A MONTHLY EMAIL PUBLICATION of the FIC since 1999. July 22, 2006 1 Featured Bookshelf Titles At Sale Prices 2 Fic Co-sponsored Events Ahead In 2006 3 Communities Magazine Issues & Redesign 4 Help Build A More Cooperative World! _________________________________________________________________ 1 FEATURED BOOKSHELF TITLEs at SALE PRICEs Reviews by Catherine Nicosia, Community Bookshelf Manager _________________________________________________________________ Cutting Your Car Use: Save Money, Be Healthy, Be Green! by Randall Ghent and Anna Semlyen 2006; 128 pages; 5" x 7"; paperback You might think, "I can't possibly live without my car". Well, argues this book, perhaps you can. And perhaps by doing so you will improve your quality of life and help the planet too. Getting rid of a car gets rid of 40% of our annual energy consumption right away, and produces quieter, cleaner, less stressful neighborhoods. Reducing your car use significantly can also go a long ways toward achieving a better quality of life, both for you as an individual and your community. Cutting Your Car Use is a lively, useful and humorous look at kicking our nasty national habit, the unstoppable automobile. The facts are sound, and there is lots of good advice for those wanting freedom from the drive-free-or-die mind set. Packed with lots of ideas, some of which you may have thought of but many more that you probably never have, this excellent and practical book offers solutions that are well within the reach of the average person to implement. Randall Ghent's and Anna Semlyen's vision is too tempting, too positive, too plausible for anyone to deny. I particularly liked the special section on talking with employers about travel options and the excellent directory of resources. This is a book to use, not just to read. Regular price $10.00 Special price $8.00 ---------- Communities Directory & Magazine Subscription Combo Save $10 off the cover price when you buy a 1-year 4-issue subscription to Communities Magazine with a copy of the Communities Directory. This is a special combination deal: a 1-year new or renewal subscription to Communities Magazine plus a copy of the Communities Directory for only $40 plus S/H. Normal price is $50 for the combination. This offer is good only for subscriptions delivered by periodical mail within the United States. http://store.ic.org/catalog/specials.php Shipping/handling 3.00 S/H for first item (combo counts as one item) 1.00 S/H for each additional item Shop online for lower shipping rates, more shipping options, and more sale items. http://store.ic.org/catalog/specials.php S/H prices are for Standard Mail postal delivery within US. Information, catalog, ordering http://store.ic.org/bookshelf Community Bookshelf RR 1 Box 156 Rutledge MO 63563 800-995-8342 bookshelf (at) ic (dot) org _________________________________________________________________ 2 FIC CO-SPONSORED EVENTS AHEAD IN 2006 Communities Conference at Twin Oaks FIC Semi-Annual Organizational Meeting Art of Community Northwest, Seattle area _________________________________________________________________ COMMUNITIES CONFERENCE at TWIN OAKS August 18 - 20, 2006 Twin Oaks Community near Louisa, Virginia We're gearing up for this years event. Workshops scheduled so far include: The Heart of Now, with members of Lost Valley Education Center, Community documentation with photography and other media, with Susan Patrice, Community as Carnival, with Craig Green and friends, and Consensus Headaches, with Laird Schaub of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. And of course there will be the famous Saturday night dance, campfires, singing, open space, the infamous mudpit, hammocks, good food and more. Join us for another rich and dynamic conference. The Conference is co-sponsored by: The Fellowship for Intentional Community The Federation of Egalitarian Communities http://www.thefec.org Twin Oaks Community http://www.twinoaks.org. Communities Conference at Twin Oaks 138 Twin Oaks Rd Louisa VA 23093 540-894-5126 conference (at) twinoaks (dot) org http://www.twinoaks.org/conference ---------- FELLOWSHIP FOR INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY FALL ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Open to the public, as are all of our organization meetings. Hosted by Songaia community, Bothell WA Tues Sept 5 - Thu Sept 7, 2006 We invite you to join us in Seattle right after Labor Day for a week of community immersion. Immediately