Poly Comics
The talented and lovely Tikva has started a comic which is largely about polyamory.
poly means more processing
Tikva and i lived at Twin Oaks together some years back…
her talents are not limited to art stuff
Of course poly folks are our own best critics
guilty
Tikva is telegenic – making for great blog material.
how many times have i heard this …
i recruited her perhaps a decade back on the Harvard Yard, she was a shooting star
Her comic can be found at http://kimchicuddles.tumblr.com/
Barefoot Bible
i have long been slightly on the fence about going barefoot. i definitely like the way it feels and i also appreciate the foot protection and speed afforded by shoes. Today i fell off the fence.
“You know that there are studies showing there is a preventative effect on Alzheimer’s and other aliments by going barefoot.” Feonix said.
Feonix does yoga int he shadow of the Tapan Zee Bridge
And i saw my mind decisively shift. Even if there was only a small chance that there were significant health benefits from walking barefoot more often, i live in places where i can often easily be barefoot. And on this day i was working at a craft fair on the beautiful Lyndhurst estate outside New York City, and i kicke doff my shoes. i carried them with me some, where they made occasionally convient detached pockets, but mostly this afternoon i was bare foot on grass. More generally on the commune it is fairly acceptable and accessible to be mostly barefoot, Rowan has modeled this behavior for his full 17 years of life.
Am i sure this is better for me? No.
especially in running there maybe something
And i dont need to be completely sure to try something which might be good for me and see how it works. And it also works for me to step out of shoe conformity, to test whether we have hurt ourselves by donning shoes.
Feonix tree dancing
And there is a kind of primitive appeal to the entire idea. What if this presumed benign technology turns out to be the source of a number of problems ? Have we heard this theme before?
There are some interesting tech fixes for the hazards at least.
Church groups and sex toys
In the lead up to the Loud Love event we have reached out to several different communities to both bolster the attendance of the event and diversify the world views of the participants. This has put us into conversation with local progressive church groups, some of whom are curious about why we reached out to them. In response to one pastor’s query about my characterization of the event as “edgy” i wrote the following letter.
i think it is totally appropriate for you to consult with members of your church before you go forward with posting our announcement. And part of what i think makes churches and other groups “progressive” is their willingness to engage with people who have quite different views than they have. There are several sets of parents already registered for the event and there is child care provided. We are quite conscious of what is child appropriate and what is not.Rather than being vague about what is “edgy”, i wanted to give a couple of examples. In the Drag Kings 101 workshop there what has been called a “Reverse Strip Tease” in which the facilitator of the workshop goes from being dressed in male clothing and donning tough demeanor thru costume changes and ultimately appears as a classically “dolled up” female. There is no nudity in these theatrics, but it is a very powerful transformation which challenges notions on gender and identity presentation.There is a workshop on kink through a feminist lens. Which discusses sex play that is outside many peoples experience, but this is not a tutorial on these practices, but rather an exploration of how these are made safe for the participants and how to insure that everyone involved is operating with full consent.And while the event does push on peoples beliefs, the organizers are committed to it being respectful and inclusive. We hope it is possible for you to promote it to your parishioners and we appreciate you considering this conference.
“…. a sexuality resource center and toy shop where you will find a
body positive, sex positive and shame free environment in which to
grow your sexual knowledge and increase your pleasure. The foundation of The Garden is sexuality education for adults and a commitment to body safe and eco-friendly products.The Garden is a queer woman owned business that caters to the whole DC community no matter your sex, gender, race, income, sexual experience or….well…if you have a body I want you to learn and shop here! ”
Filth
i just heard that Acorn lost a couple of charming interns because the place is too dirty. Let’s be clear, it is pretty dirty. And in our defense the place is a farm. We grow an increasing fraction of our own food as well as a significant number of seeds for the business. This means an approximately endless supply of people working in dirt and coming in for at least a couple of meals and meetings on the average day.
And this topic inevitably comes up whenever we talk about our diversity as a community; it may be that our biggest barriers are cultural and that if we are truly going to be more open to a wider diversity of people, we may have to do some shifting of our internal culture. Being cleaner is an obvious starting point.
But please don’t suggest that there is an easy fix, if we all just pitched in a bit more. It just does not seem to work out that way, at least in the communities i frequent. There are people who clean, and some clean quite a lot. And pushing back there are kids and pets and poorly house trained adults (and even well trained adults and kids who occasionally screw up in the scores of entries into the residential buildings each day). It is going to take some clever ideas and some culture changing.
Who has the time to clean after a hard days work on the farm??
Is Swinger interchangeable with Polyamorous?
