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by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:29 am

Stewart Brand
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Stewart Brand in 2018
Born December 14, 1938 (age 80)
Rockford, Illinois, United States
Occupation Writer, editor, entrepreneur
Known for Whole Earth Catalog
The WELL
Long Now Foundation
Spouse(s) Lois Jennings (1966–1973)
Ryan Phelan (1983–present)[1]
Website sb.longnow.org

Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

Life

Brand was born in Rockwell, Illinois and attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He studied biology at Stanford University, graduating in 1960. As a soldier in the U.S. Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing.[2] A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute, photography at San Francisco State College, and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD, in Menlo Park, California. In 1966, he married mathematician Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American.[3]

Brand has lived in California since the 1960s. He and his second wife live on Mirene, a 64-foot (20 m)-long working tugboat. Built in 1912, the boat is moored in a former shipyard in Sausalito, California.[4] He works in Mary Heartline, a grounded fishing boat about 100 yards (90 metres) away.[4] One of his favorite items is a table on which Otis Redding is said to have written "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay". (Brand acquired it from an antiques dealer in Sausalito.)[4]

Merry Pranksters

By the mid-1960s, Brand became associated with author Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters". With his partner Ramón Sender Barayón, he produced the Trips Festival in San Francisco, an early effort involving rock music and light shows. This was one of the first venues at which the Grateful Dead performed in San Francisco. About 10,000 hippies attended, and Haight-Ashbury soon emerged as a community.[5] Tom Wolfe describes Brand in the beginning of his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

NASA images of Earth

Earth from space, by ATS-3 satellite, 1967.

Earthrise, by William Anders, Apollo 8, 1968.

In 1966, Brand campaigned to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space. He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each[6] asking, "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?".[7] During this campaign, Brand met Richard Buckminster Fuller, who offered to help Brand with his projects.[8] In 1967, a satellite, ATS-3, took the photo. Brand thought the image of our planet would be a powerful symbol. It adorned the first (Fall 1968) edition of the Whole Earth Catalog.[9] Later in 1968, a NASA astronaut took an Earth photo,[7] Earthrise, from Moon orbit, which became the front image of the spring 1969 edition of the Catalog. 1970 saw the first celebration of Earth Day.[6] During a 2003 interview, Brand explained that the image "gave the sense that Earth's an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it's so graphic, this little blue, white, green and brown jewel-like icon amongst a quite featureless black vacuum."

Douglas Engelbart

In late 1968, Brand assisted electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart with The Mother of All Demos, a famous presentation of many revolutionary computer technologies (including hypertext, email, and the mouse) to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.[10]

Brand surmised that given the necessary consciousness, information, and tools, human beings could reshape the world they had made (and were making) for themselves into something environmentally and socially sustainable.[11]

Whole Earth Catalog

During the late 1960s and early 1970s about 10 million Americans were involved in living communally.[12] In 1968, using the most basic approaches to typesetting and page-layout, Brand and his colleagues created issue number one of The Whole Earth Catalog, employing the significant subtitle, "access to tools".[13] Brand and his wife Lois travelled to communes in a 1963 Dodge truck known as the Whole Earth Truck Store, which moved to a storefront in Menlo Park, California.[11] That first oversize Catalog, and its successors in the 1970s and later, reckoned a wide assortment of things could serve as useful "tools": books, maps, garden implements, specialized clothing, carpenters' and masons' tools, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers, and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" (written in the form of a letter to a friend) of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The information also described where these things could be located or purchased. The Catalog's publication coincided with the great wave of social and cultural experimentation, convention-breaking, and "do it yourself" attitude associated with the "counterculture".

The influence of these Whole Earth Catalogs on the rural back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the communities movement within many cities, was widespread throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. A 1972 edition sold 1.5 million copies, winning the first U.S. National Book Award in category Contemporary Affairs.[14]

CoEvolution Quarterly

To continue this work and also to publish full-length articles on specific topics in the natural sciences and invention, in numerous areas of the arts and the social sciences, and on the contemporary scene in general, Brand founded the CoEvolution Quarterly (CQ) during 1974, aimed primarily at educated laypersons. Brand never better revealed his opinions and reason for hope than when he ran, in CoEvolution Quarterly #4, a transcription of technology historian Lewis Mumford's talk "The Next Transformation of Man", in which he stated that "man has still within him sufficient resources to alter the direction of modern civilization, for we then need no longer regard man as the passive victim of his own irreversible technological development."

