Convenors not Presenters

by Paxus

from Your Passport to Complaining

Convenors not Presenters – deadline July 15

The best part about organizing a well established and somewhat high profile event is you get to work with some great people. Community maven and Where’s Waldo look-a-like Raines Cohen has been on the organizing teams for this years Communities Conference and Convergence. Raines is a cohousing open inter-regional networker and aging in community author. Raines social media chronicles his travels regularly asking the reader where he is?

Raines is familair with a very high number of airport lounges

Texas never looked so appealing

I also follow Raines on social media as he follows me. And when i put up a recent Reddit message about the Communities Conference being in the last five days of workshop presenter submission, Raines pointed out that they are not really presenters.

Raines is right, we are not giving lectures, for that loses the wisdom that is in the room. We are looking for people who can draw the collective intelligence and convene an interactive adventure which looks like a workshop.

If that is you and you can make it to the Communties Conference (Aug 29 thru Sept 1) and your topic has to do directly with intentional communities.

Then you have just 5 more days to get your workshop description in. Relevant links:

1. Description of Themes and good convener practices
2. Curated Workshop Convenor Submission form (due July 15, 2025)
3. Open Space alternatives (on any topic, no deadline)

UK Communities Conference 2024? Can you find Raines? [Hint: Hat]

Alpha Farm, Fertilizing, Love, and Brassicas

by Raven

This post focuses on the mid-June posts from Facebook–and it wasn’t a great time for FB viewership. But I think there was some pretty interesting stuff.

To start with, now that Alpha Farm is a Community in Dialogue with the FEC, I thought I would post something to really introduce it. I pasted a link to their webpage.

In spite of how important I think that this is, while it got four likes and three loves, it got less than eighty views.

Southern Exposure posted about garden fertilization.

The advice might have been good, but this post got only one like and just forty-three views.

The Queer Gathering posted a wedding picture.

While this post did better than the previous two, it also got only one like and eighty-eight views.

Ah, but East Wind showed what you can do with a wheelbarrow full of brassicas.

This post got fifteen likes (including one from East Wind Nut Butters) and over a hundred and eighty-views.

East Wind’s Walk-In Cooler

East Wind Community writes: “Hope everyone is staying cool out there. I know our walk-in cooler is.

“A little more info on this project… Besides a few bags of concrete and screws, we didn’t pay for anything else. Cedar posts felled and pine logs milled by our for forestry manager. Metal tin was scavanged over a year ago. Building maintence manager made the designs and slapped it together in-between all of the rains. Still needs a few finishing touches but the cooler is shaded!”

Interdependence Day

by Raven

Last Friday, many people in the US celebrated what is called Independence Day.  What it actually celebrates is the founding of the USA, but for many people ‘independence’ itself seems to be something to celebrate.  Independence, according to our culture, is the big achievement of adulthood.

Many people in the communes, and often in other kinds of communities, don’t see it that way.  For them the major life achievement is interdependence.

I see independence as the achievement of adolescence.  You are becoming free of dependence on your parents and other adults.  And I think that independence is a necessary stage on the way to interdependence.

But interdependence is an acknowledgement that we need to rely on each other and that we are stronger together.

Communal living is a study in interdependence.  Communes and communities work best when we can rely on each other and support each other.  The more sharing that a community does, the more this seems to be true.

The little commune that I lived in last year was built heavily upon interdependence.  More than any place that I lived before, both our individual disabilities and our individual strengths were abundantly clear.  We really needed each other to make the place work–and each person that we added made the place work better.

To a large degree, this is exactly why I want to live communally.  Each of us has stuff we are good at and stuff that is easy for us, and we also have stuff that is difficult for us or that we’re not able to do.  Fortunately, those things are different for different people and when we live together collectively we have the opportunity to share our gifts and get our needs met by other people’s gifts.

I think that interdependence is a gift.  As we share and give to each other, we are not only stronger together but we grow closer together.  I think that human beings were meant to live together and I think that we are made to be interdependent.  I think that every day is interdependence day.

Cabbages, Baking Crops, Food Pantries, Happy Animals, and Relaxing

by Raven

Welcome to yet another recap of Commune Life posts (and reposts) on Facebook. These posts are from the beginning of June.