following, we'll host the Art of Community Northwest weekend on the campus of Bastyr University Sept 8-10. Our semi-annual meetings are a great way to find out what FIC is cooking and who's stirring the various pots. You'll meet a band of fire-in-the-belly community networkers from around the country and also find out who's doing what in the Northwest. Among other things, the agenda will focus on five-year plans for wesbite, events, creating community where you are, regional networking, and fundraising. We'll also discuss the movement opportunities for an aging population and craft the 2007 budget. Sessions are open to all-comers and it's a unique chance to witness a 20-year-old consensus-based organization at work. For information about attending the meetings, contact Jenny Upton jenny (at) ic (dot) org 434-361-1417 We hope to see you there! ---------- ART OF COMMUNITY NORTHWEST: Building Sustainable Community An exciting weekend of networking, learning, & fun! Friday, Sept 8 to Sunday, Sept 10, 2006 Bastyr University, near Seattle WA Co-Sponsor: Northwest Intentional Community Association * Meet People from Existing & Forming Communities; Ecovillages, Cohousing, Egalitarian, Housing Cooperatives, Collectives * Build Real Community Where You Are; at Home, at Work, at Church, in other organizations * Tools You Can Use; Facilitation, Consensus, Ecological Assessments * Be More Sustainable; Ethical Consumption; Local Agriculture, Bio-Diesel, Permaculture Presenters include * Diana Leafe Christian, Communities magazine editor; author: Creating a Life Together * Laird Schaub, FIC Executive Secretary; founder of Sandhill Farm * Geoph Kozeny, the Peripatetic Communitarian from Communities magazine & Visions of Utopia producer * And many more. Check this site periodically for updated Art of Community info http://fic.ic.org/aofc/ ---------- For many more event listings http://events.ic.org/events/ _________________________________________________________________ 3 COMMUNITIES MAGAZINE ISSUES & REDESIGN Current (Good Works) and coming issue (Elder Years) By Diana Leafe Christian _________________________________________________________________ THE CURRENT SUMMER ISSUE Good Works: Communities in Service to Others #131 We got more response to our Spring 2006 "Sustainability and Peak Oil" issue than any other issue in the 12 years I've been with Communities magazine. It was also one of the best-looking issues we've ever had, thanks to the layout skills of our new Art Director, Amy Seiden of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Here's a rundown of the exciting content from the summer issue: ARTICLES ---------------------------------- Creating Community Where You Are: Prescott's "Eco-Hood" Susan DeFreitas describes how a young ecological activist helped create "virtual community" in his urban neighborhood. Sidebar: How to Start a Potential Eco-Hood, Creating Community Where You Are: Start a Neighborhood Newsletter Help organize your neighborhood--by starting a newsletter, organizing a roster of neighbors or an email network, building a community bulletin board. Seeking Community: Intern at an Ecovillage You can have fun, learn new community skills, and "try before you buy." Conflict & Connection: The Overly Powerful Community Member How to deal with the person who always gets her way in meetings, by experienced process and communication consultants Caroline Estes, Bea Briggs, Tree Bressen, and Laird Schaub. Living in Community: When Oprah or Geraldo Call . . . What happens when the media uses intentional community for consumer entertainment? How Dancing Rabbit and East Wind fared at the hands of national media. Darin Fenger. Managing the Media: A Journalist's Advice SPECIAL FEATURE "HOW CAN WE HELP?" ---------------------------------- Seven Months in the Gulf How members of The Farm community responded to Katrina victims in Louisiana and Mississippi--and what they learned about the human spirit. Ralph McAtee. Building Bridges of Clay, Mud, and Straw How Kibbutz Lotan's pioneering program in natural building brings Jews and Arabs together for cultural exchange and new understanding. Michael Livni, Mark Naveh, Alex Cicelsky. I Can Do It Because I Live in Community Bright Morning Star's members are active in peace and social justice issues--which they can do more easily through mutual support. Rosy Betz-Zall. Communities That Serve Others . . . and Love Doing It Darin Fenger interviews Jesus People USA in