Been thinking on intentional communities, pricked by Stephen Downes here, and - as these things happen - the serendipitous rediscovery of Ina May Gaskin's Spiritual Midwifery (about which I wrote a wee blog here) because "we" are pregnant. Ina May and her husband Stephen Gaskin were founders of the Farm, in south central Tennessee, which Stephen describes as "the longest-running, largest intentional community in the U.S."
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I first heard of the Farm when I was in college, around 1975. The Caravan, which preceded the farm, was something of a hippie legend; we probably read about it in Rolling Stone or similar. Anyway for those of us who were too young to have been there but old enough to wish we had, the Farm was the model of the ideal commune. A place with vision and energy where new ageism was matched and bettered by hard work and real learning; the giant carrots were not grown by pixies. I don't think it is chance that some farm alumni were Internet pioneers and proto bloggers (Gary Rhine' Rhino's Blog, Cliff Figalo's current interest here and on the WELL), or that they regularly podcast the Third Planet Report these days.
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