Table of Contents

Our Trip- Written by Joel
Why Move to Community?
Daniel Quinn (author of the book Ishmael) working on Future Positive
A letter to Ted Turner about a film for a positive future
An E-mail letter to Blacklight Power
Freedom of Speech to End?
Federal Reserve Fears Y2K
What are we afraid of ?


Dear Friends, 

    With  all else  happening I  asked our 
son Joel (12) to  write  the report of our 
visit  to  communities.  We're now serious 
about   moving to  a rural  community well 
before a computer  systems collapse coming 
at  yr.  2,000.  The  more  we  talk  with 
computer  experts,  the  more dangerous it 
looks. Government and media may  be hiding 
the danger to avoid a panic before they're 
totally in control. More on that later. 

    Joel's report was much longer, so Judy 
edited it to fit. However, this homepage 
version should have it all.

My Trip

by Joel Rosenblum On October 16, my parents, a friend named Apollo, and I left on a car trip, for the purpose of visiting different intentional communities in America. I'm not used to riding long distances in cars, because my father is a pilot. I guess you could say I'm somewhat spoiled. It took us around 12 hours to reach the first intentional commune, near Bed- ford, Indiana. It is called 'Padanaram', meaning 'God's Valley'. The land they own is 1,800 acres large, and over 200 people live together on it. It has been going for over 30 years. Unlike a city, they all choose to live there, to be with one another. The community grows natural, all organic, foods to be eaten. However they still buy a lot of food from outside of the commune; in that respect they are not completely self-sufficient. People we met there liked to talk about things such as guns, government, and the community. They were not in favor of the American government, and they were open about that fact. People had lots of guns, and encouraged hunting in the community. In my experiences with the kids, I found that their upbringing was very unrestricted. They cursed all the time, and they had the values of their parents. Women there weren't considered equal to men, and there was one respected leader/founder of the community. Therefore it was not egalitarian. There was a certain negative attitude all of the children shared about outsiders of the community. I didn't like it, me being an outsider and all. I was grateful to finally leave that place and get back on the road. It took us 13 hours to reach East Wind, and by then it was very dark outside, so we couldn't get a good impression of the community at first glance. Luckily we had Apollo with us! Apollo is a member of the East Wind Community, so he knew just where to take us. We went to the kitchen and ate leftovers from a past dinner; it was terrific tasting food, and it was vegan too! After eating, we went to the building they named "Liliput", and that is where we had been told to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I got out of bed and took a look at the community for the first time in daylight. It was beautiful, and a nice change of scenery for a boy living in the inner city. We found our way to the kitchen/dining hall once again, for the breakfast meal. All of the meals there are eaten communally so there has to be enough food for everyone who comes to eat. Altogether, East Wind has 75 people, and around 1,000 acres of land. They are all equal, and they welcome outsiders to visit, and stay if they like. Living there would be completely free, because the community has its own businesses, and you wouldn't have to work outside of East Wind. They sell all sorts of nut butters, as well as hammocks and sandals. The people there look like hippies, with piercings and dredlocks. They're very friendly, and easy to get along with. A large garden sits outside, close to the kitchen. They use it to grow many things, so as to be more self-sufficient, and less dependent on outside foods, which would be a good idea for when our society collaps- es. We could eat from the garden and from the stash of nut butters, and live indefinitely. As for those in the urban areas... they may not be so fortunate. Overall, I got a good feeling about the place. Bikes were all over there, and you could just ride them at any time. So I took the opportunity, and it was great to be able to bike to where I needed to go, which saves a lot of time in the country where things are very spread out. It was one of the first communes my mother could see herself living in, and my dad couldn't see any problems, although he is less picky about where he lives; as long as it's not in a city. Each person has 40 hours to work in a week, but no one watches over you to see that your schedule is complete; they use the honor system. If you slack off then it is you who suffer because it is your com- munity, unlike the feeling you get from slacking off at a regular job. We plan a 3-week visitors stay there in January or February to see if we could fit in there. If so, then we hope to move