The content of CoEvolution Quarterly often included futurism or risqué topics. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something valuable to say, Brand presented articles by many respected authors and thinkers, including Lewis Mumford, Howard T. Odum, Witold Rybczynski, Karl Hess, Orville Schell, Ivan Illich, Wendell Berry, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Bateson, Amory Lovins, Hazel Henderson, Gary Snyder, Lynn Margulis, Eric Drexler, Gerard K. O'Neill, Peter Calthorpe, Sim Van der Ryn, Paul Hawken, John Todd, Kevin Kelly, and Donella Meadows. During ensuing years, Brand authored and edited a number of books on topics as diverse as computer-based media, the life history of buildings, and ideas about space colonies.

He founded the Whole Earth Software Review, a supplement to the Whole Earth Software Catalog, in 1984. It merged with CoEvolution Quarterly to form the Whole Earth Review in 1985.

California government

From 1977 to 1979, Brand served as "special adviser" to the administration of California Governor Jerry Brown.

The WELL

In 1985, Brand and Larry Brilliant founded The WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link"), a prototypical, wide-ranging online community for intelligent, informed participants the world over.[15] The WELL won the 1990 Best Online Publication Award from the Computer Press Association.[16] Almost certainly the ideas behind the WELL were greatly inspired by Douglas Engelbart's work at SRI International; Brand was acknowledged by Engelbart in "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968 when the computer mouse and video conferencing were introduced.[17]

Global Business Network

Brand listening in Sausalito, California, in 2009.

During 1986, Brand was a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab. Soon after, he became a private-conference organizer for such corporations as Royal Dutch/Shell, Volvo, and AT&T Corporation. In 1988, he became a co‑founder of the Global Business Network, which explores global futures and business strategies informed by the sorts of values and information which Brand has always found vital. The GBN has become involved with the evolution and application of scenario thinking, planning, and complementary strategic tools. For fourteen years, Brand was on the board of the Santa Fe Institute (founded in 1984), an organization devoted to "fostering a multidisciplinary scientific research community pursuing frontier science." He has also continued to promote the preservation of tracts of wilderness.

Whole Earth Discipline

The Whole Earth Catalog implied an ideal of human progress that depended on decentralized, personal, and liberating technological development—so‑called "soft technology". However, during 2005 he criticized aspects of the international environmental ideology he had helped to develop. He wrote an article called "Environmental Heresies"[18] in the May 2005 issue of the MIT Technology Review, in which he describes what he considers necessary changes to environmentalism. He suggested among other things that environmentalists embrace nuclear power and genetically modified organisms as technologies with more promise than risk.[19]

Brand later developed these ideas into a book and published the Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto in 2009. The book examines how urbanization, nuclear power, genetic engineering, geoengineering, and wildlife restoration can be used as powerful tools in humanity's ongoing fight against global warming.[20]

In a 2019 interview, Brand described his perspective as "post-libertarian", indicating that at the time when the Whole Earth Catalog was being written, he did not fully understand the significance of the role of government in the development of technology and engineering.[19]

The Long Now Foundation

Brand is co‑chair and President of the Board of Directors of The Long Now Foundation. Brand chairs the foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT). This series on long-term thinking has presented a large range of different speakers including: Brian Eno, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, Philip Rosedale, Jimmy Wales, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, Ray Kurzweil, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, and many others.

