June 2012
37 posts
“We were telling them about Summer Commune, and she said ‘yeah, I’m into nudity too.’”
—A conversation our friends had in Vancouver before visiting our notso-nude commune.
So you want to have a Summer Commune event?
So you’re coming out to Summer Commune with your magic show/reptiles seminar/dance party and don’t exactly know how to make it happen? We can help you with that. We can help you find a place, a date, and any other resources you need to make a successful event go down.
Send us an email with the following information you need, and we can help you set it up.
- EVENT NAME
- DESCRIPTION
- WHEN DO YOU WANT IT?
- WHAT KIND OF SPACE DO YOU NEED?
- WHAT MATERIALS DO YOU NEED?
- HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE YOU EXPECTING?
- DOES THIS EVENT RECUR?
this week in moscow, idaho.
Summer Commune is picking up steam! At last week’s open meeting we discussed ways to continue the project of Summer Commune (art + community + fun) once the summer is over. Bringing like-minded people together is what this summer is about — both for people who live here and for people who don’t — so we love to see new ideas and new connections being made.
There are a couple of ways you can connect with us this week:
WEEKLY OPEN MEETING
Wanderers’ Tavern (Washington & 2nd, downtown) - Wednesday, JUNE 27, 6 PM
Over cheap beers & homemade snacks, we’ll continue planning the unconference event and talk about new projects and events. Have an event you want to plan? Come tell us about it. [RSVP/Invite Your Friends]
ARTS EN PLEIN AIR
Moscow Arboretum (U of Idaho) - THURSDAYS, 10-11 AM
Drawing meets the great outdoors. This is a weekly meet up for visual artists who want the structure of a class but none of the restrictions. BYO materials. MEETING LOCATION: Drive up Nez Perce Drive on the south side of the UI campus. Park along the street and meet at the stone bench under the trees, just down on the left side of the slope. Contact: sofya [at] summercommune [dot] com. [RSVP/Invite Your Friends]
LE SALON COMMUNE #1 - Words With Friends (Now with S’machos!)
Thursday, JUNE 28, 7 PM - 11 PM
Eat, drink, & be literary. After a potluck dinner & a drink or 2 (or 3…) we’ll read our original work. All genres & all levels & all subject matter welcome, but everyone must read! While smaller writing groups may emerge from these meet ups, this event is for everyone, including “non-writers.” This is about having fun while safely nestled in a sticky web of creative support. You don’t have to be good, you just have to be willing. (We promise we’ll be gentle.) [RSVP/Invite Your Friends]
VOLUNTEERING AT THE FARMER’S MARKET
Saturdays, 1 PM, Friendship Square
Moscow has been great to us - help us to return the favor. After the Farmer’s Market, volunteers are needed to help take down tables and chairs. Look for the staff in the lime green vests and ask how you can help.
WRITERS NEEDED
The Summer Commune Reading Series is looking for readers! The reading series, hosted by Book People, will feature work by both local Communers and those visiting from LA, SF, NY, etc. Each reading will feature a mixture of styles and genres. We’re particularly interested in literary voices that will reflect the spirit of Summer Commune — youthful, daring, innovative, irreverent, passionate, entertaining. Or, you know, some combo of those things. Readings will be on July 11th and 25th at Book People of Moscow (Main Street). For a chance to read, submit writing samples to nicole [at] summercommune [dot] com.
SPEAKERS NEEDED
If you know something, share something! Do you want to give people a quick introduction to a foreign language or a handy skill? Do you have burning tips about real estate, camping, or music in the area? Do you want to organize a group and would like to pitch the community? Are you a startup looking to recruit employees and want to introduce yourself? Did you travel to a cool place and want to share your experience? SIGN UP HERE to be a speaker at Moscow’s first unconference! Each speaker will present for 10 minutes on a topic of his/her choice. Now is the time to share what you know and love with your community! unconference: July 29, 5-7:30 PM, 1912 Center.
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KALIFLOWER
Publication put out by a SF commune in the late 60’s.
thanks Alia for the tip.
Take a Pacific Northwest roadtrip!
Consider turning your trip to Summer Commune into a Pacific Northwest trip!
