Four months ago as i was walking the magic meadow site and looking at the tremendous volume of brush that needed clearing i said “we need to get Pilgrim here, way before April.” And now Pilgrim is there, with a shiny new chain saw and he looked around and said “We need to get a bunch more hands on this problem way before April.” East Wind has been helping quite a bit, but it is not the communities job to build out festival site.
So i have started recruiting, which is my favorite job actually. First it was Hayden who is on the edge of finishing his GED and in conventional classifications would be a a “kid at risk”. What i see is a jem ready to reveal itself and choose important cuts. With some luck and some tutoring he will come out on the next trip from Twin Oaks (Virginia) to East Wind (Ozarks) on Feb 18th.
What is also exciting was that Erica and her young daughter Wrenagade (see photo above) are probably coming out as well. Below is the CraigsList ad she recently ran.
(t)hey say it takes a village to raise a child. so where is it? why aren’t we living in this village, raising each others children? we all know the answer. simply put, the alienation of families makes life difficult, and consumerism more productive. we’ve replaced grandmothers with talking bears and bouncy chairs. anything and everything to give mommy a break. as a new other, this is NOT acceptable to me. I want our village, without mind-numbing TV, electronic babysitters, instant formulas, all things that only make life easier for that instant, but at a dire familial, social, and cultural cost that we all see the effects of.
I’m tired of complaining about what my daughter and I don’t have. I want to go out and get it. We want to live simply primitively, supportively, communally, spiritually, maternally, matriarchally, openly. some of these terms might scare some people off because of being red-tagged, but I assure you – if I say carefree, i don’t mean careless. when I say open, i don’t mean anything goes. when I say communally I don’t mean lack of personal space. when I say matriarchally, I don’t mean anti-male. I think all the mothers reading this know exactly what I mean because it pulls at our primordial strings in a very familiar ancient way. so how do we get what we all need? how do we make it work when we get it? what do we have to give up? how do we get the support we need to accomplish our goals?
we’re so used to living autonomously. there are plenty of individuals wanting to live more simply, in the woods, farming, bartering…..by themselves, because they have their individual vision and want things to go the way they imagine things should go. plenty of groups who’ve tried to live in a village have failed for that very reason – because their visions could not be lined up. but with the way this system is going, I don’t see it possible to do it any other way. we need each other now more than ever. we need story time around the hearth, drumming, chanting, chopping wood, initiations, direct interactions with everything and everyone, reflecting Nature that knows no good vs. evil, shame or blame, just cause and effect. i come to you all with nothing of my own…..except this vision and the drive to make it happen, to pull resources together, network, and realize.
Looks like her village is looking for our village.
“Looks like her village is looking for our village.”
I am moved by Erica’s heartfelt plea and am now trying to imagine how your ‘village’ fits with her needs. Where will your village be in July?
I am interested by ideas of reimagining and adapting festivals, but traditionally a festival is a local event, not something you create 1000 miles from home. A festival is a celebration of an already existing community. Why does TwinOaks not have a festival?
MB – friend of Erica, Woodfolk, Little Flower, BTTV, Random Row, FnB, etc.
So many folks who’s ideals do not line up. How do we get our ideals to line up? We at EW have so many factions and many of them are very consumeristic and there has been a rash of thefts including mail so how do we stop the backstabbing? How do we have a large community without having to police ourselves. Positive peer pressure does not work because there is so much negative peer pressure to be consumeristic.
Some quick thoughts by Paxus on Matt and Nyles comments.
Villages in the Sky was designed by Oakers, but we decided that Twin Oaks slow and conservative decision making process made it a poor choice for having the festival there. Instead for the test festival (the Testival we had in October) where we built the first tree houses and zip lines we went to near by Acorn where were more welcome and learned a lot.
Twin Oaks does have some regular festive events, however. The Communities Conference and Womens Gatherings in August are both basically small festivals. The New Years party is festival like in some ways.
Ooops, Willow just woke up. More soon.
Paxus con’t – As for festivals being far away, we expect most people attending VIS will be from Missouri and we hope the idea is attractive enuf so that it inspires other festivals of similar themes in other places (like both the Rainbow Gathering and Burning Man have regional events).
Nyle’s questions about East Wind are vexing, certainly. And i tread somewhat carefully as an outsider offering advice. But what i would suggest is two different approaches: group constructive events and self insurance.