to East Wind. When we left there early in the morning, we brought a bunch of yummy food with us. It took around 8 hours to get to Dunmire Hollow, in Tennessee which was our next destination. All the communities we visited after East Wind were on the way back to Philadelphia. Dunmire is a land trust with separate houses and no income sharing, very different from East Wind. The population was around eight. After a brief visit, we left, headed for Virginia. High Flowing is a new community in Floyd County, VA. Only about 3 people live there. We got there in the dark, just as it seems we do when we get to all the communes. We came to the communal trailer, and we had some supper, and talked with Starroot, who lives there. She is very knowledgable about the Mayan calendar. In the morning we went on the World Wide Web, and checked out our Mayan birthdates. It happened to be my mother's galactic birthday that day! We printed out all the charts we got from the Mayan calendar interpretation of us. Then we left and went to Abundant Dawn/Tekia Community (both part of the same community, but Tekia is income-sharing, and Abundant Dawn is not). It was only about 10 minutes away so we made it much before dark, finally! We just walked around the place for a while, trying to find out where we were supposed to go. We found someone's house on the land, but we kept going, in search of more people. Apollo and I went down a large, steep hill. After a while we found a structure, missing a few walls, inside of which was a man making hammocks. He told us that he was one of the 2 members of Tekia, and that to produce income for Tekia, he and a woman made hammocks and sold them. They produced around 500 a year, because that is what they had in their contract. After a great potluck supper, we stayed the night and left in the morning. We got into the car, and surprisingly made it up that steep hill we had come down. We were on our way now to Twin Oaks Community in Virginia. When we arrived there, only to stay for lunch, we surprised our friend Linda, who was visiting there and deciding whether to move there or not. She said she loved the community, and she was free to do her thing there, as long as she put in her quota of work hours (only 39 hours, because she was 55-years-old). I thought the place looked similar to East Wind, with a bit of Padanaram in it. The place seemed great, except that they had a schedule for everything, they were very organized, and each person had a chart to fill out for the hours of their day. For me that was much too restrictive, and it didn't feel as free as East Wind. The commune is about 30-years-old, and had been created after the ideas of psychologist B.F. Skinner, who wrote the book Walden II. Our next destination was The Family, a Christian community in Washington D.C., with a household of about 40 people. We learned about their practices, and some of their jargon as well. My dad was curious to know what their policy was with teenagers having sex. We knew that even though the community was very Christian it was all right for men and women to have multiple lovers, because they were all married to God. They told him that 16-year-olds are allowed to have sex with teenagers aged 16 to 19-years, and the older you got the less restrictions there were with age limits. There were no limits of course after the age of twenty (only that nobody under 16 is slept with). They called it, "Going for the Gold" and that was making love and getting pregnant, because they loved and cherished all of their babies, and there was no problem with having too many babies. They said that if the kids used a condom, they called it "Going for the Silver", meaning that they didn't intend to have a baby, but in God's eyes they are still a winner. The Family has their own music bands, and a studio in the basement. They gave us one of their CDs which their own band, "Dropped Out", produced. They have dormitories and separate rooms upstairs for all of the people that sleep there, so there wasn't much to see up there. On the first floor they had a nursery room and a small guest space, or nap place for the young children. When we left in the car, we were headed to Philadelphia, and we were done our 12-day-tour of communities. Apollo and I practiced a small amount of Spanish (but I forgot most of it the next day). Then a few hours later we were home and I started writing this story. Though Joel's story, even in its abridged form is pretty accurate, I'd like to add a few things. Our donated '85 Buick did very well the entire trip, no repair costs. However, on the one day Judy said was the worst day astrologically it blew not one, but two tires ! I can't believe distant planets caused that, but maybe the belief of millions does create tendencies which can produce such effects. Judy says the astrology around 2000 is extreme. THE FAMILY seems less dogmatic and more democratic than I'd expected. I hope other groups will connect more with them.

WHY MOVE TO COMMUNITY ?

