Communal Living Making Comeback across Tennessee
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://tinyurl.com/2d9jeh
Communal living making comeback across Tennessee
Katie Allison Granju, Producer
Last Updated: 7/3/2007 9:44:59 AM
By BONNA JOHNSON
Staff Writer -- THE TENNESSEAN
When Linda Hoyle needs a new pair of shoes or even a $2 toothbrush, she
doesn't make a trip to the nearest store. Instead, she jots it down on a
piece of paper and tacks it to the bulletin board at the community
dining hall.
Hoyle has her role -- head cook for a 35-member religious community
nestled in a valley near McMinnville, Tenn. Someone else does the
shopping for members of the People of the Living God.
This religious group is one of at least 15 intentional communities in
Tennessee, people who purposely band together to advance a shared
vision. It's a lifestyle that has increased dramatically over the past
two decades; in Tennessee alone, at least a dozen more are in formation.
Sharing land and sometimes housing, community members balance their
needs with those of the larger group, pitching in to cover group
expenses and toiling to keep the community running. Members say this
style of living promotes deeper connections and sharing of interests
that can't be found in society at large.
"When you live with people consciously, you build deeper levels of
friendship," said Douglas Stevenson, a member of one of the country's
most famous intentional communities, The Farm, in Summertown, Tenn. It
started out in 1971 as a nonviolence commune.
"Being part of a community gives you tremendous leverage to live your
ideals and put them into practice," Stevenson said.
The agrarian People of the Living God are communal in nature. Most
resources are shared and there is little or no personal property. They
all work in the community, with some members tending the 101-head dairy
operation and others cultivating hundreds of acres of crops -- ventures
to support their private academy and residential compound. Most of the
women work in an industrial-sized kitchen, where meals are shared three
times a day.
Other communities are less intertwined and members work outside the
community and have independent finances, such as Jump Off Community Land
Trust in Sewanee. Residents at this eco-village get together for potluck
brunches just once a month but are there to help each other with big
jobs on the home front, like plastering straw-bale walls or installing
environmentally friendly water tanks.
"One common thread we share out here is that we're all interested in
sustainable kind of architecture," said Sanford McGee, a founding
member. "We don't use any toxins on the land."
The Parchcorn Hollow community in Woodbury is among the dozen or so in
formation. "We're interviewing other people," said Neal Appelbaum,
founder, who hopes to create a neighborhood of small, sustainable homes
where people can "age in place."
He and his partner plan to use lots of solar panels, run a large
community kitchen and limit home sizes to 800 square feet, he said.
Number has increased
Across the nation, new communities are on the increase, particularly
those focused on ecological living. In the past 20 years, the number of
intentional communities has risen nearly tenfold nationwide, according
to registrations with the Fellowship of Intentional Communities. In
1985, there were some 65 communities; by 2005, that number was more than
600.
That could be just a third of the actual number of communities out
there, with many preferring privacy and unwilling to be listed on
national Web sites, said Harvey Baker, 61, who lives at the Dunmire
Hollow Community, which promotes rural living in Wayne County and who is
a nationally active community member.
Dependence on cars and computers can be socially isolating, Baker said.
People may be networking online but not building personal connections
that are fulfilling, he said.
Living "in community" means people are around to help each other and
share ideas, said David Carroll, who is building a straw-bale home from
where he'll commute to his Atlanta job as director of the Carter Center
Democracy Program.
"People watch out for each other here," said Julia Stubblebine, a
39-year-old who has lived at Jump Off Community Land Trust in Sewanee
since 1992. "It's what small towns used to be like."
She started off in a one-room house without running water when she first
moved there. She's slowly added rooms and a third floor to hold a large
water tank.
Most homes are within walking distance of one another.
At a community center, residents share a washing machine and dryer,
where you can post a "Do Not Dry" sign if you leave your delicates
behind and a neighbor comes in to do his wash. Most of the houses don't
have the water supply or energy capacity for washers and dryers,
Stubblebine said.
The 15 residents have sustained each other through the tribulations of
two divorces and the joy of one birth, the recent arrival of
Stubblebine's daughter, Maya Indigo Simone Mauzy.
At the same time, they have their own homes, yards and finances, making
their enclave not much different from a neighborhood association.
"We're involved with each other as much as we want to be," said McGee, a
former biology teacher.
