The Sentinel
Local News
August 13, 2006
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
A map of Mendocino County rested on an easel in the meeting hall, and dozens of people, young women with thick-rimmed glasses and soon-to-be retirees with lumberjack beards, circled round.
There were no glitzy Power Point? presentations, no assurances of high-tech riches, just the promise of a new social experiment that plans no less than to heal the planet, or at least some corner of it.
The experiment, or the group behind it, known formally as the Foundation of Sustainable Living, is surveying real estate in the far reaches of Northern California in hope of finding a suitable piece of earth to homestead — a place with spring water, raw timber for building and flat land to garden.
Over the last three months, through word-of-mouth and some advertising, the group has been drawing crowds of about 50 people to public meetings the Live Oak Grange.
Local labor leader Bonnie Morr and her 29-year-old son, attending their first meeting, were "impressed" as well as eager for the regulatory hurdles to be ironed out.
Hardly a free-love refuge for flower children, the foundation is aiming to create a well-ordered, financially solvent cooperative where pragmatics, not psychedelics, rule the day.
The group has officially established itself as a nonprofit organization, employs three people part-time and has lined up some sympathetic businessmen to bankroll a down payment on land ranging in size anywhere from 64 acres to 4,000, and costing as much as $9 million.
Ultimately, they aspire to create a network of rural villages throughout the state, each supporting organic farms, classes for the public and strong, self-governed communities in which participants pool resources and share basic aspects of daily life.
"A lot of us driving this now are children of the '60s now in their 60s," said Hina Pendle, an Aptos resident who helped establish the organization and leads workshops on personal empowerment. "Thirty years ago, we had a vision of something different and it's becoming time to manifest that."
Some are going back to the land to escape corporate culture. Some say the time is ripe for a less atomized and wasteful existence. Many are motivated by a sense that living closer to nature is the only way to survive "when every part of society is on shaky ground," as Pendle puts it.
The on-again, off-again passion for counterculture living is a thread that runs through American living, starting with the Puritans, who were chasing the dream of utopia. In an interview with group leaders, they referenced other examples like the westward Mormon movement in the 1800s, and the Shakers who followed ideals of religious inquiry or self-sufficiency.
Sociologists and historians who have studied the various incarnations of "intentional communities" say the modern ecovillage movement, having established itself on five continents and centered in Europe, isn't merely a phenomenon of aging boomers looking to settle down.
"To my mind, people who join ecovillages recognize that existing systems aren't ecologically sustainable and that they can't create viable alternatives by themselves, hence the need for communities," said Karen Litfin, a politics professor at University of Washington. The local group, like most ecovillage members, believes that the world is headed towards a post-petroleum, low-energy future and they see the group as an model for this new way of living, Litfin said.
Co-founder Parker Watwood was at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1960s, a student of visionary British gardener Alan Chadwick. In the '70s, Watwood and his friends ran a feed store at 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive where they taught ways to live lightly on the land. Similar to life on many hippie communities of the time, they were high on idealism with little sense of self-discipline or direction.
"It was free love and smoking lots of pot," Watwood said. "This time around, the wheels are falling off in society. Our group is a knowledge lifeboat, a place that will teach the skill sets necessary for when disease, storms or marshal law comes along."
Not all people at the meetings are planning to uproot their families and move to the group's plot, at least not right away. Many will remain at home in Santa Cruz, Salinas or San Jose, opting instead to keep their day jobs or work on the garden at the grange until the time is right. But Watwood says anyone can visit the community — "a family vacation alternative to Disneyland."
An eager first wave of settlers will include a house painter, bike repair shop owner, natural medicine practitioner, activists and professional teachers with graduate degrees.
Watwood has already identified several properties and told members that once property is bought, people could move in three to five years. Until then, it would be mapped and the community would be modeled after the principles of permaculture, a holistic approach to design that encompasses everything from organic farming to energy use and architecture.
"We've gotta spend at least a year just to learn the microclimates of the place," Watwood told the group. "You can't just plop a mobile home down and call it home."
Government restrictions on everything from composting toilets to limits on housing density in rural areas are making it tricky to find a good spot, and some members are contemplating whether they need to keep the group from expanding.
It's been tough to see their vision bump up against land-use laws, said Watwood, recently returned from a potential site on the Mendocino coast.
"We've got to battle the current bureaucratic infrastructure. ... This was being viewed as urban sprawl," he said.
Contact Roger Sideman at rsideman@santacruzsentinel.com.
If you go
WHAT: Foundation Of Sustainable Living (FOSL), an intentional community and environmental education center currently in the works.
WHEN: Meeting is 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 24. The group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month.
WHERE: Live Oak Grange, 1900 17th Ave.
DETAILS: Contact Parker Watwood at 831-214-8207 or visit www.foundationofsustainableliving.org.