Fly into Portland and out of Seattle. Spend a few days drinking craft brews and watching live impromptu scenes from the hit television show Portlandia. Then hike Mt. Hood and beautiful terrain along the Columbia River gorge. Head to wine country in Walla Walla, then up into the beautiful Palouse. Spend some time at Summer Commune, then head north to the tourist lakes of Coeur D’Alene. Check out Spokane’s vibrant downtown and parks. Then camp out in the Cascades. Stop at the cafe where they filmed Twin Peaks (for ”a damn fine cup o’ coffee!”) and head over to the excitement of Seattle.
You could also head north to visit Canadian vacation towns like Nelson or Kelowna, or on to cosmopolitan Vancouver. Or head east to Montana. Visit Missoula or Bozeman or Glacier National Park, heck Summer Commune is only an 8.5 hour drive from Yellowstone.
...and the livin's easy.
Hey y’all! Welcome to summer! Some of us are in Moscow, and more are on the way, bu we’ve already been busy getting to know locals and each other. We checked out some live music and works by local artists at the annual Art Walk this weekend, and we volunteered and ate local at the weekly Farmer’s Market. Our opening reception at Brick & Mortar Coworking drew a really fun crowd — thanks to everyone who came out! It was great to finally put some virtual names to some actual faces. We cant wait to hang again, so join us at this week’s events why don’t you?
Summer Commune Open Meeting WEDNESDAY, June 20, 6-7 PM @ One World Café (Main Street) Meet us & greet us, Q & A, comments & suggestions.
Arts En Plein Air THURSDAY, June 21, 10-11 AM @ Moscow Arboretum (U of Idaho) Drawing meets the great outdoors. This is a weekly meet up for visual artists who need the structure of a class but none of the restrictions. BYO materials. Meet at the stone bench just over the hill.
We’re also planning a gathering in the orchard at Steve’s beautiful farm this weekend! (Details TBA via the Facebook page For Communers Only)
Have an idea for an event? Use us to get the word out! Pick a date and a time, then tell us what you want to do and how we can help. We’ll tell everyone we know, which is basically everyone. Drop a line to hello [at] summercommune [dot] com.
Inland 360: Artistic transformations
Some more local coverage on Summer Commune’s volunteering at this Friday’s Art Walk…
Josh Heller, a southern California writer who formed a summer commune in Moscow this year, said he has five fellow transplants volunteering at Friday’s Artwalk and at the Moscow Farmers Market on Saturday morning.
“We spoke with Kathleen, and we’re going to help,” he said. “When they move the farmers market to Main Street, we’re also going to assist with that.”
The commune, which is expected to consist partly of artists using different media, does not have any members who will be showcasing their works Friday, said Heller.
“We’re just meeting and greeting,” he said. “I’m definitely really excited for ArtWalk. It looks like there’s a lot of really good energy here.”
MissionMission: Have you heard about Summer Commune? →
missionmission.org
Some coverage in a San Francisco-based blog.
We will be having a Summer Commune opening reception this Saturday, June 16th in downtown Moscow.
Send us an e-mail for details.
josh@summercommune.com
“I hear Moscow is in Idaho this time of year.”
—dw
My First Week in Moscow
Sixty-five miles from Moscow, and the orange light came on. Why hadn’t I gotten gas on the Interstate? I’d acted blasé about it. I’d traveled 1300 miles and taken for granted that I’d always find somewhere to refuel. I panicked because I hadn’t renewed my AAA card in two years. But that wouldn’t matter anyway, I’d run out of juice on my cellphone. No way to contact the outside world. I imagined myself awkwardly walking down the road to a single wide trailer surrounded by signs that said KEEP OUT! (and in this imaginary scenario I noticed they’d used an upside down ‘i’ as an exclamation point). But as I was rolling on fumes I thought, “Nobody just has a full gas can lying around their trailer.” Plus this baby takes 87, and you can only get 85 in these parts—-Then out of nowhere, an empty gas pump appeared in front of a gigantic propane tank. I pulled off the road and filled my tank. I would not spend my first night inadvertently camping on the Palouse.
At the Idaho state border, I took Instagram photos. I don’t really like taking photos, but I thought it important to document the moment where an idea of what something looks like becomes a reality. Border pictures seems like a popular pastime, because it was the only place on the highway with a turn off: “Free Parking for People who like Geographic Points of Interest, and Who May Be Starting a Temporary Intentional Community.”
