INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES

	December 21, 2000
	Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Star reflects on intentional communities.

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Star, on intentional communities. For the record, it was produced this fall, before snow arrived in the Midwest. JIM FISHER: It's squeezing time in the Midwest -- that autumnal lull, when sorghum is pressed, its juices heated, and the end result becomes a molasses-like sweetener, for cooking, breads, and cakes -- and of course, slathering on biscuits and grits. The squeezing in tiny Sand Hill, in northeastern Missouri, is vital. Residents here count on sorghum sales to outsiders for a third of the $60,000 annually it costs them to run their intentional community. Intentional community? Go back 30, 35 years ago, and say "hippie commune." Remember, the flowing hair and the beads, the sexual license and rock and roll, mind-altering substances far beyond beer? Visionary artists and political activists, bohemians and beats, all dropping out, tuning in, and looking for some sort of immediate societal perfection -- remember the images of young people returning to the land, and of course, the resulting commune, absolute antithesis of suburbia's manicured lawns. Who now, recalling the tumult of the '60s, even we can furtively envy the repudiation of that inner eye conformity of the '50s, would have imagined hippies in sorghum squeezing. It's hard, laborious work, far removed from arguing the fate of the world, or seeking some mystical inner truth. Sand Hill is more than sorghum. See this trailer? Inside is a miniature Amazon.com. A computer records orders off the Internet, and processes credit cards. What's provided is information on the intentional community movement, enough stuff for a whole directory. Communities Directory is a slick, 456-page tome that is sort of a cross between the "whole earth catalog" and the "official airline guide." It leads one into an American subculture that seemingly disappeared off the radar screen decades ago. How many such communities? 700 that care to be listed, another 2,200 who want anonymity. Numbers? Maybe 12,000, 15,000 people around the country, living in places that range from urban homes to farms with several hundred acres, most on the coast; 20 such places here in Missouri; one that now ships a million pounds of nut butter a year. Variety? There's an intentional community in West Virginia devoted to clowning -- clowning. Nine such communities around the country advocate anarchy. Others focus on group marriage, self sufficiency, visions, Zen, esoteric Christianity, war tax resistance, and organic gardening. Name a gig, and there's likely an intentional community advocating it. Laird Schaub is secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, which is publisher of the guide. He's been here at Sand Hill almost 25 years. LAIRD SCHAUB: We've got a database that lists up to 3,000 groups all over the world, and of those, about a quarter of them want to let other people know what they're doing, and make themselves available for people to come and visit, and find out what it's about. We're getting people of all ages -- definitely. People over 50 are considering moving to community for the first time. In some cases, these are people who were first excited about community living in the last boom, which happened in the '60s and '70s, but weren't in a position in their life to try it then, and their lives are so stressed and scattered that there isn't that sense of connection. We're human... as humans, we're social animals. We want connection and belonging with each other, and that's what community's about. JIM FISHER: Can that connection be re-attached? Who can say? There are contented faces here, as the frothy green juice is processed. But immediate societal perfection, utopia, the Zion sought 200 miles west of here, by early day Mormons? Probably not -- at least in the fullness of time, by which men and women measure their lives. Age replaces youth, unbounded hopes are swapped grudgingly for common sense. In fervored passion turns more and more to a refection about the irony of existence. Yet for most, accompanying those changes comes an appreciation as old as the race -- that of the changing seasons -- time now, when stalks give up their liquids, and sustenance is taken from the land: Sorghum squeezing time. I'm Jim Fisher.

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