Intentional Communities Newsletter: May 25, 2009

Promoting Community Living & Cooperative Lifestyles
Communities magazine, Directory, Video and more

Since 1972, Communities has been the primary resource for information, issues, and ideas about intentional communities in North America--from urban co-ops to cohousing groups to ecovillages to rural communes. Communities increasingly focuses on creating and enhancing community in the workplace, in nonprofit or activist organizations, and in neighborhoods. Articles and columns cover practical how-to issues of cooperative living as well as personal stories about forming new communities, decision-making, conflict resolution, raising children in community, ecological living, and much more. We explore the joys and challenges of cooperation in its many dimensions.

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Following are some highlights of the about-to-be-released summer issue Ecology and Community. We hope you'll check out this exciting issue:

Sharing and Climate Change by Bucket Von Harmony. A simple solution could drastically reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the modern citizen, and it does not require new technology or a drastic reduction in quality of life. We all learned about it in Kindergarten, and statistics from Twin Oaks prove its effectiveness.

Revolutionary Communitarianism? by Alexis Zeigler. The author's activist friends in rural Virginia turn out to have above American average per capita energy use. Intentional communities, with shockingly lower energy footprints, are the sleeping giant of the conservation movement.

Cars and Rabbits by Alline Anderson. What separates the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff, the truly eco-concerned from the cotton-headed ninny-muggins? Car use. Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage has honed the practice of car-sharing to an art.

Ecovillages, How Ecological Are You? by Prudence-Elise Breton. The author finds that ecovillages can play powerful roles in the social transition to sustainability, but need to pay attention to quantification and evaluation to match their results to their intentions and become meaningful examples.

Findhorn's Incredible Shrinking Footprint by Jonathan Dawson. With the lowest ecological footprint of any ever measured in the industrialized world, a Scottish community finds it's time to re-invent itself once again in response to climate change.

The Nature of Our Work by Stacie Whitney. The path to sustainability involves not only technological solutions, but a willingness and ability to continually evolve, adapt, and create—to break old patterns of behavior and attitude and accept that change is not only inevitable, but it is also good.

How Ecology Led Me to Community by Chris Roth. The author recounts some of the off-beat marching orders he received from an eco-oriented "different drummer"—and how, instead of becoming a hermit, he became a communitarian.

The Reindeer Herders of Northern Mongolia: Community, Ecology, and Spirit Matters by Marilyn Walker PhD. For Dhuka shamanists, whose lives revolve around intimate relationships with plants and animals, "ecology" is about both the seen, physical world and the unseen world of spirits.

In Our Community—Ecology Is for the Birds by Michael Livni. Kibbutz Lotan thinks globally and acts locally to enhance conditions for migratory songbirds.

Water Is Life by Leila Dregger. In southern Portugal, the Tamera community creates a model for reversing desertification and enhancing regional food autonomy.

Environmental Activism: Securing Your Community's Quality of Life into the Future by Chant Thomas. With a long history of protecting the local watershed, Trillium Farm Community in southern Oregon grows not only organic food, but ecological activists.

Walking through the Forest by Russ Purvis. alliances.

Community Composting: A Transformative Practice by Jason Grubb and Mason Vollmer. At Camphill Soltane, composting is both a metaphor for and essential element in the process of building community.

Lighten Up: A Community Energy-Reduction Experiment by Kelly Barth. Organized around common ecological values and a shared appreciation for the epic of evolution, a group of neighbors reduces its collective energy consumption by 25 percent.

Software, Hardware, and Ecology at Ganas by Tom Reichert with Peggy Wonder. Internal attitudes and willingness to change behaviors can be more powerful than simple technological solutions in shifting a community toward sustainability.

Seeking an Alternative Education by Alison Cole. What’s a verb to do in a land of harsh nouns, industrial adjectives, and wasteful superlatives? Two students look for answers in an Indian reforestation project.

The issue also includes letters, a publisher's note, a Cooperative Group Solutions panelist discussion of "Balancing Inner and Outer Ecology," the story of an experiment in geographically-dispersed community- building, a profile of problematic P-words, and Tim Miller's review of Geoph Kozeny's Visions of Utopia, Part Two DVD.

Please ask for Communities at your favorite local cafe or natural foods store, or subscribe today.

Fall issue: The theme for the fall issue (#144) is Community in Hard Times. If you're interested in submitting articles, photos, or illustrations to future issues of Communities, please follow this link for details.

Contact Communities Editor

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