After unpacking I went to the grocery store to buy staples: beans, bread, beer. I went to pay at the cashier, and glanced down at the newspaper. We were on the cover. I knew I’d given an interview, but I was surprised to see the paper in the flesh (paper is a kind of recycled tree flesh) right next to the section about high school sports wins. It said my name and called me a travel writer. This was the first time I’d ever arrived anywhere with this warm of a welcome. (I mean, once someone wrote a Facebook status that said they were excited to have me visit.)
I spent my first nights in Moscow sleeping in a tent in the living room. (Cuz I thought that would be fun.) I figured I’d be most comfortable in the room closest to the Anytime Fitness where I steal the internet from. It’s important to have that life line to your virtual life in case of emergency, or if you wake up in the middle of the night with a joke to tweet. (A constant internet connection is also good to be able to immediately erase that last joke.)
Everyone in town has been so friendly. Some new friends took me to a Co-op party where I let a goose bite my skin and realized that it was not as scary as I thought it was when I was a kid. At a bar I met scientists who thought it was funny that I still couldn’t get over the cheap drink prices. ($2.75 mixed drinks. $3.25 for “32 oz tubs” of beer.) I met with a Buddhist scholar who provided me with some good Summer Commune advice: “Instead of asking what you can do for Moscow, ask what Moscow can do for you.” People told me about how various cafes on different sides of Main Street are also on different sides of America’s “culture wars. Liberals get their espressos at One World, conservatives get cappuccinos at Bucer’s. This college town is a mirror of our larger society. The perfect destination for our Summer Commune.
Later in the week, friends from the internet passed through for a few nights en route to Glacier National Park. They’re filmmakers who said that this town would be a perfect place for a filmmaker to work on projects. If they had their own equipment, all they would need are actors. While they were here we recorded a rap song, a Summer Commune milestone. Stay tuned for the next Kid Sriracha + Boar$head + Sauerkraut In the Cabinet jam dropping soon.
This summer is full of endless potential, and it seems like we’ve picked a wonderful town to spend it. Excited for more communards to show up, so I can introduce them to the great people who already live here.
- Josh
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
— - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Overheard in San Francisco
- Summer Commue Skeptic: "commune, eh?"
- Summer Commue Advocate: "Yeah, but it's not new age....it's new wave."
Exxon and Imperial Oil Forced To Go Around Sensitive Idaho River Valley →
circleofblue.org
“An article worth reading on some recent north central Idaho political and environmental issues:”
via Ian
“They need to actually meet new people who are not part of their virtual world. … They need to learn risk-taking by trying new things and challenging themselves with a new sport or swimming or obstacle courses. They need to learn creativity with crafts or dancing. … We need to get these kids out playing and communicating and winning and losing so they can take our place in getting this country back to leading the world in economic and ethical ways.”
—Kids that grew up exclusively online need to leave the house and meet real people. Adults need that too.
“
As they step back and reassess, CEOs have seized upon creativity as the necessary element for enterprises that must reinvent their customer relationships and achieve greater operational dexterity. In face-to-face interviews with our consultants, they said creative leaders do the following:
• Disrupt the status quo. Every company has legacy products that are both cash—and sacred—cows. Often the need to perpetuate the success of these products restricts innovation within the enterprise, creating a window for competitors to advance competing innovations. As CEOs tell us that fully one-fifth of revenues will have to come from new sources, they are recognizing the requirement to break with existing assumptions, methods, and best practices.
• Disrupt existing business models. CEOs who select creativity as a leading competency are far more likely to pursue innovation through business model change. In keeping with their view of accelerating complexity, they are breaking with traditional strategy-planning cycles in favor of continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments to their business models.
• Disrupt organizational paralysis. Creative leaders fight the institutional urge to wait for completeness, clarity, and stability before making decisions. To do this takes a combination of deeply held values, vision, and conviction—combined with the application of such tools as analytics to the historic explosion of information. These drive decision making that is faster, more precise, and even more predictable.
Taken together, these recommendations describe a shift toward corporate cultures that are far more transparent and entrepreneurial. They are cultures imbued with the belief that complexity poses an opportunity, rather than a threat. They hold that risk is to be managed, not avoided, and that leaders will be rewarded for their ability to build creative enterprises with fluid business models, not absolute ones.