Works

Stewart Brand is the initiator or was involved with the development of the following:

• The Whole Earth Catalog in 1968
• CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974
• The Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review in 1984
• Whole Earth Review in 1985
• Point Foundation
• Global Business Network (co-founder)[19]
• The WELL in 1985, with Larry Brilliant
• The Hackers Conference in 1984
• Long Now Foundation in 1996, with computer scientist Danny Hillis—one of the Foundation's projects is to build a 10,000 year clock, the Clock of the Long Now
• New Games Tournament (was involved initially, but left the project)
• In April 2015, Brand joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.[21][22] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Barry Brook. Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague[23]

Publications

Books

• II Cybernetic Frontiers, 1974, ISBN 0-394-49283-8 (hardcover), ISBN 0-394-70689-7 (paperback)
• The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, 1987, ISBN 0-670-81442-3 (hardcover); 1988, ISBN 0-14-009701-5 (paperback)
• How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, 1994. ISBN 0-670-83515-3
• The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, 1999. ISBN 0-465-04512-X
• Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Viking Adult, 2009. ISBN 0-670-02121-0

As editor or as co-editor

• The Whole Earth Catalog, 1968–72 (original editor, winner of the National Book Award, 1972)
• Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, 1971
• Whole Earth Epilog: Access to Tools, 1974, ISBN 0-14-003950-3
• The (Updated) Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, 16th edition, 1975, ISBN 0-14-003544-3
• Space Colonies, Whole Earth Catalog, 1977, ISBN 0-14-004805-7
• As co-editor with J. Baldwin: Soft-Tech, 1978, ISBN 0-14-004806-5
• The Next Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, 1980, ISBN 0-394-73951-5;
• The Next Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, revised 2nd edition, 1981, ISBN 0-394-70776-1
• As editor-in-chief: Whole Earth Software Catalog, 1984, ISBN 0-385-19166-9
• As editor-in-chief: Whole Earth Software Catalog for 1986, "2.0 edition" of above title, 1985, ISBN 0-385-23301-9
• As co-editor with Art Kleiner: News That Stayed News, 1974–1984: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly, 1986, ISBN 0-86547-201-7 (hardcover), ISBN 0-86547-202-5 (paperback)
• Introduction by Brand: The Essential Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas (Introduction by Brand), 1986, ISBN 0-385-23641-7
• Foreword by Brand: Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age, editor: Kevin Kelly, 1988, ISBN 0-517-57084-X
• Foreword by Brand: The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog, editor: Ted Schultz, 1989, ISBN 0-517-57165-X
• Foreword by Brand: Whole Earth Ecolog: The Best of Environmental Tools & Ideas, editor: J. Baldwin, 1990, ISBN 0-517-57658-9

See also

• Bright green environmentalism

References

• Phil Garlington, "Stewart Brand," Outside magazine, December 1977.
• Sam Martin and Matt Scanlon, "The Long Now: An Interview with Stewart Brand," Mother Earth News magazine, January 2001[24]
• "Stewart Brand" (c.v., last updated September 2006)[25]
• Massive Change Radio interview with Stewart Brand, November 2003[26]
• Whole Earth Catalog, various issues, 1968–1998.
• CoEvolution Quarterly (in the 1980s, renamed Whole Earth Review, later just Whole Earth), various issues, 1974–2002.
1. "Bio..." Retrieved 2014-05-20.
2. Stewart Brand. "Big Think Interview With Stewart Brand - Big Think". Big Think.
3. Brand 2009, p. 236
4. Lewine, Edward (April 19, 2009). "On the Waterfront". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-11-02.
5. Brand, Stewart. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog. Stanford University Libraries via Google. Event occurs at 32:30. Retrieved 2009-11-07.
6. Brand, Stewart. "Photography changes our relationship to our planet". Smithsonian Photography Initiative. Archived from the original on 2008-05-30. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
7. Brand 2009, p. 214
8. Leonard, Jennifer. "Stewart Brand on the long view". Archived from the original on 2007-12-12. Retrieved 2013-02-05.
9. The front cover of the Fall 1968 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog showing the AST-3 image of 10 November 1967
10. Fisher, Adam (9 December 2018). "How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos". Wired. Retrieved 12 December2018.
11. Kirk, Andrew G. (2007). Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. KSBW. University Press of Kansas via Amazon.com. p. 42. ISBN 0-7006-1545-8.
12. Turner, Fred. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture : Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226817415. OCLC 62533774.
13. Kirk, Andrew G. (2007). Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. KSBW. University Press of Kansas via Amazon.com. p. 48. ISBN 0-7006-1545-8.
14. "National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.
15. Fred., Turner, (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture : Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226817415. OCLC 62533774.
16. Katie Hafner, The WELL: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community:(2001) Carroll & Graf Publishers ISBN 0-7867-0846-8
17. "(5:26:00)". Youtube.com. 2007-08-21. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
18. "Environmental Heresies". MIT Technology Review.
19. Wiener, Anna (2018-11-16). "The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-05-18.
20. Stewart Brand (2009). Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02121-5.
21. "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
22. Eduardo Porter (April 14, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". The New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2015. On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the "Eco-modernist Manifesto."
23. "Authors An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.
24. [1][dead link]
25. "Bio". sb.longnow.org.
26. PDF Archived May 18, 2005, at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