I was posting for Loud Love and i ran across this question on Facebook in the open polyamory group.
I see the words “poly” and “swinger” being used together as if they are one and the same… or maybe that is just how I am reading it. Do most consider them interchangable?
For me the answer is clearly “no”. The equivalent question would be “Is Baptist interchangeable with Christian?”. Polyamory is an overarching term of which there are many flavors (like Christian). Swingers are one relatively small subset of the entire group. Poly is about having honest interactions among multiple romantic and/or sexual intimates. Swinging is when you are honest about having multiple partners, but you are specifically seeking relatively low commitment and usually short term relationships. In the best case swingers are people who enjoy sex, are responsible about it, and want to have more than one sexual partner. But these connections generally do not lead to longer-lasting romantic adventures.
The Polyamory Virginia Listserve sends the following text to all of its new members:
Welcome to the Polyamory_Virginia at Yahoo!
Please review this message.Posts advertising commercial personals sites will be deleted, as will requests for swing partners and one line personals.
Now, with that out of the way, this group is for those single or couples who are into Polyamory or are interested in it and live in Virginia. POLYAMORY IS NOT SWINGING. It’s loosely defined as being able to sustain stable, loving, and long-term relationships with more that one person at a time.
If you’re just looking for a fling, this is not the place for you. Move along.
Though i have no hard numbers, my guess is that the number of people who are involved in more committed polyamorous relationships far exceeds the number of swingers in the world. But then i found this graphic:
Of course there are swingers who are not being honest with each other and the above diagram shows this. What is the larger world of non-monogamy in this Venn diagram? Well, it could be people who are not honestly practicing multiple romantic relationships OR more likely this author uses a different definition of polyamory than i do. They might use a simpler polyamory definition like “multiple romantic/sexual relationships with the possibility (or desire) of long term committed relationships”.
And i personally object to this diagram, because it has non-monogamy surrounded by a sea of monogamy, which might be demographically true, but we certainly dont need to be surrounded ontologically.
For the opposite perspective, check out this fascinating article from Loving More magazine. And check out these stories of flings, affairs, three-ways etc. in the context of monogamish [sic!] relationships.
Thanks to Sarah Taub from Network for a New Culture for pointing out this much better Venn diagram.
Hot Cha – Not recognizing the song written about me
My brother very generously gave the communes two dozen free tickets and back stage passes to his show last night in Cville. The Acorners and Oakers loved it. Some attendees were repeat offenders from last years show.
The band played it’s only platinum album Flood, for most of the show. And on this album is the song Hot Cha, which is the most clearly-about-me song my brother has written. The lyrics of Hot Cha were written (i believe) in response to my disappearance from contact with my parents for much of 1982. My brother and i often played the game Derby Day when we were little and Hot Cha was horse number two and my favorite. Despite his claims otherwise, i am clear that this song on the Flood album is about me.
Derby Day Horses
The funny thing is that i told Mac that this song was about me just before the show and when it started playing she said “This is your song!”. But i did not really recognize it. At first this struck me as odd. Here is this song, written by my brother, on his most famous album, which is about me and i don’t even recognize it. That seems lame.
But really, i am not that big a fan of my brothers music (i do appreciate their theatrics) and it turns out that i dont know most of this album. And he does not know my stuff, so it seemed fair that i might not be paying super careful attention to this critical media.
Before the show we bumped into Olivia in front of the Jefferson Theater with her TMBG t-shirt on, excited about the show – i had never met Olivia before this evening. The conversation turned to the point where i admitted that my brother was in the band and Olivia said “You must be Pax”, which is i think the first time that someone has identified me by name for this connection. I was so excited i gave her one of our back stage passes.
This band does not wear ties often – and has not had a line up change in 10 years.
When the show was over, we went thru the strange underground tunnels that lead to where the bands relax. The woman in the wheel chair from Louisa who i had worked on a local campaign with me, who i donated tickets to, could not come with us to the back stage party, which made me sad.
As is often the case, my brother was gregarious and generous. The commune hippies descended like locust on the food and drink in the back stage area. When we left half an hour later it was all but gone. We talked a bit about his coming tour to Australia, about angry audience vibe in Cville and other places. I also reminded him that he was completely right in his political forecast about Obama’s re-election. In May of 2012 he had forecasted “people will be surprised how much he wins by”. When i congratulated him on this forecast he was both dismissive (“could the Republicans have chosen a worse candidate?)” and quick to follow up with a new forecast for the coming two years.
“The Republican Party has opened a Pandora’s box of troubles which will ultimately tear the party apart. The Tea Party and other wingnuts will crash it within two years.” I am doubtful, but i thought Obama was going to be much closer than he was, so i will suspend disbelief.
