The Harvest at Serenity Solidarity

There’s been a lot growing on Serenity Solidarity’s land. This is from their “Summer Photo Dump.” They add, “Wish you were here!”

More Than Ninety Ways to Build a Commune

by Raven (with apologies to Paul Simon)

Your problems are all inside your heads, she said to us

I’m not sure why everyone is making such a fuss

There must be more interesting things we could discuss

Like how there’s more than ninety ways to build a commune

More than ninety ways to build a commune

*

I’m sorry, he said, but I feel I must intrude

If you want to fight all night, I am just not in the mood

But I’m curious enough ask, at the risk of being rude

What are the more than ninety ways to build a commune?

More than ninety ways to build a commune

*

First find the people, Steeple

Make sure you agree, Flea

Take it real slow, Glow

Don’t start it too soon

Visit some places, Aces

And figure out the money, Bunny

Then make your plans, Stan

To start your commune

Someone said, Would you please explain

Why you list so few ways and so many still remain?

I hope we don’t need to ask you again and again and again

About the more than ninety ways to build a commune

More than ninety ways to build a commune

*

She said, I don’t intend to spend the entire night

Listing different ways until we see the morning light

I’ll name a few more so that you can see that I am right

There’s more than ninety ways to build a commune

More than ninety ways to build a commune

*

It can be big or small, Saul

Or in the midst of the city, Pretty

Or out on a farm, Charm

Or maybe on the moon

It can be well known, Joan

Or totally obscure, Pure

There’s just so many ways, Haze

To build a commune

*

First find the people, Steeple

Make sure you agree, Flea

Take it real slow, Glow

Don’t start it too soon

Visit some places, Aces

And figure out the money, Bunny

Then make your plans, Stan

To start your commune

Roots, Garlic, Convergence, and Heat

These posts were from our Facebook feed when we were nearing the end of July.

Acorn hosted a gathering for BIPOC farmers and communitarians. Later a report was written on what happened. Here’s some pictures from the report.

Here’s a link to the report itself.

Unfortunately, this post didn’t do as well on Facebook as I would have liked (given how important I think the event was) with four likes and just seventy-seven views.

East Wind posted about garlic.

This post did very, very well, with nine likes, four loves, two comments, and two hundred and sixty views.

I posted about the Northeast Eco-Communities Convergence, which I attended and wrote about here.

This did pretty good, with eight likes, one love, two shares, and over a hundred and thirty views.

Finally, SESE posted about how to deal with your garden in the summer heat.

This didn’t do particularly well, with just two likes and eighty-six views.

Pizza Making at East Wind

East Wind Community writes: “We really do LOVE pizza over here

Especially when it’s made with fresh ingredients from our land. East Wind tomatoes and basil with mozzarella from our cows milk. Thank you Cada and Norah

#eastwindcommunity#intentionalcommunity#garden#mozzarella#tomatoes#basil#organic#pizza#ozarks “

What Keeps Me Going

by Raven

This will be a bit more of a personal article than I usually write, but I think that it may be useful for some folks, particularly those who want to start a community and even more for anyone who has tried to start one and wonders if it’s worth trying again, or even wonders if it’s worth trying to join a commune when you’ve already done it once and it hasn’t worked.

I’m a communities veteran.  I’ve been part of five income-sharing communities, four cooperative households (all in the Boston area), and one hybrid community (Ganas).  I’ve been focusing on this for thirty-six years now.  

My first income-sharing community (the Waldo Street Collective in 1989) lasted only six months, but as soon as it was over,  I knew I wanted to do it again.  Our next attempt was the Common Threads community, which lasted five years (in Cambridge, MA, 1995 to the year 2000) and became a Community in Dialogue with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (the FEC).  After that fell apart, I joined a couple of co-op houses–and after an unsuccessful venture, a third co-op.  I’ve found that co-op houses are lovely and I still have very good relationships with a couple of them, but they’ve never been enough for me.  

Common Threads, me on the left

My third attempt at commune building was in New York City.  After living two and a half years at Ganas, which I enjoyed but wasn’t the style of community I was looking for, three of us tried to start an income-sharing community in Queens (Cotyledon) which lasted almost two years but never attracted enough other folks to make it really work.  

