards, for communards.
We are a platform for sharing stories about life in community.
This is our wordpress blog. Here you will find writings and photo essays about income-sharing communities. You can find other kinds of communal content in other places!
Our Youtube Channel hosts commune videos, and our Facebook page is the best place to go for discussion with community members, and updates. You can also follow us on Instagram.
To use this site to find information about a particular community or topic, the three lines in the top right hand corner will reveal a drop down list that covers most of the subjects on the blog.
Commune Life is made possible by our remarkable patrons.
We are 100% community supported. Everything we make we make for you! If you want to support us to continue to make awesome content about the communities movement, a great way to do it is by becoming a patron: patreon.com/communelife
In early January, I posted this question on our Facebook page:
Here’s a sampling of the responses that I received:
My comment at the end of the thread is actually a response to Lucy Perry’s question at the beginning of it.
Honestly, I wish I knew a magic formula to guarantee longevity for communities. It is possible; look at Twin Oaks. But, as Julia points out, even longevity brings its problems.
by Raven Glomus (with assistance from Theresa Glomus and JB East Wind)
The subject of this post will probably not surprise anyone. In one way, I hate to add to the constant drumbeat of coronavirus stuff. It’s all our news feeds are filled with and it gets tiring–to me, at least. On the other hand, I think that it’s important that folks know what the communes are doing about this pandemic.
In some ways, the communes are great places to ride out the pandemic. At this point, they are all rural and a bit isolated. It’s fairly easy to disconnect from the social world and you don’t need to feel isolated, since you have other people who are just as isolated with you. It’s perfect–until someone somehow gets the coronavirus.
This is the downside of the communes. We share income, we share a mission, we share our stuff. We also share germs. Once someone in a commune gets the coronavirus, everyone is probably going to get it. There is also more back and forth between the various communities than there is contact with the outside world. That means there is also the likelihood of it rapidly spreading from commune to commune.
So what are specific communities doing to deal with the coronavirus?
Twin Oaks had been talking about quarantining sick folks in one cabin and only allowing caregivers in and out. The caregivers would not be allowed to eat in the dining hall, to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Now, as of Saturday, Twin Oaks is in full quarantine/locked down mode. No visitors are allowed except for essential services, such as UPS. Members leaving the property without the consent of the Planners won’t be allowed to return until the pandemic has abated.
They have cancelled visitor periods for March and April and all Saturday tours at Twin Oaks have been canceled for the foreseeable future.
At Acorn, they quarantined themselves early. They have instituted thorough sanitation procedures in every area of the community. These include thoroughly wiping down surfaces that people interact with, and even nearby surfaces that might not be interacted with. For off farm business trips, members have been instructed to wear gloves during the entire trip, to drop off items at designated areas and sanitize priority items, and then discard gloves in designated trash areas and sanitize hands with hand sanitizer immediately.
Acorn further instructs that if a person is having difficulty breathing, they should have a designated emergency person take them to the hospital. That person should prepare to shower upon returning to Acorn and put the clothes they wore immediately into a washing machine (with hot water), sanitizing all surfaces of the washing machine.
Anyone at Acorn who feels sick or shows symptoms of the Coronavirus, has been told to stay in their own room. They have been instructed to stuff a towel under their bedroom door, keep a window open as much as possible, have a designated person bring them meals, and have a stock of snacks in their room. If they need to leave their room, they should wear a mask and sanitize all knobs and surfaces that they come in contact with.
At East Wind, they have had two community meetings to discuss the Coronavirus. They have stopped visitor periods for April and have effectively made a prohibition on guests. They say that they have a solid amount of food and could be well situated to weather the pandemic.
Economically, their nutbutter business has been impacted with a drop in sales to those who use our product as an ingredient in their manufacturing (some examples are juice and snacks). On the other hand, the distributors that they work with are experiencing large spikes in sales. It seems unclear if they will lose money due to the virus but it is definitely a possibility.
Being one of the most rural communities, East Wind has yet to see the full extent of impact it will face. As things change, they may start taking more serious actions, but of the various communes, they think they may be in a pretty good place in terms of being prepared and isolated.
Here at the Glomus Commune at East Brook Community Farm, we are smaller and are looking at people coming here on a case by case basis. We have told people who just want to visit not to come. With other people, who are planning to come here on a long term basis, we are checking on their health status and whether they are coming from a high risk area before giving them permission to come. As with all the communes, things are changing daily.
Communes are semipermeable and still quite connected with the larger society. We are all going to have to see where this pandemic goes.
Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
We have been putting questions on our Facebook page and getting a lot of responses. I (Raven) am now putting them out as Friday reposts so that blog readers can see what we’ve been doing on Facebook and some of the comments that we have gotten. Here’s the first question we reposted and the second and the third and the fourth and most recent.
In this back and forth, Theresa raises the question of the place of hierarchies in egalitarian communities. Is this a paradox or an admission that a flat playing field isn’t completely possible, even in communities that struggle for it?
This got lots of responses, beginning with:
This led to a back and forth between Shari McRae and Gil Benmoshe (with contributions from Theresa and Nicole Bienfang:
This was where the dialogue ended, but the question is still open: in ‘egalitarian’ communities, how do we deal with the fact that some folks will always have more experience than others? Do we reward it, or try to contain it?
Join us August 7-9 for a weekend of queertranstastic fun, learning, workshops, networking, revelry, and more! This will be our fourth year hosting the Queer Gathering at Twin Oaks Community in rural central Virginia, and we invite you to come participate. The gathering will be a safe(r) and supportive camping event for queer folks and allies of all ages to come together, skill share, make art, build community, dance, and organize.
Julia and Maddie do some repairs at the conference site
It is especially important given the current political climate to create connections and build resilience. Often, these types of conferences take place in urban environments, so this event is also important for folks who are more rural and have less access to queer community in everyday life.
Group shot of 2018 participants (plus Khaleesi, the dog)
This is a participant-led/co-created event, so while the organizing team will setup the event site and create a general schedule of activities, the content is largely up to YOU! There is opportunity to lead a workshop, DJ some of the dance party, bring your instruments to jam, offer an interest/identity-based meetup (POC dinner, non-binary lunch, comic book breakfast, etc), and more. Some past year’s workshops include mushroom identification, glitter transformation, consent, queer parenting, basic tool use, etc. Sunday’s workshops are all offered by participants and voted on using an open space organizing format.
Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
We have been putting questions on our Facebook page and getting a lot of responses. I (Raven) am now putting them out as Friday reposts so that blog readers can see what we’ve been doing on Facebook and some of the comments that we have gotten. Here’s the first question we reposted and the second and the third.
Theresa asked this question at the end of December:
Here are some of the responses–including a couple of replies from Theresa:
I will add that I (Raven) choose to share my income because it’s a direct challenge to the capitalist system that values one person (and their labor) over another. I feel like when I am in an income sharing community, we are all working together, to support each other, instead of competing to get what we can.