• Binkley, Sam. Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
• Brokaw, Tom. "Stewart Brand." BOOM! Voices of the Sixties. New York: Random House, 2007.
• Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007.
• Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. New York: Penguin, 2005.
• Turner, Fred From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. 2006. ISBN 0-226-81741-5.

External links

• Official website
• Works by or about Stewart Brand in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by Stewart Brand at Open Library
• Stewart Brand at TED
• Stewart Brand Papers housed at Stanford University Libraries
• Appearances on C-SPAN

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:34 am

Portola Institute
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Portola Institute
Type
Nonprofit
Founded Menlo Park, California (1966)
Headquarters 1115 Merrill St. Menlo Park, California U.S.
Key people
Dick Raymond

The Portola Institute was a "nonprofit educational foundation" founded in Menlo Park, California in 1966 [1] by Dick Raymond.[2] The Portola institute helped to develop other organizations such as The Briarpatch Society. It was also the publisher of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog beginning with the first issue in 1968.[2] The first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog notes that the catalog is one division of The Portola Institute and that other activities of the Institute include: "computer education for all grade levels, simulation games for classroom use, new approaches to music education, Ortega Park Teachers Laboratory." [1] Raymond and Brand later collaborated to form the Point Foundation.[2]

Notes

1. Stewart Brand. Whole Earth Catalog. Fall 1968: Inside back cover.
2. Andrew G. Kirk. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007): 70.

References

• Brand, Stewart. Whole Earth Catalog. Fall 1968.
• Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007.
• Turner, Fred From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. 2006. ISBN 0-226-81741-5.

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:37 am

Point Foundation (environment)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Point Foundation
Type
Nonprofit
Founder Stewart Brand and Dick Raymond

The Point Foundation was a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco and founded by Stewart Brand and Dick Raymond.[1] It published works related to the Whole Earth Catalog.[2] It was also a co-owner of The WELL.[3]

Notes

1. Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism, Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007, pp. 120-122.
2. Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006, p. 294.
3. Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. p. 142.

References

• Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007.
• Turner, Fred From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. 2006. ISBN 0-226-81741-5.

External links

• The future of Point: a growing dialog - the Point Foundation

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:41 am

The WELL
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/19/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Type of site
Virtual community
Available in English
Owner The WELL Group Inc.
Website well.com
Launched February 1985; 34 years ago[1]

The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. As of June 2012, it had 2,693 members.[2] It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on The WELL range from deeply serious to trivial, depending on the nature and interests of the participants.[3]

History

The WELL was started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985, and the name (an acronym for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)[4] is partially a reference to some of Brand's earlier projects, including the Whole Earth Catalog. Initially The WELL was owned 50% by The Point Foundation (publishers of the Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth Review) and 50% by NETI Technologies Inc. a Vancouver-based company of which Larry Brilliant was at that time the chairman. The WELL began as a dial-up bulletin board system (BBS) influenced by EIES,[5] became one of the original dial-up ISPs in the early 1990s when commercial traffic was first allowed, and changed into its current form as the Internet and web technology evolved. Its original management team—Matthew McClure, soon joined by Cliff Figallo and John Coate—collaborated with its early users to foster a sense of virtual community.[citation needed]

Gail Ann Williams was hired by Figallo in 1991, as community manager, and has continued in management roles into the current era.