Mac, Maddy and brother John – April 10 2013
He talked about his work to stop fracking, his insights into NY Governor Cuomo’s completely political nature (“he has no moral compass.” John said) and the unexpected popularity of their coming Australia trip.
Having evaporated the food, my crew left the green room of the Jefferson theater without Olivia, who lingered behind in the place she always wanted to be.
—-
Since there seems to be a bunch of TMBG fan traffic to this post, i should perhaps go more into detail about my contention that this song was written about me, since there is at least some dispute about it. The song refers to the first time Hot Cha went away a float island was his home. A pretty clear reference to the time i spent hitching on sailboats across the Pacific.
In the original Hot Cha video (which seems now to have been pulled from You Tube) i am told there was a phone with “PAX” on the center of the rotary dial.
My brother certainly feels some affinity for the prodigal son story in light of my disappearance and we did eat fondue together when we were growing up, which is a bit of an odd food choice.
Okay, enuf parasiting off my brothers fame, on to other adventures.
Pantsless Dance Party and the Pearl Harbor Theory of Funology
One of the most studied attacks in military history is the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 near the start of WW2. One of the often criticized aspects of this daring and hugely successful attack was the failure of the Japanese to launch a third wave. Had the Japanese hit a third time, they would have been able to destroy much of the pearl harbor infrastructure and would have set back the US pacific fleet from attacking Japan perhaps by years.
The USS West Virginia was one of many sunken ships at Pearl Harbor
Similarly, organizers of the great Acorn 20th Anniversary Land Day party needed an exceptionally successful after party, to both finish the beer left behind at the main event and to offer something wonderful but much smaller and more intimate to the people who made this large commemorative event happen. The pants-less dance party was everything it needed to be to deliver this critical third wave of fun.
Part of what made it tremendously successful was that it was organized in the highly organic, super low overhead Acorn style. [This is quite different for me than the Twin Oaks parties i have helped plan which have far more meetings and logistics associated with them.] For the Land Day after party the organizing went like this.
“We have two kegs of beer left over.”
“We should have a party and drink at least some of it!”
“What will get people to come to such a party?”
“We could have a pants-less dance party at the Rec Collective!”
That was it. No advertising (all word of mouth). No fancy decorations. No invite, you had to be at Acorn already to know about it to be there. Someone did put out a cool blue colored flashing light. i wore a skimpy green negligee, tho i changed dress theatrically a couple of times over the evening.
What made it an excellent after party (in my never humble opinion) is: It was quite lively. It was quite sexy without being raunchy. It was inter-generational. It had mostly people who knew each other with a handful of trusted outsiders. We practiced fabulous consent culture with lots of people asking to kiss or touch other people. There was a highly fluid mix of dancing, cuddling, chatting and making out. These things happened between the three spaces of the rec collective small dance floor, the newly constructed giant mattress in the rec collective and near by smoke shack.
It also felt like a gift to most of the organizers who had made the big land day event happen, who had to do next to nothing for this nice event.
Hooping on land day (including Feonix in the back)
April is Manifesting Loud Love
What is important to me in this coming month is promoting the Loud Love conference and so we get a bunch of people to experience it. We have a good program and a great team of organizers (see below).
Loud Love is about exploring, expressing, exporting and celebrating your romantic identity and experience. There are a wide range of workshops offered from Blues Dancing (a non-sexual intimacy building skill) to Honest Seduction (yes, this is not a contradiction in terms) to Drag King 101, to Transcending Jealousy and building compersion (yes, people actually succeed in this) to advanced polyamory techniques.
Blues Dancing
Plus there is a days worth of open space technology which permits conference participants to present on topics that the group in interested in.
The New Loud Love Logo – art by Mac
At the end of our last organizers meeting Sky pointed out that we are not where we want to be for this Loud Love event, which is in two short months. And it made me realize that despite the good work we have done (securing a space, finding presenters, designing workshops, budgeting and more) there is more left to do to make this happen.
i dont usually ask things of my readers, but this post i will. Please think about a friend of yours (or possibly you yourself) who would be well served by this event. Then encourage them to register and attend or let us know who they are and we will let them know you recommend them for our event.
Here are the awesome folks i get to work with on this event:
Sky Blue has been experimenting with relationships since he was 8 years old and did his first
mediation with squabbling friends. He’s been in some form of open relationship for most of the last 14 years. A drop-out from UC Santa Cruz he’s lived and worked in cooperative and communal groups for most of the last 17 years. His purpose in life is to help bring people together to transform themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Kassia is a musician, activist, community builder and all-around nosey-parker. She h
as traveled the world, lived on a commune, toured the US with a klezmer band, and practiced Jewish Farming. After spending several years in Charlottesville helping start two small collective businesses (a hostel and a home-veggie gardening biz), she concluded that there is more fun to be had on the commune and recently moved back to Twin Oaks to work on her life-goal of conspiring with the universe to have as much fun as possible.
