Portable Shrines

While bopping around arthur magazine an ad caught my eye asking the viewer if they “wanna start a commune?”. Being the ever avid commune/cult junkie I could not resist the click.



It seems like an interesting idea that takes the traditional communal living model (or intentional community, check out this excellent resource Intentional Communities) and expands it outward. They are creating, and asking others to create, communes out of cul-de-sacs, apartments and such by joining together with your neighbors to share, barter and commune. It is a concept worth pondering to bring people together locally in a culture growing ever geographically separated while communicating and creating virtual communities through technology. There are even some shirts and bags sporting the logo if that is your thing. This venture is sponsored by ecoshack an experimental design lab and studio based out of Joshua Tree and LA that “designs and builds small-scale, modular projects that invent new ways to live lightly on the earth.”

The hippie communal concept will always be far more romantic, and there are still a few original communities out there. Some interesting decades old communes still subsisting:

• The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee has gone through changes since the early 1970′s but is still around.
• In the Ozarks the East Wind Community has been active since 1973.
• The Zendik Farm has been moving about since 1969.
• In the Northwest the Love Israel Family, no longer a traditional commune, is now more along the lines of ecoshack’s modern communal idea.

Also, I recently stumbled across a favorite film its entirety on youtube. Rebecca Miller’s “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”. The setting is a disbanded commune in 1986 and focuses on the relationship betwen Jack and his daughter Rose who are the two last residents. Highly recommended on so many levels beyond the setting….