Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

More bad news today for our friends in the UK and London in particular. Best wishes go out to them. Of course the same for those in Iraq who have to deal with this every day at a higher intensity.

I was reading Joe Haldeman’s SFF.NET group this morning and he mentioned the following book. Sounds like something taking a closer look at. I’m kind of a utopian community junkie and so this got my interest. I look forward to what my good friend from Colombia has to say about it. I’m sure she knows all about it.

“Colombia’s Gaviotas is a community only dreamers could visualize, and only outcasts could build. Surrounded by rebel-infested llanos (savannas) and vast coca plantations, the presence of its peaceful rhythms and homegrown technologies is as hopeful as it is unlikely.

A super- efficient pump fills water cisterns every time children play on the teeter totter. Innovative lunar collectors have been designed for refrigeration. Ostracism, not jail, punishes criminal behavior, but is rarely needed in this society of no police and no politicians.”

- Spike Magazine review of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman

The James Weinstein book, The Long Detour, continues to inform and entertain. I can only get through a couple of pages a day but what I do read has been great food for thought. Just finished up a section on utopia socialist experiments from the earliest days of our country. Robert Owen’s New Harmony in Indiana (which was bought from a Rappite community who decided to move back to Pennsylvania after finding too much hostility for their religious community from neighbors and too much malaria from the Ohio River) and the origins of the Amana Colonies in Iowa were particularly interesting. Owen’s earlier successful and humanitarian efforts at New Lanark, Scotland are also described.

Also on the new things list, I picked up a copy of Plenty magazine, a slick issue with a cute girlish model holding up a globe. The magazine is kind of E magazine for consumerist yuppies. Their tag line is “It’s Easy Being Green”. Color me skeptical on that point. They had several excellent albeit usually too brief articles in this issue. Things like Can Republicans Go Green? and Small Houses for Big People: The End of McMansions?

Great stuff on Radical Radio today. Presently listing to a recording of Nixon era protest poetry. Excellent stuff.

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

More bad news today for our friends in the UK and London in particular. Best wishes go out to them. Of course the same for those in Iraq who have to deal with this every day at a higher intensity.

I was reading Joe Haldeman’s SFF.NET group this morning and he mentioned the following book. Sounds like something taking a closer look at. I’m kind of a utopian community junkie and so this got my interest. I look forward to what my good friend from Colombia has to say about it. I’m sure she knows all about it.

“Colombia’s Gaviotas is a community only dreamers could visualize, and only outcasts could build. Surrounded by rebel-infested llanos (savannas) and vast coca plantations, the presence of its peaceful rhythms and homegrown technologies is as hopeful as it is unlikely.

A super- efficient pump fills water cisterns every time children play on the teeter totter. Innovative lunar collectors have been designed for refrigeration. Ostracism, not jail, punishes criminal behavior, but is rarely needed in this society of no police and no politicians.”

- Spike Magazine review of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman

The James Weinstein book, The Long Detour, continues to inform and entertain. I can only get through a couple of pages a day but what I do read has been great food for thought. Just finished up a section on utopia socialist experiments from the earliest days of our country. Robert Owen’s New Harmony in Indiana (which was bought from a Rappite community who decided to move back to Pennsylvania after finding too much hostility for their religious community from neighbors and too much malaria from the Ohio River) and the origins of the Amana Colonies in Iowa were particularly interesting. Owen’s earlier successful and humanitarian efforts at New Lanark, Scotland are also described.

Also on the new things list, I picked up a copy of Plenty magazine, a slick issue with a cute girlish model holding up a globe. The magazine is kind of E magazine for consumerist yuppies. Their tag line is “It’s Easy Being Green”. Color me skeptical on that point. They had several excellent albeit usually too brief articles in this issue. Things like Can Republicans Go Green? and Small Houses for Big People: The End of McMansions?

Great stuff on Radical Radio today. Presently listing to a recording of Nixon era protest poetry. Excellent stuff.