Crafts House and Tufts

[This story originally appeared on the CommuneLife.org blog]

It’s been too long since we have organized a Point A trip, and it’s fun to be on the road again. Tufts University, outside of Boston is proving a worthy first stop on our adventure.  I am lucky to have a capable fun group of people to be presenting with:

Nina on site

Long experienced communard and construction wizard, Nina is not the chatty type, but what she says is more than worth listening to. She was the principal presenter of the Community as the Solution to Climate Change workshop on Saturday.

Kristen with this unlikely couple

Skylar is Nina’s strongly bonded partner. Twin Oaks brought  them together and they are enjoying a long honeymoon.  Most people who meet Skylar don’t believe she can actually be as happy as she appears, but I know better.  Optimistic, fanciful, quick to comment and engage, Skylar is, in a positive way, Nina’s mirror image.  Skylar navigated the workshop on Transcending Jealousy and Building Compersion that we did at the Tufts LGBTQ center.

Skylar at some unidentified beautiful location

Raven is my steady ally on the prolonged roller coaster ride of the Point A.  He tries, with some success, to catch all the flying pieces of wreckage hurling from my poorly organized multi-city trips.  He is making sure our crew gets fed (me: people need food?) and that local organizers know what to expect from our small invasion of commune activists.  When I neglected to secure housing in Somerville, Raven tapped his deep Boston co-op roots and found us all places to sleep.  He is the wrangler in chief for the commune life blog.

Rare picture of Raven at William St Coop, Somerville

Maximus from the Genome Collective in Binghamton, NY has been the godfather of this trip.  Getting dates months in advance so they fit into the several classes we are doing at Binghamton; finding us honorariums for presenting; finding us amazing venues and local support at Tufts (where he went to school). Specifically, he hooked us up with the fine folks from Crafts House, who have an adorable college collective living situation, combined with stewardship of the well stocked student art space at Tufts, the Craft Center.

GQ revolutionary poster person – Maximus

Telos did not think he was going on this trip.  He made the mistake of calling me for advice on rides to Virginia, after he was disqualified at the last minute from a medical study that his community, Cambia, was doing in Baltimore.  He ended up going North instead, where he joined this intrepid crew with his organizing and writing skills, and experience from previous Point A trips with the Genome collective, who we are advising later in the trip. Moral: I am happy to help find you a ride, it just might not be to where you think you were going.

Telos at the TO greenhouse – Photo by Wren

The way these trips work, ideally, is we work with a group house (Craft House in the case of Tufts, or the Genome Collective in the case of Binghamton) and give them a collection of workshops to choose from.

Elise from Craft House consulted with her coop and choose three:

• Polyamory Principals: Transcending Jealousy and Crafting Compersion
• Intentional Community as the solution to Climate Disruption
• Community Communication: Clearnesses and Transparency Tools

Craft House itself has been supportive and hospitable.  When our team grew in size with Telos arrival and needed another place for someone to sleep, Craft House gave us a luxurious closet to sleep in.  It is currently their small costume commie clothes.  I jumped at the chance to sleep in their fine closet, even before i found out it’s august history.   It also turns out to be the closet the be off the room where Tracy Chapman lived while she went to Tufts in 1987.

Finally out of the closet – Skylar and Paxus

The audiences to our workshops have been growing steadily since we started presenting at Tufts.  A number of people are interested in coming to the Virginia communes to visit and dozens of fingerbooks have been distributed on various topics.  We have several solid offer to host us when we return next semester and well as Tufts students and area residents who want to explore the path from dorm to student coop and then from coop to egalitarian community.  It feels like important beginnings.

On to Binghamton.

Update March 2017:  Crafts House is coming to visit the communes over spring break!  12 members of Crafts House will be coming down and staying at Simple House (a property near Twin Oaks controlled by Cambia) for 4 days and visiting the communities and working at income sharing farms in Louisa.