Cotyledon, me in the middle

Then I joined Glomus Commune in Walton, NY, which actually became a full member of the FEC but it was small and didn’t appreciate visitors and it was in a rural part of the state with no real public transportation, where I just felt lonely and isolated (although it was a good enough place to ride out the pandemic).  

Glomus, me in the middle of the middle row

I moved back to Boston, where I had friends and family, in 2023, moving into yet another co-op house.  From there I heard of a little income-sharing community in western MA, and I thought that I might do better there because someone there drove regularly to Boston.  It turned out that wasn’t enough for me.  A friend of mine pointed out that this place was even smaller and more isolated than Glomus.  Which is why I’m currently living in Brattleboro, Vermont, trying to start yet another community.  (If you know anyone who would like to be part of a newly forming income-sharing eco-community in Brattleboro, please send them my way.)

I was talking with a friend of mine about all of this and my current attempt and he wondered how I could keep doing this.  “What keeps you going?” he asked.

I thought it was an excellent question and a good question for anyone who has tried to do things again and again and again.  As I think about it, I can come up with three things.

First, I have a strong belief that income-sharing communities are needed.  In a society dominated by inequality, individualism, and isolation, I think that communes are an antidote to all of this.

Second, I have a real feeling that this is where I belong and fit.  As I said, as soon as the Waldo Street Collective collapsed, I knew I wanted to do it again.  And when Common Threads was over, again, I knew this was how I wanted to live.  And at Cotyledon and Glomus Commune and even at the little commune in the western Mass woods, when we had meetings and made collective decisions, I felt right at home and connected.  (The problem with all three of these was that I was by myself most of the rest of the time-–which is not how I want to be community.)

And, third, I have an overwhelming sense that this is what I’m meant to do.  Honestly, I can’t think of anything that I would want to do more.  For me, no hobby or travel adventure would be anywhere near as satisfying.  I’m technically retired so I sometimes say,  what else would I do?  Collect stamps?

I’m aware that a lot of these reasons come down to me saying this is who I am, so I’ll finish by asking, what keeps you going?

Heat, Solar, and Convenors

by Raven

The middle of July was a strange week for Commune Life on Facebook. As I went to bring them over here I found that two of the posts (including the most popular one that week) were no longer available on Facebook. The second most popular post (which I am including below) is something that I had already posted once on Facebook and was deliberately posting a second time. (I say deliberately because I’ve accidentally posted some things on Facebook twice.) I’ve learned that it seems like Facebook readers have a short enough attention span that if you repost things several weeks apart, you can still get a pretty decent readership. (I’ve even reposted things, accidently, the next week, and gotten a decent readership.)

SESE posted about how to deal with gardens during heat waves.

Good advice but it only got two likes and forty-nine views.

The repost that I did was a reminder that Living Energy Farm was going to install solar panels at Serenity Solidarity and they were still looking for folks to help. (I went and I’ve posted several photo essays about it, including this one.)

This post did fairly well, getting six likes, four loves, and two comments, although it got just over a hundred views.

Finally, Paxus, on his blog, decided that workshop leaders at the Communities Conference and the Convergence of Intentional Communities were better described as “Convenors”.

You can read the whole article on Paxus’ blog (including why Raines Cohen suggested that Convenor would be the better term).

This post didn’t do that well on Facebook, with no likes or loves and only seventy-two views.

Putting up the solar panels

by Raven

This is the last batch of pictures from Living Energy Farm’s solar installation at Serenity Solidarity. The structure that the solar panels are put on was built before I got there. Here the panels are attached to it, the wiring is attached to the panels and connected via a long cable (which will be buried underground) into the house.

The First Northeast Eco-Communities Convergence

by Raven

When I went to the first Convergence of Intentional Communities which was held after the Twin Oaks Communities Conference last year, I was disappointed.  I was hoping for some local and regional networking, and it was focused on national and global networking.  When I mentioned this to Riana, a woman I met who said she was interested in communities, she said that this was what the folks that she was working with were doing.  She was part of Permatours who were planning to organize a northeast US regional event for communities.

So, naturally I said I wanted to be involved.  I was soon on a couple of the organizing calls and I was a bit disappointed.  The folks on the calls talked about permaculture, and art, and spirituality, and bioregions and indigenous people, and social justice, and just about everything except communities.

