R.I.P., Fred

Fred Lanphear, a longtime advocate of intentional community, became a personal hero of mine not long after I met him and his wife, Nancy, who serves with me on the Northwest Intentional Communities Association board of directors. Though Fred led a life full of noteworthy achievements, his unusually wise approach to illness and death was particularly inspiring. I'll miss him, and I'll always wish I'd had a chance to get to know him better. But even the brief time we spent together left me with a clearer idea of how to live well, and how to face the end of life with courage, dignity, and integrity. Thanks for everything, Fred.

An urban collective in Brooklyn

A recent New York Times article (sent my way by Joel) spotlights a community in New York that somewhat resembles the Kibbutz. Those pictures at the top, which make the residents seem like sitcom characters or reality-show contestants, tempt me to get professional photos taken of all 15 Kibbutzniks. If only I actually had the money for that...

The Kibbutz on Wikipedia

I've written a brief article about everyone's favorite intentional community. If you're a Wikipedian, or aspire to be one, feel free to improve/expand as desired. I'm proud of myself for getting better at article writing. Now it's time to go back and improve the other ones I've created...

Notes from NICA

Today I attended the Annual Meeting of the Northwest Intentional Communities Association, also known as NICA. It took place at Songaia, a beautiful co-housing community I visited for the first time in 2007, when I participated in their yearly Maypole festival. Two years ago, I marveled at the acres of gorgeous woods the community owned, and the way each family knew all the others. At one point during the celebration, a small child moved dangerously close to a dancer's kicking foot, and an adult not the child's parent scooped him up and carried him to safety. People at Songaia don't have to ask permission to lend a hand with each other's children, because an atmosphere of informal co-parenting is the cultural norm there. I also remember how good the food was that day -- always an important criterion for me when it comes to intentional communities -- and how I was less uncomfortable than I would have expected with Songaia's somewhat woo-woo ceremonies, which often include singing and communal appreciation of the planet's bounty.

I arrived toward the end of lunchtime, bringing two pounds of Whole Foods corn salad with me (non-gluten, non-dairy, non-animal), and I had a quick meal of nettle soup, potato salad, and quinoa tabouli before settling in for an icebreaker called Interplay. We did a number of fun movement exercises, including a "hand dance" in which two people move their hands in relation to each other, sometimes echoing and sometimes trying to complement the waves and dips and twirls. Then we listened to a panel of people who live in intentional communities -- mostly co-housing folks, as it happened -- talk about the emotional trials of their experience as ICers. (The theme of the meeting was "Intimate Journeys," which sounds like a brand of sex-instruction videos but actually referred to the highs and lows that living in community can bring.) The panel was followed by a "fishbowl" session wherein other meeting members could ask questions of the panelists in view of everyone; then we broke into small groups and had wonderful conversations about various aspects of IC, including how to resolve personality conflicts and how to live in community as a couple.

Finally, there were announcements from Songaia and other represented communities (I missed a chance to invite everyone to Shabbat dinner, sadly), and we did a "closing circle" that involved singing "America the Beautiful" (with revised, PC lyrics -- e.g., "humanhood" for "brotherhood") and listening to a lovely poem read by Nancy, one of the Songaians leading the event. At the very end, we took a brief tour of the community, which I remembered pretty well from my previous visit. All in all, a day well spent. I gleaned some good ideas about how to enhance the Kibbutz community, including a "Wall o' Wonder" (see the picture above) charting each resident-organizer's key achievements and experiences, and learned about other growing communities, like Maple Leaf's Mustard Seed House, a small Christian IC that I hope to visit soon.

Less meat, more meet

As my research for the Birthright article continues, I'm finding a lot of interesting stuff about various organizations' attempts to attract unaffiliated post-college/pre-family Jews -- aka the hottest demographic in the world of Jewish outreach. A recent story in The Baltimore Jewish Times has some noteworthy things to say about what young Jews are and aren't looking for in community. To wit:

The alumni surveyed in all four cities said they would like to be more involved than they were in Jewish life. Most preferred small gatherings to large, anonymous “meat market” Jewish events.

“They’re happy to eat free food and drink free beer at those big events, but they don’t feel it meets their needs to find Jewish community,” Chertok reports.

This certainly echoes what the Kibbutz is trying to do. Nice to see it validated in print!

Thanks, Anonymous!

After a previous post drew an angry response from an anonymous commenter, I was concerned to see that Anonymous had struck again, this time responding to a more recent post in which I expressed interest in intentional communities. This Anonymous, as it turns out, is a very different kind: the helpful kind. He or she pointed me towards the Sirius Community in Massachusetts, whose proper Web site I'm having trouble accessing sans Flash but whose page on Living Routes intrigues me. If anyone out there, anonymous or not, has anything to share about Sirius or any other intentional community, please come forth from the shadows!

On a more local note, here's what I hope to make for potluck tonight:


Actually, it'll be with green olives rather than cranberries, but you get the picture.

Ecstatic dance, baked rigatoni, road trip

I went to Dance Underground tonight for ecstatic dance. I dug it. It reminded me of the dance class I had in elementary school in which the teacher told us we were all ingredients in a stew in a giant witch's cauldron. We zoomed around the studio in a big circle like crazy little kids, which we were. It was great. Tonight was a little like that, for which I'm grateful. It's nice to have sore feet because you actually used your body for something other than sitting and typing and walking to lunch.

Also, I ate a lot of soy ice cream when I got back, and watched a bit of Top Chef with Angela, Michael, David, and Jessi.

Oh, and earlier today I had lunch at Skillet. I ordered baked rigatoni with ricotta and weird broccoli. It was fantastic. Dessert was Nutella and banana on crostini, and we also had Mexican Coke (real sugar! glass bottle!) to drink. And I'm writing an article about Dreamlets, the invention of potluck regular Matty Harper, for NWsource. I'm excited. The interview is on Monday.

In other news: Kickball starts tomorrow. It'll be fun to run around again, this time in a non-dance context. I sincerely hope our team name doesn't end up being the Schoolyard Bullies, though. Someone suggested the RickRollers, and I loved that. I hope we get to be the RickRollers.

Finally, I gave notice at work this past Friday. Tentative plan: Stay in Seattle through May, drive down the West Coast in June, return to Seattle by July 4 to fly to Germany with my mom for our Eurotrip. We're going to Freiburg, where I spent several years of my childhood, then Paris; the first leg of the trip is, in part, about a big dinner my mom has arranged in honor of my dad, who died approximately five years ago (June 11, 2003). After Paris, I might remain in Europe and Eurail it for a while, staying in hostels; upon my return, I'd sell or ship anything that didn't fit in my car (I'm buying Angela's car!), pack up the rest, and drive east. East! Through Montana and other pretty states, and hopefully to Chicago, where I'll pick up my friend Margo. Then we'll head to the East Coast; once we arrive, she'll fly back. That's one plan, anyway. And where will I end up? I'm thinking either Brooklyn or an intentional community in New England. The fictional Fieldstone Collective from The Ballad of Jack and Rose, even though we get only a brief glimpse of it, really inspired me.