Local News
August 13, 2006
New nonprofit aims to go back to the land
By ROGER SIDEMANSENTINEL STAFF WRITER
A map of Mendocino County rested on an easel in the meeting hall, and dozens of people, young women with thick-rimmed glasses and soon-to-be retirees with lumberjack beards, circled round.
There were no glitzy Power Point? presentations, no assurances of high-tech riches, just the promise of a new social experiment that plans no less than to heal the planet, or at least some corner of it.
The experiment, or the group behind it, known formally as the Foundation of Sustainable Living, is surveying real estate in the far reaches of Northern California in hope of finding a suitable piece of earth to homestead — a place with spring water, raw timber for building and flat land to garden.
Over the last three months, through word-of-mouth and some advertising, the group has been drawing crowds of about 50 people to public meetings the Live Oak Grange.
Local labor leader Bonnie Morr and her 29-year-old son, attending their first meeting, were "impressed" as well as eager for the regulatory hurdles to be ironed out.
Hardly a free-love refuge for flower children, the foundation is aiming to create a well-ordered, financially solvent cooperative where pragmatics, not psychedelics, rule the day.
The group has officially established itself as a nonprofit organization, employs three people part-time and has lined up some sympathetic businessmen to bankroll a down payment on land ranging in size anywhere from 64 acres to 4,000, and costing as much as $9 million.
Ultimately, they aspire to create a network of rural villages throughout the state, each supporting organic farms, classes for the public and strong, self-governed communities in which participants pool resources and share basic aspects of daily life.
"A lot of us driving this now are children of the '60s now in their 60s," said Hina Pendle, an Aptos resident who helped establish the organization and leads workshops on personal empowerment. "Thirty years ago, we had a vision of something different and it's becoming time to manifest that."
Some are going back to the land to escape corporate culture. Some say the time is ripe for a less atomized and wasteful existence. Many are motivated by a sense that living closer to nature is the only way to survive "when every part of society is on shaky ground," as Pendle puts it.
The on-again, off-again passion for counterculture living is a thread that runs through American living, starting with the Puritans, who were chasing the dream of utopia. In an interview with group leaders, they referenced other examples like the westward Mormon movement in the 1800s, and the Shakers who followed ideals of religious inquiry or self-sufficiency.
Sociologists and historians who have studied the various incarnations of "intentional communities" say the modern ecovillage movement, having established itself on five continents and centered in Europe, isn't merely a phenomenon of aging boomers looking to settle down.
"To my mind, people who join ecovillages recognize that existing systems aren't ecologically sustainable and that they can't create viable alternatives by themselves, hence the need for communities," said Karen Litfin, a politics professor at University of Washington. The local group, like most ecovillage members, believes that the world is headed towards a post-petroleum, low-energy future and they see the group as an model for this new way of living, Litfin said.
Co-founder Parker Watwood was at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1960s, a student of visionary British gardener Alan Chadwick. In the '70s, Watwood and his friends ran a feed store at 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive where they taught ways to live lightly on the land. Similar to life on many hippie communities of the time, they were high on idealism with little sense of self-discipline or direction.
"It was free love and smoking lots of pot," Watwood said. "This time around, the wheels are falling off in society. Our group is a knowledge lifeboat, a place that will teach the skill sets necessary for when disease, storms or marshal law comes along."
Not all people at the meetings are planning to uproot their families and move to the group's plot, at least not right away. Many will remain at home in Santa Cruz, Salinas or San Jose, opting instead to keep their day jobs or work on the garden at the grange until the time is right. But Watwood says anyone can visit the community — "a family vacation alternative to Disneyland."
An eager first wave of settlers will include a house painter, bike repair shop owner, natural medicine practitioner, activists and professional teachers with graduate degrees.
Watwood has already identified several properties and told members that once property is bought, people could move in three to five years. Until then, it would be mapped and the community would be modeled after the principles of permaculture, a holistic approach to design that encompasses everything from organic farming to energy use and architecture.
"We've gotta spend at least a year just to learn the microclimates of the place," Watwood told the group. "You can't just plop a mobile home down and call it home."
Government restrictions on everything from composting toilets to limits on housing density in rural areas are making it tricky to find a good spot, and some members are contemplating whether they need to keep the group from expanding.
It's been tough to see their vision bump up against land-use laws, said Watwood, recently returned from a potential site on the Mendocino coast.
"We've got to battle the current bureaucratic infrastructure. ... This was being viewed as urban sprawl," he said.
Contact Roger Sideman at rsideman@santacruzsentinel.com.
If you go
WHAT: Foundation Of Sustainable Living (FOSL), an intentional community and environmental education center currently in the works.
WHEN: Meeting is 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 24. The group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month.
WHERE: Live Oak Grange, 1900 17th Ave.
DETAILS: Contact Parker Watwood at 831-214-8207 or visit www.foundationofsustainableliving.org.