I've longed to return to communal living ever since I came here, hoping to create that lifestyle here, and then, as a group move elsewhere. That never worked. But now, Judy and I are more united than ever in our determination to move to a large community as soon as we can. We see the danger ahead and how hard it will be to survive as a family, city or rural. Some friends are considering a move to other lands where things are still done by hand and the problems will be less. We hope by moving to a large income sharing community to have security and a way to care for hundreds who may come when things get really bad. Right now, because gov't and media people (fearing panic and personal loss) hide the truth about the problem, most folks are unaware and may be caught by surprise. See later for other ways we're trying to help.

FuturePositive Foundation

The following is from Daniel Quinn's ISHMAEL UPDATE Newsletter for 1997: [NOTE FROM ART FOR NEW READERS: Some who read this might not know my connection with Daniel and the book, ISHMAEL which won Ted Turner's first prize as the best novel leading to a positive future in a contest entered by about 2,500 authors around 1991. Ted was moved to create this contest after I asked him to make films on a positive future for the planet. We've been in contact with Dan ever since and he wrote the preface to our own disk-novel, OH BEAUTIFUL UPON THE EARTH.] Here's from Dan's recent newsletter: "Daniel has really been cutting back on traveling and speaking, but we were persuaded to spend a weekend in July, 1997 in Minneapolis with this group of human resources specialists and organizational consultants. They've been meeting four times a year for the past 20 years for purposes of personal and professional growth and support. Quite often, they choose a book as a focus for their weekend discussions and for this session ISHMAEL and THE STORY OF B [both by Daniel Quinn] were the choice. We didn't know what to expect, but what we got from the weekend was far beyond anything we could have expected. Here's what Daniel wrote his agent after we got home: "It's a truism of boxing that the blow that knocks you out is the one you don't see, and it sometimes happens that a boxer who receives such a blow will actually keep swinging for a few seconds before going down. That's the way it was with me in connection with this meeting. I got home from it not having seen the blow and went on with my life for a whole week before suddenly going down from it just two days ago. In a nutshell what the men and women of the Woodlands Group showed me (I now see) is that, like Ishmael, I've been holed up in a hidden room, shielding the world from my awful presence. I've been afraid that if I stepped out from behind the glass wall, everyone would take to their heels screaming like a panicked crowd in an old horror sci-fi movie. And this is why I've stubbornly declined to write the book that everyone right from the beginning has been asking me to write - pleading with me to write - which is a book telling them HOW. In ISHMAEL and THE STORY OF B, I've told them WHAT, but what they really want to know is HOW. I can now realize (at last) that I CAN write that book" "So, Daniel is now at work on FUTURE POSITIVE: HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD, and below is some work for the rest of us. "FuturePositive Foundation for a New Worldview Getting Organized - At last ! "In the next couple of months we're going to start something that readers have been demanding for years, an organization. "The second half of its name pretty well summarizes its purpose: to promulgate a new worldview - specifically the worldview articulated in the works of Daniel Quinn, of course. Among other things the foundation, centered in Houston, will sponsor AN INTERACTIVE WEBSITE providing a forum for discussion, a source of information and learning, and an opportunity for participants to connect with others of like mind. (This is already in place): http://www.futurepositive.org AN EDUCATIONAL CENTER where Daniel intends to make himself available for an hour or two on an almost daily basis for those who want to study with him. The center will offer a reading room where members can use computers, books, videotapes, and audiotapes. AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE planned for the spring of 1999 to provide the basis and to originate the network for ongoing regional and local conferences and further national and international conferences. DEVELOPMENT of products, materials, or other resources that will provide teachers with supplementary curriculum assistance. Production and publication of newsletters, brochures, tapes, books, CD ROMs, teacher's guides, discussion guides, and other materials. VOLUNTEER PROJECTS that will enable members to participate in the foundation's initiatives. Perhaps most importantly, FuturePosi- tive will offer something that readers have been asking for from the beginning: the opportunity to participate in further- ing the new world vision that attracted them to Daniel's work in the first place. WE'LL KEEP YOU POSTED !" THE ISHMAEL UPDATE PO BOX 163686 AUSTIN, TX 78716-3686 [I've been trying to phone Dan, but without luck. I'll await his e-mail. -Art]