When I said something, they asked if I wanted to do a presentation about communities.  Of course I said I’d love to and offered to do presentations on either an intro to intentional communities or one on income sharing (or both).  Which is how I ended up on two panels there, one on Living in Community and one on Toward Just and Regenerative Economics.

The Convergence was in Unity, Maine, but I had been told there would be lots of folks coming from Brattleboro (where I am now living) since Permatours is based in Brattleboro.  And, indeed, getting there was not a problem.

The Convergence itself was an amazing networking event.  I met lots of people that I knew from quite a few different places–and made some lovely connections.  The workshops I attended were also very good.  I particularly liked the one on Consent, which focused on the acronym FRIES (from Planned Parenthood and the best description that I’ve heard of–consent is Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific) and had some fun practice exercises.  The Convergence also had lots of building projects to improve the space where it was held and had maps of the northeast bioregion which they were using to highlight various groups, projects, and individuals around the region.

The biggest difficulty (remember, this was their first year) was that everything ran off schedule.  The organizers began describing everything as “flow-y”.  I met one woman who could only come for one day who left early in frustration with the ever changing schedule.

I really enjoyed the panel that I did with Daniel Greenberg (who is currently co-director of the Foundation for Intentional Community and was one of the leaders of the Convergence of Intentional Communities last year), Marissa Peck (who I know and is one of the organizers of the Earthseed Ecovillage–visiting them was one of the things that brought me to Vermont), and Galia (who I didn’t know but lives in a co-op house in the Boston area).   We all shared learnings and stories from our community experiences.

I didn’t actually make the panel on Economics.  It was originally scheduled for two o’clock on Sunday but looked like it was happening at four (maybe) and I had a problem.  It was a lot easier to get a ride to the Convergence than back, because I needed to leave Sunday afternoon or evening, since I had a bus to catch early Monday morning—I was going down to Virginia then. The people with Permatours were staying until sometime late on Monday at least because they had to take down the event.  I finally begged a ride off someone I knew who eventually agreed, even though it was two hours out of their way.  I didn’t feel too bad about blowing off the Economics panel because when I last checked there were at least six of us scheduled to be on the panel, which I thought was a bit too many.

The Permatours people are planning on holding this event again next year and have been soliciting feedback to improve things.  I’m excited that there is some serious regional organizing happening here.

Plums, Networks, Kitchen, and Reppin

by Raven

For anyone who has joined us recently, on Friday I repost stuff from the Commune Life Facebook page that was originally reposted from the various communes Facebook pages (or occasionally their Instagram site or their webpages or somewhere). I do this especially for folks who don’t want to look at Facebook (which I can’t blame them for) but the stuff that is covered here is stuff that was on our Facebook page a while ago and on many of the communes pages sometime before that. So I know it’s old news, but it still gives some sense of what’s going on at the various communes. In this case, these posts are from early July, even older than usual because we took the month of August off.

East Wind wrote about their harvest of plums.

I also add commentary about how well each post did on Facebook. My usual criteria for thinking that a post did well is if it got at least a hundred views. In this case, the Plum post did pretty well. First of all, it got fourteen likes and six loves (and that’s a lot of likes and loves), and in addition it got nearly two hundred views. (As you will see from what I post below.)

Then I reposted what I thought was a fairly important post from Serenity Solidarity.

While I thought that this was inspiring, I didn’t do anywhere near as well as the previous post, with just two likes and two loves. It also got two shares (which means that two viewers shared it with their own Facebook connections) which often drives up the viewer numbers but in this case, it didn’t do that much because less than seventy people saw it.

The Twin Oaks Queer Gathering posted about the work being done at the Conference site.

This post was very well liked (the summer conferences at Twin Oaks are popular and the area was severely damaged in the fire in the spring of last year) with eleven likes, five loves, one comment, and two hundred and twelve views.

Finally, East Wind posted about their sales staff.

This post also did very well on Facebook, with eleven likes, one share, and a lovely two hundred and thirty seven views.

Serenity Solidarity, Summer 2025

Here’s some more photos from my visit to Serenity Solidarity in July, focusing on the land and community that is developing there. Pictured is Vega, the newest member of the community; the altar that Vega built for our time together when Living Energy Farm came to install the solar panels; the main house; the land around them; the little pond in back of the house; the stream that runs through the property; and the Peace Pagoda, in a town several miles away that we’ve visited each time I’ve been at Serenity Solidarity.