From 1994 to 1999 The WELL was owned by Bruce R. Katz, founder of Rockport, a manufacturer of walking shoes.[6]

In April 1999 it was acquired by Salon, several of whose founders such as Scott Rosenberg had previously been regular participants there.

In August 2005 Salon announced that it was looking for a buyer for The WELL, in order to concentrate on other business lines. In November 2006, a press release of The WELL said, "As Salon has not found a suitable purchaser, it has determined that it is currently in the best interest of the company to retain this business and has therefore suspended all efforts to sell The WELL."[7]

In June 2012 Salon once again announced that it was looking for a buyer for The WELL as its subscriber base "did not bear financial promise". Additionally, it announced that it had entered into discussions with various parties interested in buying the well.com domain name, and that the remaining WELL staff had been laid off at the end of May.[8] The community pledged money to take over The WELL itself and rehire important staff.[9]

In September 2012, Salon sold The WELL to a new corporation, The WELL Group Inc., owned by a group of eleven investors, who are all long-time members. The CEO was Earl Crabb, who died on February 20, 2015. The sale price was reported to be $400,000. Members have no official role in the management, but "can ... go back to what they do best: conversation. And complaining about the management."[10][11]

Notable items in WELL history include being the forum through which John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, and Mitch Kapor, the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, first met. Howard Rheingold, an early and very active member, was inspired to write his book The Virtual Community by his experience on The WELL. According to Rheingold's book, The WELL's Usenet feed was for years provided by Apple Computer over UUCP. The WELL was a major online meeting place for fans of the Grateful Dead, especially those who followed the band from concert to concert, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The WELL also played a role in the book Takedown about the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick. Founded in Sausalito, California, the service is now based in San Francisco.

Topics of discussion

The WELL is divided into general subject areas known as "conferences". These conferences reflect member interests, and include arts, health, business, regions, hobbies, spirituality, music, politics, games, software and many more.

Within conferences, members open separate conversational threads called "topics" for specific items of interest. For example, the Media conference has (or had) topics devoted to The New York Times, media ethics, and the Luann comic strip. An example of a local conference is the one on San Francisco, which has topics on restaurants, the city government, and neighborhood news.

"Public" conferences are open to all members, while "private" conferences are restricted to a list of users controlled by the conference hosts, called the "ulist". Some "featured private" or "private independent" conferences (such as "Women on the WELL" and "Recovery") are listed in the WELL's directory, but are access-restricted for privacy or membership-restriction reasons. Members may request admission to such conferences. There are also a large number of unlisted "secret private" conferences. The names of these conferences are public, but the contents, hosts, and members are restricted to members of a particular conference. Membership in private conferences is by invitation. WELL members may open their own new public or private independent conferences.

Policy and governance

The directors of The WELL have included Matthew McClure and Cliff Figallo, both veterans of the 1970s commune called The Farm, and Gail Williams, previously known as one of the principals in the political satire group the Plutonium Players. In 2016, The WELL hired Christian Ruzich and Daryl Lynn Johnson, who have over 30 years of combined experience on The WELL, to be the General Managers. The couple, who met on The WELL, will draw on their years of marketing and online community experience to help The WELL become the prime destination for premium online conversation and discussion.

The community forums, known as "conferences", are supervised by "conference hosts" who guide conversations and may enforce conference rules on civility and/or appropriateness. Initially all hosts were selected by staff members. In 1995, Gail Williams changed the policies to enable user-created forums. Participants can create their own "independent" personal conferences—either viewable by any WELL member or privately viewable by those members on a restricted membership list—on any subject they please with any rules they like.

Overall support and supervision of the conferencing services is handled by several staff members, often referred to collectively as "confteam", the name of the UNIX user account used by staff for conference maintenance. They have more system operational powers than conference hosts, along with the additional social authority of selecting "featured conference" hosts and closing accounts for abuse.

WELL members use a consistent login name when posting messages, and a non-fixed pseudonym field alongside it. The "pseud" (in WELL parlance) defaults to the user's real name, but can be changed at will and so often reflects a quotation from another user, or is an in-joke, or may be left blank. The user's real name can be easily looked-up using their login name. WELL members are not anonymous.