BACK TO TED TURNER

Today, more than ten years after I had lunch with Ted Turner and gave him my letter about films on a positive future, the need is greater than ever, but also the possibilities, so I called CNN and was told to write: Dear Mr. Turner, We had lunch together at Windstar, Snowmass, CO in May of 1986 where we talked of producing films on a positive future for the planet. Later you created the Turner Tomorrow Award leading to publication of Daniel Quinn's ISHMAEL, but not yet to films depicting earth's positive future. I know you had some problems with that contest, and I'm very sorry about that. I don't suggest a repeat. Instead, continu- ing my own positive future search, I've found a team who are producing fine posi- tive future films that could inspire millions to work for the better world we all want. We also found a scientist/inventor, Dr. Randell Mills who has discovered a source of safe energy which is clean and abundant making it possible to provide electric power to every village in the world so that the benefits of electronic education (as well as electric light and water systems) could be everywhere, ending poverty without violent revolutions. I have available four taped interviews with Dr. Mills and I'll enclose a copy of his bio. www.blacklightpower.com is his site on the worldwide web. The future is great! Films showing our planet having a really positive future are far more urgent today that in 1986, because with the year 2,000 we are likely to experience severe disruptions due to failures of major computer systems. For decades, computer scientists have warned that the two digit system for specifying the year will not work after Dec. 31, 1999 because computers can't handle a year "00". Though many are working to correct this, there are many millions of program lines and, as with ecological problems, efforts have been "too little, too late". Unlike other prob- lems this one has an absolute and immov- able deadline. Some scientists admit we're heading for a major collapse of banking, government, transportation, communication and utilities in all advanced countries, and millions of lives could be lost. Visualizing a positive future may help motivate people to cooperate and share when the going gets rough, saving many lives. Mr. Jacque Fresco in Venus, FL is producing, at low cost, excellent positive future films. With your interest he could expand the work rapidly for CNN. I'd like to suggest you call him at (941) 465-0321 and find out how he can help. ... -Art R. I included two color photos and a B&W showing Ted reading my letter in 1986, Randy Mills & myself recently, and folk dancing with this caption: "Folk dancing at the community of The A- bode of The Message, a site which has been a cooperative community since it was built by the Shakers in 1776. People have lived in cooperative systems for 99% of their time on earth and various forms of cooper- ative communities are growing today." I also included a bio of Dr. Mills and financial info. on Blacklight Power Co. I'll FAX some more information on the Fed. Res. Bank's fears of the Millennium Bug. I shared the letter with Jacque Fresco who liked it. He has funding for 3 new 20 minute segments for school use, but needed 18 months to produce just one. We need Fresco's positive vision seen worldwide before 2000 so he needs the funding and promotion Turner and CNN could offer. LATE NOTE 12/2/97: Called Turner's office today and Blaine said he has my letter and a copy has gone to Turner Original Productions for their review. She suggested I call them on Friday, 12/5 to see how they are getting on with that.