For me the best times in community have been when larger groups of members have gotten together to do something. Ideally, building a structure or clearing an area – something where a large number of people working for a relatively short amount of time has a high impact. These kinds of events tend to build bonds between members.
Theft is extremely headachy in communities like ours. It degrades trust and infuriates people. One technical fix might be to try some type of self insurance, like we do with PEACH for health stuff. Members of the community contribute and the community does as well and some trusted group evaluates claims for theft or other things you wish to insure against and disburses, typically fractional reimbursement. Hardly a perfect solution, but something which helps take the edge of the loss.
i would love to hear other solutions from other folx.
Paxus- I do like how you identified the fire, water, and earth qualities of some major festivals and the need for an air festival.
Nyle – It pains me much to read of people who are supposed to be cooperating ending up hurting their community, whether it be a farm community or a town or city. I can’t say what to do in your situation, not knowing anything about your community. If I was in a small community I would want it to have a way to quickly banish such troublemakers.
Erica wrote, “when I say communally I don’t mean lack of personal space.” For me, having personal space and security is an ingrained need. One solution could be in that area. Some space to lock away some of your property. Mail is getting stolen? Lock up the mail! I know this is the antithesis of the principles of many coop communities, and this thinking could be called materialistic, but perhaps you can see some advantages too.
Not everyone is going to agree to live in a communist or anarchist village so it seems we need a wider variety of models to suit different attitudes and needs. A village that allows for property and personal capitalism. A gay village. A redneck village. A bluegrass village. A techno village. Vegetarian villages. A village of hunters. A place and home for each type of person. Our culture keeps seeking diversity but I see that as just ensuring there is always someone nearby to argue with.
I thought about how tribal societies might have dealt with their thieves. Sometimes kill or banish, but I imagined that perhaps they were sometimes able to put that thieving nature to work by sending them off to steal from a neighboring tribe. Maybe you could send these guys off to borrow some stuff from Walmart
I think I need to find a forum where lots of people discuss these kinds of things. Any suggestions?
Dearest Matt:
Of course the solution to thievery in these small environments might be to reward the thieves so they no longer feel like they need to participate in this destructive behavior – certainly cheaper than locks and cops.
Certainly not everyone is going to live in a village. In fact the overwhelming trend is the other directions, in a few years half the worlds population will be in cities for the first time in history. And it still feels like our job (my job) to build counter examples, Villages of various flavors (as you mention) and different structures.
as for forums to discuss this – i will take here for the moment – drag your friends over, it is these types of discussions which keep blogs alive and lively.
Paxus at Twin Oaks
27 jail bird 10
Wow! this is exciting! i’ve often wondered myself about how more tribal aboriginal communities dealt with things like this. A long time ago I read this book called ‘Original Wisdom’. in it there is described how there was the village thief, the village “crazy” person, etc. they were just considered to be part of the community, and when you saw the village thief around…..you hid your shit. I also recently read a book called ‘Daughters of Copper Woman’, in which is described the village Clown. Usually a girl who has a knack for mimicry, (a trait that could become very annoying) she undergoes training to learn how to develop these gifts into a way to help her fellow villagers see themselves as other people see them, as a way to keep them in check and become more self aware. She does this by respectfully mocking them and their materialistic, self-absorbed behavior. She is among the ranks of Medicine Woman and Shaman. No one dares react to her with rage. They all know better. She is held in high esteem.
i’m pondering on my own comment some more. yeah, sometimes just not wanting to be reputed for being a thief is enough to keep yourself in check. Presenting it to your fellow members like, “how do you want to be known? you are personally responsible for your own reputation and character.” of course, you need to know who the thief is.
The thing about anarchy – no rules only works if you subscribe to a higher law of principles. And we all individually need to promote this with our own example which is hard when most of us didn’t have those good examples to learn from. nowadays there’s more to UN-learn, which is a daily task of reminders, checking in with each other, lovingly calling each other out, picking ourselves back up, dusting off, forgiving forgetting, apologizing, and telling our stories for our future generations. and honestly, the more people that do this, the more people will do this. and I can see how a thief could potentially see this happening around them and either grow up, or lose interest in being conspicuously labeled in an unflattering way and leave for darker pastures.