There is a time-honored double meaning to the WELL slogan coined by Stewart Brand, "You Own Your Own Words" or ("YOYOW"): members have both the rights to their posted words and responsibility for those words, too. (Members can also delete their posts at any time, but a placeholder indicates the former location and author of a deleted or "scribbled" post, as well as who deleted it.)

Journalists

The WELL was frequently mentioned in the media in the 1980s and 1990s, probably disproportionately to the number of users it had relative to other online systems. This has diminished but not disappeared in recent years, with other online communities becoming commonplace. This early visibility was largely the result of the early policy of providing free accounts for interested journalists and other select members of the media. As a result, for many journalists it was their first experience of online systems and, later, the Internet, even though other systems existed. Although accounts are now seldom provided for free to journalists, there are still a sizable number on The WELL; for example columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle, Wendy M. Grossman of The Inquirer, and critic Andy Klein of Los Angeles CityBeat.

The WELL also received numerous awards in the 1980s and 1990s, including a Webby Award for online community in 1998, and an EFF Pioneer Award in 1994.

In the news

In March 2007, The WELL was noted for refusing membership to Kevin Mitnick, and refunding his membership fee.[12]

Virtual community and social network difference

There is often confusion between a virtual community and social network. They are similar in some aspects because they both can be used for personal and professional interests. A social network offers an opportunity to connect with people one already knows or is acquainted with. Facebook and Twitter are social networks. Platforms such as LinkedIn and Yammer open up communication channels among coworkers and peers with similar professions in a more relaxed setting. Often times social media guidelines are in place for professional usage so that everyone understands what is suitable online behavior.[13][14] Using a social network is an extension of an offline social community. It is helpful in keeping connections among friends and associates as locations change. move. Each user has their own spider web structure which is their social network.[15][16].

Virtual communities differ in that users aren't connected through a mutual friend or similar backgrounds. These groups are formed by people who may be complete strangers but have a common interest or ideology.[17][16] Virtual communities connect people who normally wouldn't consider themselves to be in the same group[18]. These groups continue to stay relevant and maintained in the online world because users feel a need to contribute to the community and in return feel empowered when receiving new information from other members. Virtual communities have an elaborate nest structure because they overlap. Yelp, YouTube, and Wikipedia are all examples of a virtual community. Companies like Kaiser Permanente launched virtual communities for members. The community gave members the ability to control their health care decisions and improve their overall experience.[18] Members of a virtual community are able to offer opinions and contribute helpful advice. Again, the difference between virtual communities and social network is the emergence of the relationship.

The WELL distinguished itself from the technology of the time by creating a networked community for everyone. Users were responsible and owned the content posted, a rule created to protect the information from being copyrighted and commoditized.[19] Women particularly were able to find community and voice on the WELL. While largely bound to household work at the time, women of the WELL could be participants and contributors on message boards by sharing experiences and information.[20]

Publications about The WELL

• Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community
(1994) Perennial ISBN 0-06-097643-8 (Hardcover) – ISBN 0-262-68121-8 (2000 revised paperback edition)
• John Seabrook, Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace
(1997) Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-684-80175-2 (Hardcover) – ISBN 0-684-83873-7 (Paperback)
• Katie Hafner, The WELL: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community
(2001) Carroll & Graf Publishers ISBN 0-7867-0846-8
Katie Hafner's book, expanded from a Wired Magazine article, chronicles the odd birth, growing pains, and interpersonal dynamics that make The WELL the unusual, perhaps unique online community that it is.
• Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
(2006) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-81741-5
"Where the Counterculture met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community", Technology and Culture, Vol.46, No.3 (July, 2005), pp. 485–512.
Tierney, John. “Stewart Brand - John Tierney - An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New ‘Heresies.’” The New York Times, February 27, 2007, sec. Environment. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/scie ... .html.Kirk, Andrew. “Appropriating Technology: The Whole Earth Catalog and Counterculture Environmental Politics.” In Environmental History, 374–94, 2001.
Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

