SassafrasWilds: the whole story 
First time visitors may wish to start at the first entry and read up

April 7, 2006: Three years plus, since my last entry to this page. Seems like the blink of an eye.

Long story short, the two years following my foregoing entry (below) are summarized by one word: disintegration. Resultant of factors seemingly beyond human control, Daniel and I went our separate ways late in 2004 and legally concluded our matrimonial relationship in February 2005. The year-plus since then has been one of reintegration.

In October last year (2005), the kids and moved... sadly NOT into a domehome... but to a lovely dwelling on Primrose Lane just outside of Clinton which has so many of the environmentally-friendly creature comforts I savor that I don't feel too much deprived. Heck, there is even a beautiful Sassafras tree in our backyard!!! And the fact is that the kids and I *needed* to move to a fresh new location in terms of clearing the emotional slate, so really all things are good. Anyway...

Our new digs are splendiferous... much grander than the photos on the above referenced page show. And as soon as we finish Phase One of redecorating <grin> -- which hopefully will be done by the time my daughter Shalom has her Homeschool Graduation here on the 20th of this month -- I'll take some new pics and post them for all to see.

But wow... what a trip it is having 'grown up' children... Sorta-kinda like discovering lifelong friends you didn't know you had.... <smile>.

Also, I've initiated the somewhat major transition of reclaiming my maiden name, thus from now on you'll have to get used to calling me Christine Beems even though, legally speaking, my last name will still be Weiss for a while. Just be apprised that the changeover is in process and pending the tending of persnickety details which I have decided to postpone until after my youngest child attains the age of adulthood.

So, that about covers the pertinent bases up to the moment, though there are many current things happening that I could, granting myself the time to do so, elaborate endlesslys about. At the moment, however, a long list of significant items -- specifically two new Gozarks projects: FlyArkansas  and Women & Birthing -- clamor for my attention... thus I had best get back to work!!!

March 23, 2003: The question came up again last night, as Daniel and I sat watching the TV-war: How do we change it? What needs to be different? Where do we start? Why is the obvious so seemingly difficult to communicate, let alone obtain?

Anyway, our question last evening went something like this: Okay, we imagined, let's say that several folks wanted to get together and build some kind of common venture at Sassafras. How exactly would that work? I mean, do we just say "Hey, all y'all... we have this great 30 acre chunk of pristine Ozark mountain, few other worldly resources, several useful skills and a bushel and a peck of enthusiasm. And we know that "many hands make light work," so y'all just come on, pitch your tent, tow-in your 4th-hand mobile home, and let's do it!!!

A bunch of years ago, we visited for a weekend with an intentional community that was thrown together very much like that and, while the people were pleasant, the life-style was far from our ideal. Also, the "rules" for permanent residents felt far too constricting for us.

Thus our conundrum: The anarchist's credo, being "the only rule is that there are no rules" stands in mock opposition to the standards of order, organization and judicious respect we do our best to engender and somewhat expect from others with whom we choose to share space. And the playing of any game -- and life in it's simplest terms is and has the ever-present potential to become a vivacious, high spirited, bodaciously fun, invigoratingly happy and communally beneficial (productive) "game" to us -- seemingly necessitates an agreed upon set of "rules."

Yet it seems that every time we humans set about to codify a set of rules and promulgate same as "laws of the land," what we end up with is factions of us clashing with each other, waging battle over whose rules are wrong or right.

Like I said, thus our conundrum.

But isn't it the illusiveness of the answer that makes the riddle most fascinating to solve?

March 22, 2003: The war is on. And, today is Daniel's 64th birthday. Not that the two things are coincidental to anything but the timeframe... except maybe for the fact that I am "shocked and awed" by both facts.

I mean, geeze... Sixty-four...??? How did I end up married to such an old coot??? (HAHA)

And war... well, to my mind no matter how one tries to justify it, it's still just another way of saying "atrocity."

Anyway, these things got me thinking again about the sublime and profoundly simply complexities of the Universe. And as I mull everything 'round in my heart and my head... if I were to express purely what "I" selfishly want... it would be to grow an "extended family, self-reliant, mutually beneficial community" on Sassafras, and right there in the middle of it, plant our domehome.

But I'm so easy. I'm willing to settle for just about any semblance of this order. Thus I'm as content right here in this moment of now as I would be anywhere on the face of the Earth... unless, of course, that spot of Earth was hallowed in the traditions and ceremonies of co-creating creature comfort luxurious by the ways and means of co-creating peace.

I mean heck... who wouldn't want to live there. And it really wouldn't matter just what kind of house one had because in a place like that all the houses would be nice.

However, back to my personally preferred "druthers," I think I'd enjoy the results of moving into a home I'd designed.... a place that was custom built with all the quirky little details I crave and completely "brand new" (using as much reclaimed and recycled material as I could scrounge).

