Sunday, October 26, 2008

BOOK WATCH

SWEET POTATO SUPPERS:

A Yankee Woman Finds Salvation in a Hippie Village

by Patricia Lapidus

Spiritual Hippies? These were the clean long-hairs, the ones who lived on the land, worked hard, and meditated to a joyful Ooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! that rose up through the trees and the golden morning air!”

Peace and Harmony. In this book you will discover how strangers lived together tribally—crowded and without running water or refrigeration—in peace and sanity far above the social norm. You will learn how the government watched and how that watching influenced the survival of the community.

A Gift for You. Here you will find information to help you live better with your own family and with those you may take into your home in an effort to lessen economic burdens.

Birth: You will see spiritual birth based on respect for the holy child and family.

Community: The community called The Farm was an attempt to stitch back together the torn fabric of social living, to make life fair and honest and safe. As for living green, we used to say, “Tread lightly on the earth.” Today we say, “Reduce your carbon footprint. For more green, Click Here!

Brief video about the book: temporarily not available.

Responses to Sweet Potato Suppers:

“I finished Sweet Potato Suppers and passed it on to a friend who passed it on to a friend. We all LOVE it. It's a real piece of history, documenting the Farm and community life in general. I especially appreciate your courage….” M

“I don't know HOW you have remembered so many little details about life on the Farm and all your experiences with everyone….And I find myself in you so often. My experiences and reactions - and I'll bet most of ours - were so similar to those you describe. What a riot! We've come a long way, Baby….Love the drawings too.“ ST

“Then a few more pages and I sat back and said, damn. This woman can write!.... This is not just history, this is poetry. This is ideas on the carrier wave of words. She is expressing thoughts I have expounded in conversation (as recently as yesterday to a reporter from Chicago) but never committed to paper, or seen in print. Amazing stuff, really, the diamond jewel in the lotus. The early days in the mud and cold and tents was the essence of the experience, that which was truly ineffable and utopian. You didn’t just tell it. You told it with style, you told it definitively. You made a mark, you set down the marker.” AB

i love your book!!!!
i'm almost done, & i want it to go on forever......
it's so thoughtful & thought provoking
thank you cc

You obviously did take delight in the simple moments of joy. I think it's so important that everybody gets to tell their stories now, it's what heals. And how wonderful for your children to read the stories. Thank you for writing your book, Patricia. CO

Be of good cheer! The Farm is still here. Furthermore, many of the members of The Farm, both those living on the land and the diaspora, are still committed to alternative birth and health and death, and to freedom, political and personal. They work actively to promote social change. For further information see www.thefarm.org

E-Book coming soon. Watch for Sweet Potato Suppers, eBook, audio book, and soft cover book, to be announced here soon.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

COMMUNITY: RECIPE FOR HARD TIMES

     Here is balm for the worried, excitement for the playful, and hope for all.

     At right, our copy of Hey, Beatnik.  We read it cover to cover, savored the bright pictures of people working together in the fields, and kept it by our bedside like a holy book.  In time we went to live on The Farm.  Many of the friendships we formed there have lasted to this day.  

     I know that your lives are not easy, that you are concerned about the survival of your loves ones.  Long ago I read that one of the most important ingredients for survival in difficult times is good relationships.  A tribal leader in the moving book Rainbow Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas makes this statement:  Give me twenty people and I can get us through the winter.  The survival of that little group depended on the efforts and cooperation of all members.  Trust is about relationships.

     The advice to look to our relationships struck a cord with me.  If I were there with you, having breakfast and talking about the day ahead, I would see your face and posture, hear your voice tones, notice your movements.  You might look cheerful, and we would smile together and share our excitements about the day ahead.  If you looked dispirited I would give you my unhurried attention.  I would invite you to tell me your thoughts and encourage you to have a winning day anyway.  Or you would encourage me and share your knowledge of how to improve life, on purpose, no matter what.
   
     My book Sweet Potato Suppers, due out before Thanksgiving, will help, especially in the relationships upon which your good survival may depend.  Watch for it in the coming weeks, revised and updated since it was first published in 2003: SWEET POTATO SUPPERS: A Yankee Woman Finds Salvation in a Hippie Village.  Ebook, audiobook, and softcover.

     Ways to go forward:  

          1)  First, tell your story.  Write, talk, and publish if you like.  Ask me what I know about writing, sharing, and publishing.  Watch my progress as I learn the ropes.  Your story matters.  

          2) Second, look at community as normal living.  I experienced one that, having changed with the changing years, continues to thrive.  

     Some of us will solve problems of shrinking resources by sharing housing.  We will take in our children or neighbors.  We need to know how to live, possibly crowded, in peace and mutual help.  We need the arts and crafts of survival, of sustainable living, of growing food, and--that magnet that pulls it all together--the art of relating.

     Previous posts.  For a joyful look at stone towers found on the trail, for information about raising healthy and happy children, eBook publishing, learning language, laughter, and more, please scroll down or click the article title on the right.  I invite you to comment.

     Note:  The subtitle to Hey, Beatnik is This is the Book about The Farm.  Stephen Gaskin and The Farm.  (Beatniks were precursors to hippies.  Hippie started as a pejorative but was adopted and given honor by The Farm, a community of spiritual hippies.)

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

Hiking in Heaven



    Some god or goddess, perhaps several, visited one of my favorite trails since I last walked here.  High on West Rock Ridge a gathering of cairns appeared overnight--as if they had scheduled a meeting and were now in session.  Or, perhaps a coven of witches celebrated the fall solstice here.  They had made it into a magical place.

     I spent some time there admiring the forms--the balancing, the beauty, the work of such exhuberant play.  I pictured the slow, grunting frolic of lifting and arranging the stones, the conspiracy of preparing this extravagant surprise for unknown hikers.  The sheer audacity of bidding stone to appear light like dancers.  For these were not broad based cairms meant to withstand the winter winds that would push along the ridge.  They were single stones set verticle, three, five, seven stones together marching skyward.  Why they did not topple I could not say except that the creator had told them to stay.  I was unwilling to touch one with the lightest finger.  


     At first they blended with the surrounding forest.  I saw two, three, six.  The more I looked, the more structures I saw.  I walked quietly, respectfully, peering around me.  There was a rock balanced high on the stump of a lost branch of a tree.  One composition included found objects, a rusty saw and an old bottle.

     There was a feeling of worship to the place.  Something both sweet and powerful had been made, a sacred grove.







                                                                                                                  













Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Book Suggestion

About Symbolia by Sylvia Anderson

 Symbolia is a humorous and inspiring story of a sister and brother from our world who journey to the magical world of Symbolia, where they find that they must follow the Sacred Path to get back Home. Along the way they are captured by the Abbo tribe in the MotherLung Rainforest, encounter the diapered dictators at the Gulf of Simonsez, carry burdenbags for the Zaards, .who live at the top of the pyramid city of Dogmapolis, and interact with stressed-out Morstuffians in the Forest of Berbs, Their Path leads them into Krule City, owned by the Giants of Induss Tree, then on to adventures with the Neggies in the Deep Depression and into Shadow’s Underground Maze to dig for the Gold of Self-Understanding. Then it’s on to GoldenMean to find Grandmother Sophia, who takes them to the New Treeno See, where they help create a new PrahBubble for the world of Symbolia before returning Home, where they can apply their new understandings to life here on Earth. It's a fun adventure story for children of all ages, a spiritual allegory for adults with ears to hear, and a socio-political satire for those with eyes to see.

 

More at:

 

www.symboliabook.com