Another Stage of the Intentional Communities Odyssey

You might've noticed I haven't been writing in this blog for a while.

That's because I've been in Tennessee, visiting (among other things) the Sequatchie Valley Institute near Whitwell, TN. A friend of my boyfriend's and mine is staying there to work as a gardener, and we decided to visit her and help out with some of the work they're doing, as well as attending a couple of workshops*.

Staying at SVI was a very different experience than staying at The Farm was --- for one thing, it was a very different type of environment, being on a densely forested, steep hillside rather than a flat, grassier area. (The Farm, I was told, had acquired most of its land from a defunct paper mill, and the land had been clear-cut several times during the mill's period of operation). There were also a lot fewer people there: six people living at Moonshadow, which was the part of SVI we were visiting --- there's also a house and gardens at the foot of the hill, called Sweet Gum, where a family of seven people lives --- plus the other visitors who came either for the workshops or the workday at Ulinawi. But, unlike at The Farm, the other visitors did not stay overnight, and even the people who lived there mostly seemed all to have their own, generously spaced, sleeping quarters, with people gradually filtering into the main communal building throughout the day to cook, eat, and hang out. Accordingly, I did not have to interact with people constantly, and the number of people I did see every day was a lot smaller. (Also, two of them were well-known to me, while at The Farm I was thrown together with about a dozen strangers for a very immersive, intensive experience).

Even with all that, though, I had a lot more trouble with overloading at SVI than I ever did at The Farm. I think the main reason for that is because we got there right before the busiest days --- the two workshops, when the most people would be around and the most structured activity would be going on. Also, I was pretty sick physically at the time, so it might also have been that my usual defenses were somewhat lowered.

I really liked the layout of Moonshadow, though: the one communal building with kitchen, fireplace, shower and offices, with smaller sleeping cabins scattered around it. For me, I think the ideal community has both shared spaces for cooking, eating, work and play, and also separate individual spaces to which people can retreat if they need to.

*A wildflower-identification hike and a shiitake-mushroom-growing workshop, both of which I ended up missing because I was sick.

Autism and Intentional Communities

These two posts at And Stimming With Rainbows of Every Design struck a chord with me. I actually panicked a bit reading the first one, since I am on the record praising rural intentional communities for their autistic-friendliness (or, rather, praising one particular community, The Farm, for its friendliness to one particular autist, me). I had to go and reread that particular post to make sure I had not inadvertently implied that rural community living as The One Answer for all autistic people, because that was not my intent.

Danechi raises an important question in the second post that I link, dealing with Bittersweet Farms. BSF, along with the community Danechi's parents are involved in planning, and along with these two other autism-centered communities I found here, appears to be less an intentional community of, by and for primarily autistic people and more a group home set in a rural environment. Danechi worries, rightly, that these communities simply represent the kinder, gentler face of institutionalization.

Of the three fully-established communities I listed above, it is Bittersweet Farms that looks most institution-like to me. It is overseen by the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, with its membership coming from caseworker referrals. So, people do not come to BSF; they are placed there. The arrangement of government at BSF is also quite hierarchical: there is a Board of Directors, there are staff members and then there are the actual residents. There are treatment regimes, lots of structured activities, and training geared toward "develop[ing] skills of independent living."

Of the other two communities, I was not able to find much detail about The Brookwood Community, except that it is Christian-based and its citizens work at flower gardening and handicrafts, the products of which are sold online or at three stores. The other place, Farmsteads of New England, describes itself as "a human services agency that has developed an intentional farming community that caters to the needs of people who have autism or other developmental disabilities." It was founded by a special educator who wanted to create a good work environment for her son, whom she believed could not succeed in a conventional workplace, and whom she did not want to put in a sheltered workshop, where she believed the work would be repetitive and meaningless. Its website emphasizes principles of "least restrictive environment," "innate value and dignity" and "self-determination." Like BSF, FNE is essentially a cluster of rural group homes, with a high staff-to-resident ratio and various day programs in basic self-care, life skills and farm work.

I'm not knocking the educational or assisted-living services these places offer. People need those things, and many autistics have additional medical problems that require specialist oversight. Learning to take care of yourself is also one of the most empowering things you can do, and something many autistic people struggle to master. No, what bothers me about these communities is the apparent lack of participation by the autistic residents in the governance of their own communities and the shapes of their own lives. From reading the mission statements of BSF and FNE, it seems that the intentional community is formed of the parents and staff, with the autistic residents existing as the focus of the community but not having any say in that community, or even being members in their own right.

I did find one apparently self-governing, egalitarian community of autistics here, though.