Ecovillage at Ithaca

While the slow and lumbersome governmental beast ambles (hopefully) towards some type of climate-related legislation, there are plenty of people who aren’t willing to wait for the politicians. Bard students are entering Recyclemania season (more about that later). Sustainable Hudson Valley Organization is dashing about urging people to take up the “10% Challenge” (10% reduction in emissions by the end of 2010!). And right here in New York, people are building ecovillages-- intentional communities, created to resolve that perpetual dispute between man and nature.

Over Thanksgiving Break I paid a visit to the Ecovillage at Ithaca. I’m writing my Senior Project on ecovillages. Ever since I heard of them, I’ve been in love with the idea. And you know the usual fate of those starry-eyed idealists who fall in love with an idea. Their dream falls to pieces before their eyes; the people they idolize fall off their pedestals; their hearts and souls are brutally crushed on the harsh wheel of reality. So I got on the bus for Ithaca with some trepidation. Would the ecovillage (the REAL ecovillage, at last— after reading books about them for weeks!) be everything I dreamed it would be? Or would I meet only with disappointment?

I stumbled with my suitcase through the dark to the Common House. There I found the ecovillagers dining, and a plate set aside especially for me-- the most delicious vegetarian meal I had ever eaten! I was warmly invited to join a table, and sat down and listened to my heart’s content. The conversation was very much like it is at Bard College; wry humor, talk of social justice, a little good-natured teasing. They teased me for being “an anthropologist come to study them,” and joked that “maybe we should act weird or something,” so I would have something interesting to write down about them. The impression was very much that of ordinary people, mildly surprised and amused to find themselves at the center of all this fuss. “We have a nice shelf of all these theses people write about us,” one of the elderly gentleman laughed.

I had this little list of interview questions, stamped and approved by the Bard Institutional Research Board. One of the questions was, “What influence do you think the Global Ecovillage Movement will have on the future of the world?” A sweet lady named Graham (“like the cracker!”) had consented to be interviewed after I helped her spread mulch on her garden. When I came to that question she laughed and said, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure there are people in the ecovillage who are thinking about that. But I don’t think about that— I’d rather be out…. planting garlic or something, you know!”

I had a couple of tour guides over the weekend. There was a Cornell professor who talked on very impressively about solar panels and insulated homes and straw-bale housing and the economic efficiency of shared resources, arrays of facts and figures. The vanguard of the war on global warming, so to speak. The other guide was a longtime ecovillage resident named Jim who entertained himself during the tour by making off-putting jokes. Showing us the root cellar, he said, “This is where we lock up people we don’t like. Ah ha ha!” Then, wandering into the Common House’s Recreation Room, we stumbled upon a couple of normal-looking teenagers enjoying a foosball table. With a grand flourish (as if displaying a couple of savages clad in nothing but war paint and eagle feathers) Jim proclaimed, “There are the REAL ecovillagers! You can observe them in their Native Environment.” The teenagers were startled, their foosball game interrupted by a group of twenty people staring at them intently. Then, catching onto the joke, they started making loud monkey noises and jumping about. I snorted laughter into my hand as we excited the building.

Besides taking the tour, I also ate the Thanksgiving meal with the ecovillagers. A potluck of about fifty people crowded themselves into the Common House dining room. We began the meal by singing a song together, and then there was a “Grateful Ritual.” Everyone said a sentence about what they were grateful for, and lighted a little candle next to their plate. One golden-haired young child said he was grateful for, “All the love and smiles which inhabit this Earth,” and I just about died from the cuteness of it. A lady with a mischievous smile proclaimed, “I say this every year—I’m grateful for chocolate!” Most people were grateful for food and family. I found it all incredibly moving, but I admit that fifty people are rather a lot to listen to on a hungry afternoon. Towards the end one grumpy old man (who’s stomach must have been rumbling) stood up and said, “I’m grateful this Grateful Ritual will be over soon….”

It was so fun laughing and chatting with everyone. Imagine Kline cafeteria at Bard, only with people of all different ages and much better food. I exchanged stories with a retired old lady who had (like me) had traveled to Africa. And this cute kid told me about naming the fish in the local pond. “We named one of them Gold-y, and another fish we named Orange-y, and then one of the fish died and floated to the top, and Daddy named THAT fish Dead-y…..”

When we had all stuffed ourselves, a group of enthusiasts clamored for the musicians in the group to perform“Uncle Dave’s Grace,” apparently a Thanksgiving tradition there. I’ll give you some of the lyrics:

Thanksgiving day, Uncle Dave was our guest
He reads the Progressive, which makes him depressed.
We asked Uncle Dave if he’d like to say grace,
A dark desolation crept over his face

“Thanks,” he began as he gazed at his knife,
“To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life
All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed
Where life was a drag, then they cut off his head.”

“Thanks,” he went on, “for the grapes in my wine
Picked by sick women of seventy-nine
Scrambling all morning for bunch after bunch
Then brushing the pesticides off of their lunch.”