Chicago; Magic, Inc., in Palo Alto, California; and Koinonia Partners in rural Georgia. It Shows our Neighbors We Want to Contribute Alyson Ewald looks at local service projects undertaken by members of Sandhill Farm, Dancing Rabbit, and Red Earth Farms in northeastern Missouri. Heirloom Gardens, Clean Water, and No GMOs How the environmental activist Sowing Circle community manages multiple successful projects through its nonprofit Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC)--from teaching school children organic gardening to taking on agri-biz. Phil Tymon, Brock Dolman, Adam Wolpert, Dave Henson. ---------------------------------- FALL ISSUE INCLUDES LAUNCH OF MAGAZINE REDESIGN Editor Diana Leafe Christian and the staff of Communities magazine are excited about the all-new redesigned magazine, which will debut with the fall issue (out in early September), with the theme, "Will You Live Your Elder Years in Community?" "Thanks to our new Art Director, Amy Seiden of Dancing Rabbit, and our new Photo Editor, Susan Patrice of Ganas, and our generous donors who have helped us in so many ways," Diana reports, "we will now have more attractively designed pages, higher quality photos, better image resolution on the page, and, as our readers have seen already, color covers and higher quality paper." She notes that in each issue there will be something for community seekers, community founders, people who live in communities (especially "process junkies"), and people who would like more community in their lives where they live now. The issue will include: * "Ecotopia in Japan?" by Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach, who visits Yamagishi Toyosato * "The Dilettante's Journey, Part I, How do you pick a community to join if you're interested in . . . everything?" Frank Beaty. * "A Bittersweet Blessing--The Joys & Sorrows of Life as 'Community Elder'" Darin Fenger * "Elder-Only Cohousing: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?" Neshama Abraham * "An Elder's Perspective: Would I Ever Live in Community Again?" with High Wind founder Lisa Paulson * "Organize a Neighborhood Dinner Co-op!" * "The Rhizome Collective: Starting an Activist Urban Community" by Austin, Texas activists Scott Kellogg & Stacy Pettigrew * "How to Not Get Bogged Down in 'Endless Processing!'" with process and communication experts Bea Briggs, Laird Schaub, and Tree Bressen. Diana will be leading workshops on starting new communities this summer in Eugene, Oregon (8/4) O.U.R. Ecovillage in British Columbia (8/12-13) Los Angeles Eco-Village (8/25-27) the FIC's Art of Community Gathering in Seattle (9/10) Amherst, Massachusetts (10/28-29). She's also a presenter ("Ecovillages as 'Lifeboat Communities'") at the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference in Detroit (10/22-22). ---------------------------------- Get a sample issue, renew or subscribe here http://store.ic.org//communities/sample.php http://store.ic.org/cmag Sample issues $4 plus $3 S/H by US standard mail. Shop online for lower shipping rates and more shipping options. Subscriptions one year 4 issues $20 US :: $24 Canada :: $26 Other Order by phone fax or mail FIC * 138 Twin Oaks Rd * Louisa VA 23093 800-462-8240 fax 540-894-4112 _________________________________________________________________ 4 HELP BUILD A MORE COOPERATIVE WORLD! _________________________________________________________________ E. B. White once said, "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." Like many of us faced with the same dilemma each morning, you can choose to improve the world in a way that also helps you (and many others) to savor it at the same time. Join the FIC! If you've already joined, donate! It's easy, it's fast, it gets you discounts and other benefits... but best of all, it's a way to both enjoy being part of a vast network of community-minded folks, and also enable the growth of that very network. So, don't fret over whether to improve the world or enjoy it--do both. Savor community living while bringing it to more people. Please join us. For more info on member benefits and to join online using our secure server go to http://store.ic.org/membership To request a membership form by mail, or to email, or to talk with a human, contact us at RR 1 Box 156 Rutledge MO 63563 800-995-8342 fic (at) ic (dot) org To learn more about the mission of the organization visit http://fic.ic.org/index.html Many thanks from all of us in the Fellowship.