I'd like to do this for no better reason than never having done it before. You see, every home I've called my own (and I've lived in some very decent places) has been built by and for someone else... to accommodate their standards and tastes. Thus I think it would be kind of neat to "do it my way" one time once. But as much as I know I'd enjoy the pleasures of having done this, it's the actual doing of it that turns my head around.

I mean, shit... I ain't no spring chicken and though I'm far from ready for a rocking chair with a cat curled up at my feet, I'm not chomping at the bit with energy to burn, eager to take on some huge construction feat.

So like I said, I'm easy. Or at least that's what I've taught myself to be. Because as anyone who really knows me will tell you, there are times when I can be very hard-assed.

And I must confess that all this war stuff has my titillation bristling and my head reeling, revisiting old dreams -- the embers of which seem to stay alive of their own volition, somewhere deep in my soul -- with heat-vapors rising every so often to my consciousness, wafting the vital importance for a group of people to come together of their own free will and "re-invent" the concept of what "civilized society" is (supposed to be) all about.

People role-modeling a lifestyle wherein the concept of "war" (aka: "againstness") is banished from existence by public decree and all modus appreheni are willfully invested in the activity of living (all for one and one for all) in accord with mutual prosperity, community health, individual liberty and everlasting peace.

And, in my humble opinion, the only thing stopping us from doing this is the "belief" that it cannot be done.

Poppycock.

GREAT THOUGHTS TO PONDER
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment." ~Buckminster Fuller

"We hope to empower site visitors to see the big picture and exercise individual initiative. Everyone on board our Spaceship Earth can live abundantly and successfully on an ecologically sustainable basis. Humanity has the option to make it. We must choose it before it expires." ~Buckminster Fuller Institute  (AMEN)

December 29, 2002: Having titled this page "the whole story" I realize now that I've set for myself a task that may never be complete, there being so many nuances, twists, deviations and variances to this tale that it could take a lifetime of words to write-out the details deserving to be told. Thus today's effort will be devoted to sketching an illustrative outline of the most pertinent events, addressing how we arrived at the idea of building our dream home at SassafrasWilds.

It was late in 1988, after the "home" birth of our daughter Shalom when the nesting urge took over our life. We, being Daniel & I and age-2 son Adam, had been living (by choice) in a nifty little travel trailer at a mobile home park in Jupiter, Florida. And really, the vagabond life we'd been sharing was pretty good.

Except that our compact abode, though it had been pleasantly cozy when only three of us were onboard, was now feeling a bit crowded. And we soon envisioned the day when both our young'uns would deserve more than a cement patio for a backyard. Thus we started craving to put down roots.

To satisfy this notion, we looked first to those things called "intentional communities." For those of you not familiar with this concept, it involves the making of a voluntary alliance with others of "like mind" in the co-creation of a residential/community environment of some sort. And there were, at that time, several different sorts to choose from.

One could, for example, "buy in" to an intentional community with cash (of which we had rather little) or with "sweat equity" (of which we could muster between us a lot) by simply swearing allegiance to vegetarianism, environmentalism, prison-ministryism, civil-disobedienceism or even non-smokerism. Under any of these heading and a whole lot more, there was an intentional community somewhere eagerly waiting to add your name to its membership roles.

But none of these things quite seemed to be our cup of tea. So we figured that in order to have what we really wanted, we'd have to create.

And I remember bits and pieces of the theme of the first "manifesto" we wrote for ourselves on the subject. It all had to do with "co-creating a community that it would feel good to call home." A place where "all for one and one for all" was the daily routine.

So we went on this little quest to find "the place" where we were going to be a part of this inspired happening, which we hoped -- sincerely -- would eventually include others, but we knew at baseline that the only ones of us doing this thing that we could count on would be our selves.

Thus we drove and looked. We walked through lots of "for sale" houses for months, scattered over half a dozen states. We read newspaper ads from a vast region of the United States, and even toyed with (but never really seriously) thoughts about Canada and Hawaii for a bit.

Time pressed on. Shalom and Adam grew. The trailer felt quite crowded but still we found nothing that simply "felt like home."

Then, in a last ditch effort to give it one more glorious go, we almost blindly stumbled upon this phenomenal chunk of land in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, and that (as the saying goes) is all she wrote.

But that's not all that is to be written, because the tale meanders along for 15 years from then until now. And as time passes and the spirit moves me, I'll come back and add a new paragraph or two. Because a lot of things happened in this interim. All of which have in some way been good, but several of which were sad. And if I'm really going to tell "the whole story," then I'm duty bound to share it all.

Anyway, I've achieved my objective for this sitting, except to note that on this date there are the six of us fully vested in the co-creation of our little SassafrasWilds homestead, plus two more folks working with similar intentions on the nearby Peaceful Acres spread. Thus our little intentional community is happening as our dreams continue to grow.