It goes on like that for nine or ten verses, everything from jungles cut down to make our chairs, to unrenewable fossil fuels heating our rooms, to mines that make silverware polluting rivers; the whole kaboodle. Feel free to Google it, but I won’t inflict it all on you here. I’ll just skip to the end.

Sighed Uncle Dave, “though there’s more to be told
The wine’s getting warm and the bird’s getting cold”
And with that he sat down as he mumbled again
“Thank you for everything, amen”

We felt so guilty when he was all through
It seemed there was one of two things we could do
Live without food, in the nude, in a cave,
Or next year have someone say grace besides Dave.

It was the first time I had heard that song. I was struck by how it combined a passion for social justice with an ironic sense of humor. As someone who tends to be a little bit overly zealous, I’m accustomed to people wincing when I show signs of launching into some rant. But this song made me feel compassion for the people who end up on the receiving end of my rants, so to speak. I can imagine the Grandma resting her head in her hands after Uncle Dave’s speech, thinking, “Good grief! I just wanted to have a nice family dinner…….. No one’s going to enjoy my cooking now….”

That song was very typical of Ecovillage at Ithaca in general. People clearly felt deeply about environmental and social justice. (The Bed ‘n Breakfast I stayed at was run by a woman who had started a nonprofit to help the 3rd world.) But they didn’t like making speeches. They didn’t take themselves too seriously. They knew how to laugh at themselves. I’m used to living among college students, some of whom take themselves very, very, seriously. But if you can’t see the humor of it all, you’re just like poor Uncle Dave: broadcasting doom, gloom, and destruction everywhere he goes.

The moral of the song is, don’t be like Uncle Dave!!! When people hear that kind of rhetoric, they get overwhelmed. They feel like their choices have narrowed to “living in a cave” or trying not to think about it. While the world boils because of global warming, and the genocides rampage unchecked, and the child workers in the factories in China make knicks and knacks for our greedy American appetites….. I’m sure you’ve all written some variation on that essay.

What if the world isn’t saved by the grand theories we write in our essays, but by the simple things? Simple things like planting garlic. Or planting a tree, or giving hugs, or dropping a can in the recycling bin. (Recyclemania! More to come in following blogs!) Surprisingly enough, you can save the world without being pretentious about it…….

I can blather about paradigm shifts and “alternative modes of living,” about “addressing society’s problems at a systemic level,” social fragmentation, and crass consumerism. But I’m sure you’ve all heard that all before. So I’m just going to keep it simple:

Ecovillage at Ithaca was pretty special. It wasn’t just a matter of chickens, or solar panels, or Community Supported Agriculture, even though those are all awesome things to have. I keep talking about how much the social atmosphere reminded me so much of Bard. See, there was a reason for that.

Bard is an amazing place because of the degree of community we enjoy here. Sometimes I have the feeling of being nestled in the center of a giant extended family. My friends are like my immediate family, but even the most distant Bard acquaintance is like a cousin-once-removed, whom I may, if I choose, address in a tone of friendly camaraderie.

I don’t like to think how many of us lose that after graduating. The naturally gregarious, perhaps, continue to maintain extended social groups, but I can’t keep count of the number of adults who have said to me, “College? Those were the best years of my life!” The idea that at the age of twenty one, I have already passed over the peak of my happiness, is horrifying to me. But I think the reason people remember college as a golden age is because of the friendships they formed there. Friendships which are no longer so easier to form, once you cannot meet people in the cafeteria and the dormitory.

The Ecovillage at Ithaca was founded to help the planet by sharing and using fewer resources. But the side-effect of sharing resources was a communal kind of living which did much to connect neighbor to neighbor. These people went on to become adults without giving up what I think of as the best part of college life.
As I waited for the taxi to take me away from Ecovillage at Ithaca, I listen to some woman hollering a conversation from one house to another. In an earlier era of American history, such a conversation would have been commonplace. I don’t know how commonplace such conversations are now. It went something like this:

“I grew a giant squash! I’m putting half of it in the Common House cooler for you to cook this evening, okay?”

“How do I coooook it!”

“I don’t know. Cut it up or something. Sprinkle salt and paper and broil it for a few minutes.”

“How many minutes?”

“How should I know? Until it looks done!”

(Another woman joining in) “I have some celery you can use.”

“What if I put the celery in a soup?”

“Squash soup! Mmmmmm delicious….. I can’t wait!”

I’m sure every Bard student wants to make her or his mark on the world. I really believe every one of you is going to go out there and do great deeds. But the great deeds won’t be what makes life worth living. What makes life worth living is the preciousness of everyday things. Like yummy squash soup.

So hold onto your sense of humor. Appreciate the everyday things. Work to make a difference in the world, sure, but seek out an environment where people love you and a state of mind where you love yourself. And that’s all I’ve got for today.