NEW ENERGY PUBLICITY

I called Blacklight Power to let Randy know what's happening. Caroline suggested e-mail so I did that. Here's most of it: Dear Caroline, Actually I'd like to know what is happening at Blacklight, especially any progress towards the demo. (of sorts) Randy mentioned preparing for December, but first I'd like to fill you in on what's been happening with regards to publicity. You recall there was a controversy with Moses Henry who was very friendly and then suddenly stopped communicating for no apparent reason. Moses had promised a worldwide broadcast in October. It turns out that he was exceeding his authority. He is only one producer for Radio for Peace, very idealistic and enthusiastic at times, but does not make the decisions. Now I'm working with Richard Schneider of Portland, OR who is the actual founder and director of Radio for Peace and who has known me for many years. But Richard is also a principal of the Institute for Global Education and togeth- er with his wife runs a school in India where they hope to train the future lead- ers of that nation. Richard is very inter- ested in the work of Dr. Mills and very friendly and sent me a copy of the inter- view Moses did with Dr. Mills. He also has the tape of my interviews. However, he got it just as he was leaving for India, and I'm not sure if he heard it already or not. He expects to be back in a few days. He told me there was no way the material could be scheduled for broadcast before January, which I feel more comfortable with myself. I want this done really well, and this gives us time to do it properly. I feel the need to have all my interviews transcribed and then I'd be able to study what Dr. Mills said, reduce repetition (normal in 4 interviews), and also see where some further clarification might be required. I might have to study Randy's book or learn a bit more physics to explain some of the things he mentioned in a way that is scientifically accurate and also understandable to lay people. That takes time. I may also need to get some help from Randy if I can't understand some things. As it happens, Dr. Eugene Mallove of Infinite Energy Magazine also learned of the interviews, heard them and was very enthusiastic about publishing them. He is having them transcribed for me which is a great help. Of course, I'm well aware of some differences between Randy and the "Cold Fusion" advocates, which Randy mentioned in the interviews. That will not be omitted or treated in an unfriendly way. Scientists do have disagreements by which the truth comes out. Dr. Mallove plans publication in a January issue, and I hope by then to have everything as clear as possible. Otherwise I'd try to delay it until I do. There will be no personal attacks in the article, just a search for truth. I'm expecting to have the transcription in about 10 days. ... How close are we to some kind of demonstration ... of the process ? [I then wrote of the coming computer crash and the possible chaos that could result, especially if most people did not have the positive view of the future they would have if they knew about the new energy. I explained how urgent it is to get the news out to the millions in a convincing way before things got really bad, and told him we hope to move to a large rural community and prepare space for others in the next months. So, I'm very concerned to know what progress Randy is making with Blacklight Power so that before things get too diffi- cult, everyone will be aware of a really positive future, offering the elimination of severe poverty, new educational and travel opportunities, and whatever else abundant, clean energy can provide.] ... Sincerely, Art R.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH TO END ?

Yes, I fear the danger is very real that our freedom of speech is ending. As it's legal to take an electronic bullhorn and blast your message on the corner regardless of who might disapprove, it should also be fine to put any legal message on the peoples' air waves, the FM radio band - if you don't interfere with other stations. That was the ruling of a judge in California who refused to give the FCC an injunction to close down Free Radio Berkeley, an unlicensed 20 watt FM station there. She said she: "Could not grant the injunction that was requested as it might be a freedom of speech issue". And since then, with high quality low cost FM radio stations becoming quite cheap (Under $1,000), three or four hund- red such stations have sprung up nationwide. This week, a station in West Philadelphia that was offering news the corporate media might refuse to air, was given a "Cease and Desist Order" by the FCC, and has temporarily stopped broad- casting while studying the situation. Luckily the operators were prepared, and have three top lawyers ready to take the case without charge. While the Berkeley case set an important precedent, this one, in the city of the Liberty Bell, the Constitution and Bill of Rights may be the critical case where the peoples' right to the airwaves will be decided for years to come. Should the courts allow that only big corporations can have radio stations, as the FCC proposes (by requiring licenses costing at least $50,000 as a minimal requirement even for a low power station that interferes with no one), then the rights of the people may be forever lost, and media dictatorship finally installed. This may be the historic legal case of our time. Though lawyers may work gratis, there will be many other organizing expenses if the case is to be won for all of us, and those involved will need all the help they can get. In fact, the freedom to operate local stations in our cities might save millions of lives by helping organize local groups that can prepare their area for whatever may happen if large computer systems crash at the end of 1999. Only a small fraction of people will have computer communication before that time, but all can have an FM radio to hear of local meetings in their immediate neighborhood. So our right to low power FM is a life and death matter for city Americans, not just an issue of freedom or political idealism. Do help us take a stand here and now. E-mail or call Art or Judy at Aquarian with your suggestions. (215) 849-1259 or 849-3237. If long dis- tance let us call you right back for under 9 cents/min. (Feel free to ask, or get the 24 hr. 9 cent long distance rate for yourself from our phone cooperative, and a special lifetime deal till Dec. 31, 1998.)

FEDERAL RESERVE FEARS Y2K

This is an amazing statement, coming from the top of the Western financial world: By Reuters: 11/17/97 (Excerpted -Art.) MIAMI--The Fed's central bankers fear regional economic issues may distract European and Asian banks from dealing with a "millennium time bomb" threatening the world banking system, a Federal Reserve official said yesterday. "It's number one on my agenda every day," William Ryback, associate director for banking supervision at the Fed, said at a Latin American bankers conference. "We at the Fed are terribly worried." Ryback said he was not satisfied with software developed so far to adjust computer systems before 2000, a year most of the world's computers cannot recognize reliably since dates in computer programs have been typically rendered with only two digits for each year. The glitch may cost the world's institutions tens of billions of dollars to correct. Many fear that computers, in an era of electronic commerce may fail on January 1, 2000. South Africa expects to pay $4.4 billion to fix its computers, the government said recently. Ryback told reporters that European bankers were working hard on adapting their information equipment for the arri- val of a common European currency and had not fully focused on the millennium bug. Asian bankers, he said, were facing economic turmoil and were unlikely to devote much time to a computer problem, regardless of its importance. "We have been told that the Europeans are preoccu- pied with Ecu conversion," he said. .... Banks which fail to satisfy the Fed will be told to suspend operations and face financial penalties, he said. ... A key task for the Fed, he said, is to insulate the U.S. banking system from "a contagion effect," if [foreign] banks do not fix their millennium bugs. Ryback said ... the Fed was working up contingency plans in case [that happens.] .... the Fed might bar transactions between U.S. institutions and banks outside the U.S.... ******************* NUCLEAR TODAY, a newsletter for nuclear plants recently published a warning of how Y2K would affect them. To quote briefly: "Y2K affects virtually every facility, engineering, business and information systems. It has the potential to cause loss of control room annunciators, plant trips, inadvertent safety injections, .... missed preventive maintenance or surveil- ance testing, and common mode failures to mention a few (catastrophes" -Art). In effect, this means all nuclear plants may close by 1/1/2000 or risk meltdowns. They are just now considering it. Can live nukes test new programs ? ************** The following adaptation of Mandela's inaugural speech is by Apollo of East Wind, who spent a month with us, sharing our visit to communities.

WHAT ARE WE AFRAID OF?

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, `Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, loving and fabulous?' " Am I an EastWinder or am I breathing from the west winds? "Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the universe." Therefore we are all brothers and sisters that should love one another in any way we feel appropriate (as long as we do it responsibly). Go for the Gold! "Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking/minimizing so that other people won't feel insecure/uncomfortable around you." It is their own baggage that makes them feel comfy or not, not you. "We were born to make manifest the glory of the Kosmos that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others from theirs." If you heal yourself, love yourself, en- lighten and liberate yourself, you'll pro- ject and see that in others, hence heal- ing, loving, enlightening and liberating others as well as bringing that in them. Don't refuse the dance of life; focus and tune into the chorus of the creation and let your intuition take over. The time of the transition has come, whether you call it the imminent economic, political and social crash, the market/ stock exchange fall, the millennium bug, the polar shift, Armaggedon, the second coming of Christ, the alignment of the planets, sun and moon, the end of the Mayan and pyramidal calendar, the shift from Gregorian to real time. It does not matter what you name it, it is here and it is here to transform us into what we have forgotten and soon will remember again. Those living cooperatively and communally will increase their chances of survival in the "going back to the earth and simply aware lifestyle". Those will be the centers that, located on ley lines, will become universities of hope of a new era, the third millennium/ cinammon skin civilization. >From there we will build a new world from scratch. A moneyless society based on taking only what we need for the present and giving and sharing instead of taking greedily, accumulating for what? I ask. We need receiving and giving, serving, loving and accepting one another by focusing on the beautiful qualities that we all have. The sooner we make this transition, the less painful it will be. The sooner we un- derstand and apply it, the smoother it will go. It doesn't have to be destruc- tion and chaos. It is up to us to make our own reality a beautiful, loving one. W-A-K-E U-P and do something about it before it's too late. Save yourself pain, sorrow and desperation. Heal yourself now! With the infinite, eternal and omnis- cient loving and healing energy of our creator that flowed through me, Apollo. Peace and love, Joel, Art & Judy Rosenblum