Picking Up the Torch
By Chris Roth Issue #185’s “Seizing the Torch” (pages 38-42) described Maple Creek’s near-collapse from an ill-advised torch-seizure, and promised a future article about the community’s recovery. Space constraints do not allow that story to be told in its entirety...
We Left Our Community but Our Community Never Left Us
By Daniel A. Brown Thirty years after the demise of the Renaissance Community (see Communities #184, Fall 2019: “Whatever Happened to the Renaissance Community?”), its hundreds of former members are still trying to figure out what happened. There is no unified...
Lessons on the Road to Community Stability
By Kara Huntermoon We treated each new person as if they would be the answer to our problems. Our founder, Reba, begged the renters at every meeting to help figure out how to keep the land and community going. “I can’t do this!” she moaned. “It has got to be...
Communities #186: Picking Up the Pieces: New Beginnings
Communities #186 Spring 2020 Note: You can order a copy of this issue here. Following up on our Passing the Torch theme, our new issue highlights cases where intentional communities experience not so much generational shift as total or near-total collapse or...On Community: A Graduated Series of Consequences and the “Community Eye”
Just knowing the community has this process in place deters people from breaking agreements. People don’t want to get a knock at the door by one fellow community member, much less three or four.