Communities #191
Summer 2021
Note: You can order a copy of this issue here.
Our Summer 2021 issue of Communities, #191, focuses on Ecological Culture. Articles range from in-depth stories of ecovillage life, to examinations of the role of language in culture, to detailed, step-by-step instructions for building “veganic” soil fertility and also for turning a rich, abundant source of nutrients into fertilizer, even in the city, rather than flushing it away. Explorations of other aspects of cooperation and reviews of several new resources round out the issue. We hope you’ll join us!
ECOLOGICAL CULTURE
Introducing this Issue: Speaking of Ecological Culture By Chris Roth
Letters
Views from Our Partners: Our Cooperative Future By Paul Freundlich
In these chaotic and dangerous times, we need to tap the mutual benefit that binds us together.
Attending to “Essentials”: Life at Suderbyn Ecovillage By Abdul Otman
Contributing within the ecovillage’s core areas of activity anchors us to our physical needs and connects us to each other. Every activity is a sharing and teaching opportunity.
The Greening of Heartwood Cohousing By Richard Grossman
Over the past two decades at Heartwood, working gradually with people who are interested in becoming more ecological has been more successful than a rapid, radical approach.
Poems: First Blooming, Bartering for Oxygen, Toward Nightfall By Stephen Wing
The honeybees / drifting to and fro, / stitching it all / together.
We Are Rising Strong: 30 Years of Exploring Resilient Living By Liz Walker
Through wide-ranging projects, ecovillagers keep in mind the Pachamama Alliance’s question: How can we create an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet?
Alienated from the Ecovillage By Anonymous
A family committed to ecological living concludes that status-quo and fear-of-difference, based in larger US cultural norms, lie at the foundation of many “alternative” communities—even “eco” ones.
Kudzu and Consensus By Michael Traugot
A kudzu infestation brought out a wide range of proposed solutions, from immediate chemical warfare to patient manual extraction, and led to what may have been The Farm’s most successful meeting ever.
Circular Fertility Cycles in an Integrated Community Permaculture Farm By Kara Huntermoon
At Heart-Culture, the sheep eat the willows, the willows eat the sheep manure, humans use the products of both, and ecological benefits accrue.
Veganic Soil Fertility with Local Materials By Lyn Peabody
Whatever your living situation, whether in a large community or small household, you can adapt these methods to grow food with a lighter footprint on the planet.
Humanure Composting (Yes, in the city!) By Rachel Freifelder
Adopting a humanure composting system saves water, power, space, and money; protects rivers from pollution; and reclaims valuable nutrients for agriculture. Here’s how to do it easily and safely on a home or community scale.
• TP Alternatives (that work with the flush toilet too!)
Creating a Twenty-First Century Landscape By Carl N. McDaniel
Managed with care, a landscape can reduce flooding, sequester carbon, provide food and energy, enhance biodiversity, allow for recreation, entertainment, and education, promote health, and be beautiful too.
Simple Living Close to Nature By Kim Scheidt
Our lives are rustic but also rich beyond compare: we have freedom over our own time, clean air to breathe, delicious water, food security, and the peacefulness that comes with daily immersion in nature.
Does Individual Action Matter? By Rachel Freifelder
Being hassled by self-righteous community mates rarely motivates us; gracious individual action is more likely to inspire. And individual action matters more when many individuals do the same thing.
Spiritual Intelligence: Embodied Energy and the End of Consumer-Waste Culture By Cara Judea Alhadeff, PhD
A devotion to repurposing objects, to constructing co-beneficial, regenerative infrastructural support systems, is an antidote to industrialized convenience culture.
Wise Wording By Looby Macnamara
Power-over violence and nature/human separation are deeply embedded in many languages. Using words carefully and consciously can encourage and reinforce the paradigms that we do wish to inhabit.
Foundational Language for Ecological Culture By Jen Bayer and Hilary Hug
When practitioners and proponents find common ground in the science of ecology, we can protect ecological culture from ever-increasing efforts to dilute, corrupt, and co-opt it.
The Challenging Dynamics of Community Businesses By Laird Schaub
Doing better with cooperative economics in often business-averse groups may require some personal reconditioning and a fair number of group conversations, but true sustainable living depends on it.
A Short History of Cooperatives By Andrew Moore
What models should we adopt going forward that might save us from extinction and give nature and all sentient beings a chance to thrive again? Cooperatives may offer clues.
How the Military Prepared Me to Live in Community By Dave Booda
Many of the things I loved about being in the military are the same things I love now about living in community, and lessons learned transfer from one to the other.
Spaceship Earth: Finding Interconnectedness within and without Biosphere 2 By James Collector
The Biosphere 2 experiment did not fail; it proved the point that humanity relies on planetary-scale support systems which cannot be engineered in a God-like fashion.
Anatomy of a Commune (Review) By Bill Metcalf
If Laurieston Hall formed as “a struggle between radical commune versus the bourgeois nuclear family”—then the bourgeois nuclear family has clearly won.
A Solution to Homelessness in Your Town (Review) by Kate Nichols
Helping the homeless form communities where they feel safe and emotionally supported is even more helpful to their recovery than simply housing them. Charles Durrett’s book shows a path forward.
Plus Digital-Only Pages/Supplement (available at gen-us.net/191.1):
A Place to Call Home By Alexis Zeigler
The marriage of cooperative use and renewable energy is the only thing that stands between us and a complete ecological holocaust.
Marxist Ecology By Yana Ludwig
A Marxist ecologist would see both the potential and the deep internal contradictions of our community.
Sharing Resources Well By Yana Ludwig and Karen Gimnig
The social skills needed for and built by sharing can lead to significantly reduced consumption of both energy and stuff.
Our Cooperative Future, Part Two: Work Is More Than a Job By Paul Freundlich
For whole classes of people, the concept of meaningful work is an oxymoron. Yet, to the extent community exists, there is a virtually unlimited amount of meaningful work to be done.
Restoring Ecosystems and Human Communities By Susan Jennings
Agraria’s work recognizes that the health of the planet depends on our collective ability to choose a path toward restoration, regeneration, and resilience.
Native Wildlife vs. Cats and Dogs By Briony Ryan
A growing number of ecovillages are choosing to protect native life forms by keeping their communities cat- and dog-free.
Canine Community and the Dog that Other Dogs Hate By Sheryl Grassie
Just as humans do, dogs need to feel part of a community.
The Farm: The First 50 Years By Michael Traugot, Mary Ellen Bowen, Peter Schweitzer, David Frohman, et al.
Long-time Farm veterans reflect on the lifelong and wide-ranging impacts of the community-building skills they learned on The Farm in its early years.
You can order a copy of this issue here.