SEE YOUR FAVORITE SEVEN DAYS JOURNALISTS WEEKDAYS ON THE :30 AT 5:30 ON WCAX-TV! LH PAU EINTZ
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Pickup frisbee anyone?
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I’ve got cones!
It Takes a Village « p.33
When and where?
9/18/12 1:22 PM
Blue Moon Cooperative, South Strafford
Resident Jim Schley says Blue Moon got its name in part from the audacity of its residents. Only “once in a blue moon” would they succeed at the undertaking they envisioned. “We were very enamored of the idea of living off the grid,” Schley says, “and we thought that would be easier to do together [than alone].” Schley and a group of 12 friends dreamed up Blue Moon when they were in their twenties. Some had met in college; others came into the fold after working together in the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance. Together, they fostered a fairly “amorphous idea,” as Schley remembers it: They wanted to find a piece of land, purchase it and share ownership. Once building got under way, the group would try ideas that were “pretty fringy” nearly 30 years ago but seem mainstream today, such as putting up photovoltaic cells and residential-scale wind turbines. Fortunately, Schley says in retrospect, those plans took a long time to pan out; the group spent three years looking for land, and hashed out the structure of the collective in the meantime. “In our idealism, we could underestimate the need for some structures that over time would become even more important,” Schley says. The group recruited Randolph lawyer Laddie Lushin, who advised members to incorporate as
Ten Stones Community, West Charlotte
Ten Stones began as architect Ted Montgomery’s 1972 senior thesis, morphed into a collective daydream of a new housing development, and ended up a cozy and compact neighborhood, tucked among the rolling hills of West Charlotte. On a crisp morning in mid-September, Rebecca Foster is feeding the 50 or so
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THE LUXURY S60 “WE’RE DOING OUR SHARE TO KEEP VERMONT’S ROADS BEAUTIFUL”
that just happens to “click.” Bush thinks the difference has something to do with self-reliance; because everyone owns the communal property, everyone shares in the responsibility of maintaining it. “There’s not a building super who’s going to come in and solve Problem X or Problem Y,” Bush says.
a cooperative and helped them draft detailed bylaws and paperwork that are still used today by cooperatives around the country. “We have good fences,” says Schley, invoking the Robert Frost line “Good fences make good neighbors.” “Laddie helped us build them. They don’t divide us, but they do demarcate our responsibilities to each other and ourselves.” Remarkably, the same group has remained intact for 26 years. Twice it has expanded to welcome a new member to the cooperative — a decision that, just like purchasing a new truck or cutting down a tree, had to be reached by consensus. Schley, who says he knows of intentional communities where tensions flared and residents no longer speak to one another, credits Blue Moon’s success to its clear structure and balance of privacy and communal living. This summer, the eldest of the children who grew up at Blue Moon got married on the property — just the latest example, Schley says, of how the group pulls together for celebrations and sorrows. “We were pretty young, and very idealistic,” he says, looking back at Blue Moon’s evolution. “There’s a big element of luck, that nobody has just changed completely their values.” But the gamble paid off, and more than two decades later, the idealistic dreamers behind Blue Moon are older, wiser — and every bit as committed to their intentional community.
Ten Stones Community hens
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