commune Archives - The Rumpus

A Utopia of One’s Own: Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk

. . . utopia is a living, breathing, imperfect thing that expands and grows with us. It’s always a reflection of our individual selves, of the larger communities we choose, and of the time and place we are born into.

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Living Proof: A Review of Wild Wild Country

The story of Rajneeshpuram is told in a series of events and everything within it is true. But it is not real. It does not come alive.

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Rumpus Original

My End of the World at Rajneeshpuram

I used to play a game with myself: who should die first, me or daddy? When I was very little, I could never come up with a good answer.

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Other

The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #5: Vulcan Mind Meld, Anyone?

Your Storming Bohemian is emphatically a child of the early 70s. At fifteen, I lived in a hippie commune under the guidance of an eccentric psychologist, later diagnosed as bipolar.…

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Rumpus Original

The Commune

Our house, we believed, was a microcosm of that country. Every month, we’d gather at the kitchen table for our house meeting, where we, like politicians, unveiled our big plans for change.

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Comics

Fresh Comics #4: Making Babies!

Aside from defecating or having sex, giving birth is one of the most common life experiences. Half of the world’s population is capable of doing it and every single one…

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Rumpus Original

Like Elsa

About twenty of us met in a Muir Woods parking lot on a cool, grey Thursday morning. We hiked up a hill for a mile or so, through Coastal Redwoods, ending up on a dusty road with only a mailbox as a signpost.

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Other

Mixed Vibes

Erika Anderson writes for Vanity Fair about growing up on The Farm, at one time the largest commune in the United States with 1,500 people. She shares not only its…

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Mini-Interviews

The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #35: Alex Behr in Conversation with Terri Manning

In the late 1980s, Terri Manning and her sister, Barbara, lived in one of San Francisco’s painted ladies near Golden Gate Park. This lady, a huge, rambling Victorian with peeling paint,…

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