To start with, Twin Oaks was bragging about their cabbages.

This post did pretty well on Facebook with nine likes, three loves, and just over a hundred and forty views.

At Acorn, SESE posted about crops for baking with.

This also did pretty well, with five likes, three loves, and over a hundred and thirty views.

Serenity Solidarity hadn’t been putting stuff up for a while. Turns out they were busy with other things.

Unfortunately, as these things seem to happen, this really important post got less coverage, with two likes, two loves, and only seventy-five views.

At East Wind, it seemed like their animals were pretty happy with the weather.

This did okay on Facebook, with five likes, a love, and over a hundred views.

Finally, at Twin Oaks, the former hammocks manager still enjoys his product.

I guess it’s nice to see someone relaxing–or maybe Shal just has a lot of fans, but this post did very well with thirteen likes, eight loves, a care, four comments, and a lovely two hundred and fifteen views.

A Brand New Website

I just got word from the FEC that they have a new website: https://www.egalitariancommunities.org/

Check it out.

This will replace the old webpage. (Which is horribly out of date and should be ignored.)

Alpha Farm Visits East Wind

Alpha Farm writes: “Crossover Episode! Alpha Farm visits East Wind.

4 of ours took a road trip to connect with East Wind in March. Learned a lot and made connections to last a life time! Thanks so much to all the folks who made the visit so wonderfully memorable.

We’re also linked with the FEC now & officially a community in dialogue Woo!”

The best price is “free” and free

by Paxus

from Your Passport to Complaining

The Fire of 2024 destroyed both the conference site infrastructure and the hammocks business. This year has been about rebuilding. In place of the hammocks business we are looking at a number of new business possibilities, including a slip mold pottery business which we were gifted after the fire.

The pottery business came with significant inventory

The new pottery business has already transformed Oz with a new floor, and a kiln annex adjacent to the building. We are already internally seeking the services of this new industry. The Communities Conference hopes to get commemorative mugs as shwag for our annual event.

The new kitchen already has appliances needing hook up

Keenan’s super power is to build things with nothing. For labor he uses crews mostly comprised of visitors, guests and kids – all of which are not budgeted. So his labor is budget “free” in terms of Twin Oaks accounting. And using the same free labor force Keenan has disassembled an entire house, leaving it basically green fielded. With many of these salvaged beautiful pieces of wood this rag-tag team has built the various structures at the conference site with many free materials.

Take clever scheduling add “Free” labor and and free materials and you can replace all manner of functions which were destroyed in the fire, without destroying your budget.

The new kitchen is longer and higher than the old one.

These beams were harvested from a deconstructed house.

It is the last days to get your discounted Communities Conference tickets and come see these new structures and businesses yourself.

Dogs, Seesaw, Yamagishi, and Berries

by Raven

Commune Life did okay at the end of May, beginning of June on Facebook.

We started off with an update on the FEC, which I also published here and that got twenty-six likes, thirteen loves, a care, sixteen comments, three shares, and over five hundred views. I’m glad that it did so well. It was important news.

East Wind posted some very cute dog pics.

As you might imagine, this did well, although not that well, with two likes, a love, and a hundred and ten views.

Twin Oaks posted about what some of their folks do while working on Conference preparation.

(Note–this is a still from a Facebook video. You can watch the little video to get more.)

This got seven likes and I don’t know how many views because Facebook for some reason doesn’t give out the viewship for their ‘reels’.

I recently found out about this “moneyless, leaderless” community in Japan and posted about it on Facebook.

This was from a really interesting article about them, which you can read for more information.

This, unfortunately, did not do well on Facebook, with two loves, a like, and just over fifty views.

Finally, East Wind announced the start of berry season–with pictures.

This did well on Facebook, with six loves (including one from East Wind Nutbutters), five likes, a comment, and a hundred and sixty-seven views.

Another Glimpse into Alpha Life

Alpha Farm is a long running income sharing community that has just become a Community in Dialogue with the FEC. This is part two of a photo essay that they call: “A little glimpse into Alpha life from March – May.”