Dancing Rabbit was the furthest afield of all of the intentional
communities that I wanted to visit, so we headed here first. When I
originally sent them an e-mail asking if I could visit, I immediately got
one in response from one of their own members asking about coming to visit
Samar. So this week we're conducting a community exchange program... I
wonder how Liat is experiencing Samar right now?
Well, she certainly paved the way for me here at DR. In our honour, they
made Ethiopian food for dinner -- my favourite! It was quite a trip to
scoop up spicy stews with injera in the middle of Mennonite country,
Missouri, Midwest! And it's a good thing, because the food options out
here in Fatland, USA are piss-poor and pathetic! Hell, I'm surprised we
haven't seen more food refugees, migrating to escape the horrid culinary
conditions!
And while we're on the topic of circumstances that undermine the
likelihood of sustaining a human population -- it is fucking cold out
here! I imagine that we're more or less on the same latitude line as
Toronto, but I haven't had to spend a winter up in the Tee-Dot for years
now. The small strawbale and cob cabins here are heated with firewood
that must be collected and woodstoves that must be tended to. We've spent
most of the week indoors, with sporadic trips to the woodlot. But on one
sunny day, I couldn't help myself and joined a couple of the DR dudes for
an ice-cold dip in the pond!
On our first full day here, we watched the FIRST EARTH movie, which was
unofficially the very first pre-screening of the film on American soil.
Here I'm preaching to the eco-choir, so it was received very well, and
once people realized what I'm about, they agreed to speak to me on film
about living in community. I'm not sure if this is going to turn into
another full-length feature film, but it doesn't hurt to catch it on
camera. At the least it'll provide for more raw footage to upload to
Youtube.
Because it's part of their stated mission to be a model for
sustainability, there are quite a few film crews that roll through here.
You may have seen an episode of "Super-Size Me" creator Morgan Spurlock's
"30 Days" where a couple of city slickers are forced to rough it at this
rural eco-village. But I feel that because of my own experience in
community, I'll be going much deeper than the mainstream media, asking
questions that count.
I've been lucky in that there's a community member here who's been an
"embedded reporter" and doing a great job of documenting the goings-on at
Dancing Rabbit. Ziggy's been more than generous with his time and
expensive equipment. Check out some of his videos at D.R.T.V.:
www.youtube.com/drecovillage
www.dancingrabbit.org
One of the things that stands out most for me about Dancing Rabbit is that
it aspires to be a "community of communities", so to speak. There are
about 40 rabbits living on the land right now, and they hope to scale that
up to about 500 or 1000 eventually. Instead of having a single
income-sharing group with a large community kitchen, or else having a
loose collection of nuclear families who try to meet and eat together once
a week, they're allowing for pods of all shapes and sizes with any
economic arrangement to plug in, as long as they subscribe to the
ecological credo.
The agreements that all must adhere to are: no privately owned
petroleum-producing vehicles; no connection to the county sewage system;
all electricity must be generated on-site; and consensus decision-making,
and a commitment to resolving conflicts by mediation. Under that
umbrella, almost anything else is possible. There may be very little
infrastructure to begin with, but that means that there are no high buy-in
fees, making it truly accessible to anyone regardless of their financial
situation.
To close out the week, we're being treated to a pre-screening of part two
of recently deceased Geoff Kozeny's Visions of Utopia, a study of the
modern American communities movement. I feel that the film is a great
introduction, but that we need an intermediate-level discussion of the
various issues that come up in community. After the film, we'll do just
that -- have a group discussion about these themes, and then we can roll
that back into a new film for phase 2 communitarians.