” —“What Chief Executives Really Want,” BusinessweekMay 2012
27 posts
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The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar “commodity.” It can’t be stockpiled. It becomes degraded through trade. It isn’t delivered by machines. Its quality rests entirely on the attention paid by one person to another. Even to speak of reducing the time involved is to misunderstand its value.
Care is not the only profession deserving renewed attention as a source of economic employment. Craft is another. It is the accuracy and detail inherent in crafted goods that endows them with lasting value. It is the time and attention paid by the carpenter, the seamstress and the tailor that makes this detail possible. The same is true of the cultural sector: it is the time spent practicing, rehearsing and performing that gives music, for instance, its enduring appeal. What — aside from meaningless noise — would be gained by asking the New York Philharmonic to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony faster and faster each year?
” —“Let’s Be Less Productive” - The New York TimesMoscow B&Bs
Coming to Summer Commune for only a few days? Consider staying at one of the many nearby B&Bs. Thanks to the Peterson Barn for providing these links.
Moscow
Andriëtte’s Bed, Book & Bicycle
A unique B, B & B in the Fort Russell neighborhood.Bedfinders
Alternative accommodations when motels are full.Browne Block Guest House
Guesthouse over Camas Prairie Winery in downtown Moscow.Granite Grove B&B (3 miles south of Moscow)
Paradise on the PalouseHaystack B&B
Privacy in your own suite of rooms, yet with the cozy feel of family.Julia’s Guest House
Two bedroom, family friendly guest apartment.Little River Bed and Breakfast
A tranquil park-like setting with unique accommidations provided by a Mongolian-style yurt and an RV siteMary Janes Farm
A stay off the beaten track (Open May 1-Sept 30)Sixth Street Retreat
Three guest apartments near downtown, 1 bedroom & 2 bedrooms.The Little Green Guesthouse
A cute cottage guesthouse near downtown Moscow.Wylie Lauder House
Bed & breakfast in a historical house near U of I campus.Moscow Chamber of Commerce
Listings of area lodging.Idaho Bed & Breakfast Association
Potlatch, Idaho (14 miles north of Moscow)
Laird House B&B
A renovated house on the National Register of Historic Places
Pullman Washington (8 mi west of Moscow)
Pullman Chamber of Commerce
Regularly updated room availability listWesson Bunkhouse and Wesson Barn Loft
A quiet country hide-away in Pullman.
Uniontown Washington (10 mi south of Pullman)
Churchyard Inn
Overlooking the rolling hills of the Palouse
Summer arts commune expected in Moscow →
dnews.com
We got some local coverage.
(there’s a paywall)
Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything? →
blogs.hbr.org
But here’s what I believe it might just be called tomorrow, when the history books have been written, and the debates concluded: a Eudaimonic Revolution. A sweeping, historic transformation in what we imagine a good life to be, and how, why, where, and when we pursue it.
“Renters are experiencing especially tough times of late: At the same time that renters’ incomes have fallen 4%, money spent on housing has increased by 4%.”
—
"An idea for next summer." →
heller.tumblr.com
The post that generated initial interest in Summer Commune from all the way back in June 10, 2011.
I was thinking about getting like one hundred cool young people to move to a small North American city for the summer. Move from Echo Park, Bushwick, The Mission, Wicker Park, Capitol Hill, or which ever neighborhood you are paying too much to live in to a designated locale. It’d be like a summer camp, but with more wine and potlucks.
You could use this time to save money while you: write your novel, record your album, postulate on 5th wave feminism, learn to grow food, practice sustainability, have fun, etc. I think we need to find a place that’s affordable, warm, close to nature, has a (small existing) community of sympathetic residents.
Is anybody interested? Does anyone want to join an exploratory committee on this idea? I am serious. Last year I said I’d be in Europe in 2011. I am writing this from London.
Here are some potential slogans: Occupy middle America. Gentrify the Midwest.
e-mail me joshuaheller [at] gmail.com
make some noise! →
soundcloud.com
Hey remember that band you’ve been talking about starting since, like, college? Well Nathan has offered his home recording and editing studio to Summer Communers!
With Audiophile 192 24-bit/192kHz Audio Interface, a 49-key Axiom controller, a Trigger Finger controller, Live 8, Reason 5, and a studio mic. Yep.
