Peaceray

High school precursors to community

While still in high school, I sought alternatives. I read a lot: science fiction, dystopian literature, Tolkein, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jung, Ghandi, the occult, and anything current about hippie culture that I could find. Specific influences in the media of the day that drew me to wanting to live communally were Good Times, Whole Earth Catalog, and Stranger in a Strange Land. However, communes simply did not exist in my son-of-an-FBI-agent, middle-class, red-lined suburban existence outside of Wilmington, DE in the shadow of the wealthy "Chateau Country". Nonetheless, I did avail myself of some alternatives: going to coffeehouses and helping to run a couple, camping at the the Philly Folk Fest and coffeehouse camp-outs, biking to the ill-situated macrobiotic market, going to the local youth drop-in center, attending my high school's draft information club, demonstrating against the war in Vietnam, and becoming vegetarian in 11th grade.

College: broadening and yearning

I credit the University of Delaware with expanding my horizons. It introduced me to and broadened my appreciation of international films and furthered my connections with musicians, having lived with a succession of bassists and drummers. But college was hollow when it came to deep personal relationships with women. I had plenty of social life, but no one who I could share my cultural yearnings or vegetarian values with, even though I had two successive lovers for my first three semesters.

Beyond college studies, I became acquainted with yoga, joined the Newark Natural Foods Co-op, read my first books on Tantra, and started practicing massage.

Newark, Delaware

After college, I connected with the alternative culture in my local college town, Newark (pronounced New-ark). I began leading massage groups. By serendipity, I went from reading about Tai Chi in The Massage Book by Downing/Rush to starting to study with Dee Chao who was teaching across the street from my first group house. Public Friday night vegetarian dinners were a tradition and a gathering opportunity. Many of us talked about establishing intentional communities and living together. I expanded my involvement with the Co-op by joining its board for a year, and had my first years living cooperatively.

First co-operative houses

• '78–'79, suburban Newark: a group of five guys sharing a house. The fellow with his name on the lease and utilities both borrowed others' things and ate their food without asking. Rather than confront him (no transparency there), the other four moved out at year's end.
• Spring '79, Newark: shared an apartment in a house with Siddha Yogis; we had a meditation room in the attic open 24 hours a day
• Summer '79–Winter '81, Landenberg, PA: finally in a real co-operative household sharing common interests. Each of the five adults (four men, one woman) was a member of the Newark Co-op; two were on the board & one was its bookkeeper. The owner resident was an elderly Quaker man who was also a solar architect. He had bought a one room school house with huge SSW-facing windows. He remodeled it wonderfully, added a solar green house along the bottom, an octagonal studio, and a gazebo on which he mounted solar hot water panels. We heated with solar and wood stoves and turned on the electric hot water heater in October. The house was situated on four acres with four goats, a hen house, a large biodynamic garden, and a beehive. We had a large living room that we used for many community gatherings. Although we had explored governance by consensus and contemplated becoming an egalitarian community, the owner ultimately decided that his house and land would be the inheritance for his daughter, then pre-adolescent and living in the household. The community quickly disintegrated.
• Spring '81, suburban Newark: another shared house, four adults and a child. Although harmonious, I cut my time short to go hitchhike to the '81 Rainbow Gathering.

The Rainbow Gathering(s)

In the fall of 1978, I went to my first regional Rainbow Gathering near Sperryville, VA. Here was hugs, nudity, massage, chanting, my first sweat lodge, backwoods camping, and communal vegetarian meals. All of a sudden, I was connected to a network of folks similar to my friends in Newark, DE. This was followed by a Thanksgiving weekend with many folks from that Gathering coming to Newark.

In Spring 1979, some of the focalizers of the first Rainbow Gathering had come east from where they lived in the West, for the ACT-79 Fair (Appropriate Community Technology) on the Washington Mall, a regional gathering held on the previous site, & the May 1979 anti-nuke march in Washington, DC.

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