From the Farm

Groundskeeper Willie: Alright, what's so fine and great about your fancy pants leader?

Homer: The Leader knows all and sees all!

Groundskeeper Willie: Ooh...well, that's impressive!

Homer: And he's going to take us to a wonderful new planet!

Groundskeeper Willie: Oh! This Leader, he sounds like a grand fella!

Marge: Willie, I'm not sure we're making any headway here.

Groundskeeper Willie: Would you shut up, woman! He's talking about my leader!

-"The Joy of Sect"

Hey, we have limited computer access at twin oaks, but i thought i'd share a bit from the 

simpsons episode that best describes our lives here for the last week. but there really aren't 

any simpsons episodes that deal with egalitarian, income-sharing communities. so i 

figured a cult is the next closest thing.

it's gone well here. basically everyone in the community works 6 hours a day to support one of

the businesses (hammocks, seeds, tofu) or each other/the land (gardening, building, cooking,

cleaning). There are all types of folks here, but all share a sense that this lifestyle is better

than the "mainstream." The area is a large farm with gardens, cows, chickens, a dining and

meeting building, different living quarters (closest to dorms, really), and buildings involved with

business and upkeep. It's low-key and members really respect each other's individual quarks 

and passions. What's really struck me here is how far removed i've been from a strong

community...i believe Maggie feels the same way. It's tricky to describe, but essentially it's (the

community movement) a very reasonable answer to many of the questions Maggie and I

asked ourselves when we were planning the trip. It's people coming together with less to seek

more simplicity and unity with each other.

Not such a bad thing.

And yes, there is lots of tie-dye and sandals.

AdventureQuest begins (for Maggie) and testing picture uploads

Maggie finished her job at the restaurant last week. I don't think she is allowed to work for a corporate entity again since she tattooed some gibberish about not working for the "man" on her foot. Something about right livelihood from some 8 fold path. It doesn't sound like something sarah palin would support so I'm not really interested.

I still have a week at summer camp while she lives it up.

Our first AdventureQuest trip was this weekend. We went to Cleveland for

the Jonesss' wedding and got to see good friends from our Cleveland and Sewanee

days we haven't seen in years. We stayed with Sparky in Cincinnati. He showed us the crazy medical school where he is a student. It's based on "conquering your fears." There are lots of angles, glass, heights, and walls that come out at you. He made us awesome pizza.

We stayed with Hillary and Andy in Cleveland and got to hang out with Annika- who is amazing... really cute and a good dancer... plus she's going to know about 30 languages by the time she is 4. We had lunch at the Case farm with them and the Casucci crew. Pretty amazing how big Frankie is now and meeting his sister was excellent. It was a nice reminder that though our time living in Cleveland was very frustrating in some ways we were really fortunate to have such wonderful people around us (this includes you folks in Chicago, California, Africa, and Egypt).

Oh yeah, and Ellen and Jason got married. It was a great wedding, to absolutely no one's surprise. Especially neat for us to see because way back in the day when ellen/jason and david/maggie weren't coupletastic we all started dating within the same week of each other. All four of us pretty much lived in the same suite senior year at Sewanee- so I feel like we were all very present in the early developmental stages of the respective relationships.

And Ellen had the band learn the twin peaks theme as a surprise to jason. How neat is that?

Oh, The Places You'll Go

Here are webpages for a few of the places we are going:

Costa Rica:

Barking Horse Farm - a family run farm about two hours north of the capital. we'll be taking care of animals, working on the farm, and gardening.

We're still figuring out one more place to go. The plan is to stay for most of the dry season- probably January to May 2010.

Virginia:

Twin Oaks - an intentional community based (less so now) on bf skinner's walden II. we're participating in the three week visitor program.

Vermont:

Teleion Holon Farm - family run farm outside of manchester vermont. WWOOFing for 5 weeks.

Virginia and North Carolina:

Bicycle Tour - I'm (David) riding from the start of Skyline Drive to the end of the Blueridge Parkway outside of Asheville in September.

We're staring Adventure Quest in about 3 weeks.

David doesn't care about typos and thinks part of the point of a blog is to not care about things like that. I disagree and I think my mother does too. So if you think something has changed in a previous post, it's probably because I have gone back and done some editing. I'll put up a real post from me sometime soon.

Maggie

Costa Rica is on the list

Maggie and I have decided to spend about 4 four months in Costa Rica from January to April 2010.  The country has a great variety of WWOOF and commune options.  I've emailed hosts at sites that interest us, but the majority of these spots don't have electricity so it might be awhile before we know for sure how things might shape up.   

Going back on malaria meds freaks me out.  When I was in Ecuador during my junior year of college the malaria medicine gave me horrible dreams about dismembering my family.  Apparently this is a documented and not all that uncommon side effect... but no one seems to have any ideas why this happens.  That makes me uncomfortable.      

Starting the blog

Maggie and I, after being prompted by friends and family, decided to keep an online journal of why we are going to wander about and what, if anything, we discover. For an overview of why we are doing this see our blog profile. The short of it is... we don't want to live the way we have been living and want to see what other options are out there. This probably won't be a huge surprise to folks who know us well. Suffice to say we've gone a bit off the deep end since college.

We are in the planning stages now, but we know for sure that we are leaving Atlanta on August 8th. We have rough plans until the end of 2009 when we hope to leave the country.

August - September 2009: Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia (www.twinoaks.org). We will be participating in the three week visitor's program plus the communities gathering at the beginning of September.

September 2009: Harrisonburg, hiking on the Appalachian Trail, David riding from the start of Skyline Drive to the end of the Blue Ridge parkway by bicycle, Asheville, Atlanta, more spots to be planned.

October - November 2009: WWOOFing in Vermont.

November 2009: Work exchange in a Buddhist meditation communities in NY and GA, visiting friends and family in NY/DC/VA, more stops to be planned.

December 2009: Friends and family, hiking and camping, more stops to be planned.

We want to visit as many people as possible- please email if we can stay with you at some point.

David