Members are close
In contrast, members of the People of the Living God depend on each
other for everything from the clothes on their backs to the education of
their children, making them more of a throwback to the communes of old,
though you won't find tie-dye, long-maned men or rock 'n' roll there.
"I have everything I need here and don't have much reason to go out in
the world," said Hoyle, toting a small canvas bag proclaiming "Praise
the Lord," as she walked the few steps from her trailer home to the
long, white dining hall where Friday night service was about to begin.
Their church and school, Cedars of Lebanon Academy, are just a short
drive from the compound, where they live and farm, which is marked by a
sign reading, "Back to the Bible Movement," and by two distant silos in
a lush valley on the Collins Scenic River 15 miles south of McMinnville.
"There is a closeness that exists between people in the community that
does not exist in the world outside," said Brother Randall Walton, 85,
the community leader who preaches each Saturday -- their day of worship
-- to about 65 congregants in a vinyl-sided church that can seat up to 400.
"The early church held everything in common and nobody called anything
his own," Walton said. The community started in 1933 with 125 members in
California and wound up in New Orleans. They abandoned the Big Easy in
1982 because of its moral and ethical decline, Walton said.
These types of communities -- communes where resources are shared and
there is little or no personal property -- are in the minority today,
making up just 15% of the communities registered with the Fellowship of
Intentional Communities, spokesman Tony Sirna said.
Some are self-supporting
The self-supporting members of People of the Living God farm 400 acres
of corn, 250 acres of soybeans and 150 acres of hay.
Earnings provide housing, cars and just about everything else for residents.
They call themselves Sabbatarians, resting from sundown on Friday to
sundown Saturday, their day of worship. There's no broadcast TV, but
movies are available through their library. Titles available include My
Fair Lady and Gone with the Wind.
Their isolated life may not be appealing to all, and some have left --
including Arvel Delano Pugh's adult son, when he married a local girl.
"I didn't necessarily like his decision," Pugh said, but members don't
stop people from leaving."
At the same time, a few new members are seeking their daily bread.
"We don't have to worry about bills or designer jeans here," said John
Munoz, 53, who joined earlier this year after hearing about the group
from a fellow construction worker.
Munoz is being apprenticed to take over the dairy herd from Pugh, who
oversees the Brown Swiss and Holsteins, which are milked twice a day.
Proceeds support the school, where community members teach. The school's
55-student population includes mostly those outside the community, who
attend free of charge. Only two students are community members.
Townspeople admire the community's self-sufficiency. "They keep to
themselves," said Mickey Ware, who was idling an afternoon away with
buddies at Wendells Market a few miles down the road.
"We figure they don't like the way the rest of us live," he said. "But
not too many people speak bad of them."
Urban groups exist
A majority of present-day communities are rural in nature, like Jump Off
and People of the Living God, but almost a third are in cities,
including Nashville Greenlands.
In this north Nashville community, 10 residents co-house in three homes
-- as many as four adults sharing one 1,380-square-foot home with a
single bathroom.
They spent just $90,500 to purchase all three houses -- the cheapest was
$17,500 -- and rehabbed them themselves.
They bike and walk where they can and otherwise share a well-worn Camry
to carry them farther than a bike will take them.
"A great advantage of living in community is that it allows us to do
with our lives what we think is important," founder Karl Meyer, 70, said.
This frugal style of living means they can spend less time working and
more time advocating for peace and justice issues, like opposing the war
and working for a cleaner environment, Meyer said.
In the inner-city neighborhood where they live, organic gardens flourish
in theiryards, providing 80 percent of their food in the summer,
including some 45 quarts of blackberries, 300 stalks of asparagus, 300
pounds of pears, 120 figs, 500 onions, 70 butternut squash, plus grapes,
beets, carrots and a selection of salad greens.
Members are required to work 20 hours a month for the community but
otherwise live independent lives.
They include some of Nashville's most progressive citizens: the staff
director of Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing, a group that
opposes the death penalty; the chairman of the Tennessee Alliance for
Progress, which advocates for the poor, those without health care and
the environment; and other activists, including those who oppose
mosquito spraying by the city.
Co-housing presents many of the same challenges as sharing an apartment
or college dorm room, said Pam Beziat, a community activist and Quaker,
especially in a houseful of radicals so preoccupied with changing the
world that they forget to wash their dishes.
"We have a sign above the kitchen sink that says, 'Everyone wants a
revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes,'" Beziat said.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra