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This week Diana Leafe Christian will be joining us to answer our questions about intentional communities.

There are up to four copies of her book Creating a Life Together up for grabs.

Diana herself will be popping into the forum over the next few days answering questions and joining in discussions.

From now through this Friday, any posts in this forum, ie the intentional community / city repair / ecovillage forum, could be selected to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up in Paul's daily-ish email..

The winner will be notified by email and must respond within 24 hours.

Her website is http://www.dianaleafechristian.org/

Posts in this thread won't count, but please feel free to say hi to Diana and make her feel at home!

Howdy Diana, Welcome to Permies ! I am looking forward to reading your response to my thread.

Hi, Diane. Welcome! I'm looking forward to your input here!

Hello! Very glad you "meet" you here. I am relatively new to the forum. Its so very nice to rub shoulders with like minded people.

Here are the complete details for each of the events like this one:

http://www.permies.com/t/15277/tnk/book-dvd-pie-promotion

Important things: the welcome thread is excluded by the PickWinner program; your best odds of winning are to tell friends to post (the winners are asked "who referred you?" and the referrer also gets a book); in the past a lot of people were picked as a winner but their email was not on the daily-ish email list, so they were skipped over.

Hi Diana!

Good to have you Diana!
I saw on your website that you live in Black Mountain, NC. I was just looking at Earthaven and am planning on stopping by on my travels out west (I'm taking the South route). I'd be going to the public tour Feb 6 I believe, or the first one in Feb. It'd be lovely to meet you and talk about community. I have been focusing on nonviolent communication much of this year and it has opened my relationships so much more. I would love to read your books to find out more on how community can work on a larger scale than just one on one communication skills.

Thanks for Writing,

- Melanie

Love your work Diane!

I've read many of your articles and had once been very active on ic.org.

I refer many to that site and the splendid info there. I admire what you and your staff have done.

I've recently found a few friends here in the Ozarks who are burnt out on 'community' mostly because of the folks who have burned them.

Paper Towel people. You know the sort. They rip you off, use you and then throw you away. They use and abuse and have a disposable attitude when it comes to relationships.

Well, not knowing this, I was talking about 'community' and the hurts came to the surface. It was ugly as I saw the pain. So, I stopped sharing, for a bit.

Then, I realized something. After many weeks of helping on the farm here, expecting nothing in return, I came to give not take. We've been busy clearing pastures of some trees, need the firewood anyways. Today we were pickin' rocks out of the pasture after it had been plowed and planted for next years feed. After a few hours my back told me that I wasn't in my 30's anymore!

So, after thinking about what my friend had said about those who came before me, I explained, "Michael, I'm not asking for community from you...... I am offering community TO you."

That's all that needed to be said. We went back to pickin' rocks.

But I expect that he's thinkin' about it, fer sure.

Welcome to the forum Diane!

I do believe this is my first post!

Hi Diana! I will take the opportunity to ask for a few inputs!

Would love to win Diana's Christian book, staying warm here in Hungry Horse, looking at seed catalogs

Thank you Diana, for your book which I recommend fairly constantly!

Thank you Cindy, Yolanda, Melanie, Ebediah, and Xisca. (Ebediah, I appreciate your compliments to the good work of the FIC and their website, ic.org. However I'm not part of the organization and can't take any credit. I used to work for them, though, as editor of Communities magazine.)
Diana

I looked at your project on your thread, Xisca -- looks interesting. I was in Spain last summer teaching a workshop in Barcelona, but nowhere near the Canaries. And lots more rain there in Catalonia. Good luck with your project!

Thank you for the welcome too, Tyler, and I'm so glad you like my book. Let me know if you'd like the, um, extremely short "sequel," which is a 15-page handout for my workshop, "The 19 Steps: How People Typically Start Successful Ecovillages." Just email me It includes some things I learned after I wrote the book. if you want it - diana~at~ic.org

(I'm sorry I misspelled your name, Cindee. )

Just re-read your message Melanie and see that you're coming here. I don't usually say Yes when people want to visit me when they visit Earthaven, as I'm usually working all day. However I'd like to make an exception for a Permies forum person, so do check in when you're here. Do you need overnight lodging? I ask because my mother and I offer indoor lodging for Earthaven visitors, as another option besides Earthaven's campground (which closes in the winter.) Here's the link: http://dianaleafechristian.org/lodging.html
Diana

Thank you, Diana and I did email you and received your handout.

So I run the PickWinner program and it returns ten posts.

I peruse the ten posts and pick the best two posts .... excellent!

I go to the daily-ish email to verify that they are signed up for the daily-ish email and ... neither of them are.

Damn. And those were really good posts too.

Okay, I run the PickWinner again. 4 of the 10 posts that the PickWinner app comes back with are by the same person! So clearly the PickWinner loves this person. And the posts do look good. And .... damn, not in the daily-ish email. One down and one to go. Another good post by somebody else .... and ... YES! They are in the daily-ish email!

Congratulations to:

Robert Ray

I have now sent you an email requesting your snail mail address and the email address of the person that referred you (cuz that person gets a book too). You have 24 hours to respond!

Hey Paul!

Nice to hear about this winning game!

I was surprised this morning to read the email, and found out I was one of the selected ones. However I already own a copy of Diana's book!

So I am glad that someone winds! Congratulations, Robert

By the way, I say would like to say "Hi" to Diana, if she is here!

I really enjoyed your book, especially its content, usefulness and style of writing!

It really helped in my community search, and also in understanding all the problems of communities such as the biggest issues in intentional communities. Because of it, I actually joined one community, after visiting a few (and it happened without any big intent from my part). Now I guess I need a book how about each of us can also be pioneers and create more community in their neighborhood or even start one.

Somehow I found out that most, if not all communities still make the same "mistakes" of mainstream society that are they attempting to fix: money problems, focusing too much in ideology, too less in practice, communication problems, lack of a proper consensus structure and horizontal communication and non-hierarchy, sustainability and more total self-sufficiency, at a food level and/or money level.

I guess people do not change, only the way that people physically live closer to each other, depending more on each other. Other than that, I think the fundamentals of human nature and its troubles still continue. Well, this has been just my experience.

Yeah! I look forward to reading Diana' s book. Thank you.

Thanks for your nice words about my book, Paolo, and congratulations Robert, for winning it.

Paolo, you are so right that the ills of mainstream culture follow us right through the community gate. Do they ever! This is my main focus these days -- how to help newly forming communities know this in advance and take preemptive actions to reduce the dysfunction that can occur, and to help already existing communities deal with these issues too. One thing I'm focusing on is consensus decision-making. Please take a look at my article, "Busting the Myth that Consensus-with-Unanimity is Good for Communities, Part I," the lead article in last month's Ecovillages newsletter (which I publish). I

It's here: http:/www.EcovillageNews.org

This month and the next I'll continue theseries, which already started running in Communities magazine last June. I'm getting lots of positive comments about the series. I actually believe this kind of consensus is a Type One Error, in Permaculture terms, and I say so in the 2nd article in the series, out in Ecovillages newsletter this month.

If you're interested, I'd be happy to send you, and anyone else who'd like it, a copy of my 15-page workshop handout, "The 19 Steps: How People Typically Form Successful New Ecovillages." It's got new/better information (though short!) than when I wrote Creating a Life Together. Just email me at diana~at~ic.org.

All good wishes,

Diana