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Letters

Practical Help

Dear Communities:
We really appreciate your magazine here. It's a refreshing, forward-thinking, almost entrepreneurial publication, in that you show the great range of communities out there, offer practical insights about many wide-ranging aspects of community living, and turn abstract concepts about community into useful how-to advice. This was especially true of your issue on "Sustainable Building & Design" (#95, Summer '97.)  Thank you.
Father Seraphim
Holy Protection Monastery
Geneva, Nebraska

Humor Appreciated

Dear Communities:
I noticed the anecdote in your "Food Fight!" article (Fall '97)  about The Farm and the "gaseous emissions" of our soybeans. Well, if you don't cook 'em well enough, that's what happens! Stephen Gaskin [founder of The Farm and its former spiritual leader]  used to say: "How do you tell the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? The pessimist smells beans and says, `Oh oh, farts!' The optimist smells farts and says, 'Ahh, beans!'"
  I also think that, despite the non-denominational stance in your story, you made the vegan case about as well as I've ever seen it. There are so   many reasons to quit running our grains and beans through animals before eating them. However, at The Farm we always said that nothing dietary was worth getting uptight about, so I thoroughly appreciated your humorous, mind-opening approach to the topic. One of Stephen's stories about the master Suzuki Roshi involved a Zen student who was particularly obnoxious and evangelistic about vegetarianism. So Suzuki Roshi invited the student out to dinner, ordered a big steak, and proceeded to devour it in front of him - the Zen master's way of illustrating the old saying, "What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes in."
Michael Traugot
The Farm
Summertown, Tennessee

Please, No More Fiction

Dear Communities:
I greatly I enjoy Communities  magazine and find it very useful. However, I feel that the fiction story, "Food Fight!," in the Fall '97 issue on food ("Breaking Bread in Community")  while well executed, was not a good idea for the magazine. I personally read Communities   for real-world information on techniques, strategies, and lifestyles in other communities, as well as for more general information of use to intentional communities. As fiction, I don't feel "Food Fight!" was successful because it spent so much time imparting information. As fact, I don't feel it was successful because its being wrapped in fiction made the article longer, less direct, and less precise. I would have much preferred an article on food choices, and there appeared to be some excellent information in the story that could have been used for that instead.
  While I enjoy fiction, there are many venues for it already, and I don't feel it furthers the goals of community-builders and members for Communities   to become one of them. In my mind, the exception would be if an unusually skilled writer of short stories who was greatly experienced with community were to be able to write a piece that did not try to impart any information, but which revealed the very realistic emotional experience of one or more characters within a community, thus helping readers to frame ideas about personal emotional needs within community. Such a piece would, I expect, be extremely difficult to do well.
Luc Reid
Haddonfield, New Jersey