Angie Tupelo is a queer, anarchist, polyamorous, feminist, sub-identified, 
sex-positive gal. She recently moved back to the “real world” after living on a commune for 4 years, and is gradually adjusting to wearing shoes. She gives workshops on Polyamory, BDSM for Feminists, Honest Seduction, Kink for Abuse Survivors, and Intentional Community living. She blogs about life, love, revolution, mental illness, and how they fit together in her life, and really really enjoys bacon.
Ali has been bisexual and polyamorous since before she knew what those words meant. She languished in mainstream culture for several years feeling ashamed of her desires for multiple concurrent
intimacies with different genders before she found her physical and philosophical home at Twin Oaks. Among Ali’s many life goals is to make sex an acceptable form of social currency and move it from the taboo to appropriate dinner table conversation. She wants to normalize polyamory as a relationship model, move forward the idea of a mischief (group) of interconnected lovers taking care of one another, and to make group intimacy & sex as easily & openly sought as coupledom.
Paxus facilitates a workshop called “Modesty is Dangerous” and you can start fig
uring out who he is from there. Paxus self-identifies as a revolutionary, but more importantly he identifies you, dear reader, as a potential co-conspirator in designing irresistible ideas which will change the world (super memes). He comes to the Loud Love organizing team engaged, reckless, and feeling intensely daring. His tangled form of activism fuses direct action against those threatening the biosphere (Monstanto, Westinghouse, et. al) with actively fostering and building new income-sharing intentional communities with proselytizing for radical intimacy models (including Honest Seduction). Paxus is one of three parents in a polyamorous family. His biography does not make credible fiction and was thus rejected by Wikipedia. He co-founded and directs the Emma Goldman Institute for Theoretical and Applied Funology, an entity which there seems to be no proof actually exists.
MacGyver dumped her job in high end tine-share real estate marketing to live with her friends in the country and do righteous work for an organic seed company. She drives a tractor, works as cook and carpenter and tends chickens at absurd o’clock in the morning. She spends 97% less time worrying about things than the average US American. Some of her friends call her Surprise. She is not afraid to pick up a microphone and entertain without a plan as to what she is going to say or sing when she grabs it. Not a day goes by when she is not appreciative for ditching the mainstream life and moving to Acorn.
Feonix and Aries Bios to come
Willowisms
I’ve been telling stories about Willow the last couple of days.
At age 2 Willow said, in response to me asking where some toys were “i assume they are under the tower”
At age 4 when asked what he thought about having two dads he replied “i guess i lucked out”
Happy CoDads – 2012
At age 6 when asked what he would say to the police if the car was stopped and he was not in the required car seat “i dont have ID, i will just lie.”
At age 8 after i told him he needed to clean his room he replied “With what authority do you tell me this?”
At age 10 on Dec 21, 2012 at the mythical end of the Mayan calendar when was asked his thoughts on the pending end of the world, he responded “I am disinclined to believe any religious text that is found written on a wall”
Stars circa 2003 me, Hawina, Willow, Anissa and Sky
Minority Relationship Model
Crystal asked me to shock his Social Movement students at Cal State Monterey Bay. This felt like a high bar, so i offered to entertain them and provoke their thinking.
Crystal and fellow philosopher
i presented about all the folks who had said the world was going to end unless we dramatically change our behavior (Club or Rome, Carl Sagan and nuclear winter, Rio 1992 and sustainability, the Peak Oil kids and now climate change). i put them in small groups and asked them to discuss what things they could do a better job of sharing.
But it was (predictably) the second part of the class which got the most eyebrows raised. I talked about polyamory and the astronomy of the Star family (and bragged about various Willowisms). The group exercise was to talk about their relationship with jealousy and report back on if they liked it and how they might change it.
But the thing that Crystal was most excited about was the idea that polyamory was a minority relationships model and as such was discriminated against in most peoples thinking. i pointed out that if you get involved in a poly relationship and it does not work out, you are quite likely to say “Polyamory does not work” or perhaps “Poly does not work for me”.
But if you are on the other side of a failed monogamous relationship you are more likely to say “Joe is an asshole”. It is quite possible that your poly relationship failed because Joe is an asshole, or because Joe is not even poly. We rarely say “Monogamy does not work”
[80% of students reported being shocked.]