See also

• Digerati
• William H. Calvin
• Global Business Network
• Cyberia (book)
• Brian Eno
• Michael Gruber (author)
• Peter Ludlow
• Tom Mandel
• Douglas Rushkoff
• John Seabrook
• Gail Williams
• Declan McCullagh
• Hugh Daniel
• CIX

References

1. Pernick, Ron (1995). "A Timeline of the First Ten Years of The WELL". Retrieved 2008-06-28.
2. "The Well, a Pioneering Online Community, Is for Sale Again". The New York Times, June 29, 2012
3. "WELL, The.". Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2015. ISBN 9783803266316.
4. Learn About The WELL well.com
5. "IRC History -- Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES)".
6. Markoff, John (January 4, 1994). "COMPANY NEWS; Influential Computer Service Sold". New York Times. Retrieved 27 July2014.
7. "The Well to Stay With Salon" (Press release). The WELL. November 14, 2006. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
8. "Salon 10K filing, June 2012". 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-02.
9. "Will The WELL Survive? Members Pledge $100K+ to Buy Influential Virtual Community from Corporate Owners". 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-02.
10. Salon Media Group Sells The WELL to The Well GroupArchived 2012-11-15 at the Wayback Machine
11. Grossman, Wendy. "Salon sells The WELL to its members". Retrieved 27 July 2014.
12. Kevin Mitnick is Unforgiven Wired, March 21, 2007
13. Mahlberg, T. (2017). Alter-Identity Work via Social Media in Professional Service Contexts. In Proceedings of the 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2017). Chicago
14. "What is social network? - Definition from WhatIs.com". SearchCIO. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
15. Clauset, A. (2005). Finding local community structure in networks. Physical review E, 72(2), 026132.
16. "Social Network vs. Online Community: What Is the Difference?". Social Media Today. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
17. Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Virtual communities as communities. Communities in cyberspace, 167-194.
18. "EXAMPLES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES". encyclopedia.jrank.org. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
19. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Turner, Fred. University of Chicago Press. 2010. ISBN 1282894838. OCLC 824162179.
20. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Turner, Fred. University of Chicago Press. 2010. ISBN 1282894838. OCLC 824162179.

External links

• The WELL
• "The WELL Gopher". Archived from the original on 2011-09-07. Retained as a text museum but now served via HTTP.
• Wired news: Salon buys The WELL
• Wired magazine: "The Epic Saga of the WELL" by Katie Hafner
• The WELL: Small Town on the Internet Highway System by Cliff Figallo
• C|net News.com: "The WELL celebrates 20th birthday" at Archive.today (archived 2013-01-20)
• Net Wars at The Inquirer: "You own your own 20th anniversary"
• C|net News.com: "Salon places The WELL up for sale" at Archive.today (archived 2013-01-19)

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:47 am

USCO
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

USCO art in Walker Art Center's exhibit catalogue for Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

USCO was an American media art collective in the 1960s, founded by Gerd Stern, Michael Callahan, and Steve Durkee in New York. USCO, an acronym for Us Company or the Company of Us, was most active during the years 1964–66.[1][2][3][4][5] USCO exhibited in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is considered a key link in the development of expanded cinema, visual music, installation art, and the Internet.[3] In addition, USCO's strobe environments heralded new media art.[6] In the late 1960s Durkee co-founded the Lama Foundation, while Stern and Callahan co-founded Intermedia Systems Corporation.[1]

Members

The founding members of USCO were poet Gerd Stern, electronic technician Michael Callahan, and ex-Pop art painter Steve Durkee (aka Stephen Durkee, later known as Nooruddeen Durkee).[1][3][7] These three, along with photographer/weaver Judi Stern and sculptor/photographer Barbara Durkee, made up the core group.[3] Barbara Durkee (later known as Asha Greer) ran the group's Intermedia Gallery.[8] Judi Stern stated, "We dreamed collectively."[3]

Among USCO's other members were the filmmaker and video artist Jud Yalkut.[1][3][9] Yalkut created the following films for USCO events in the mid-sixties, some in collaboration with USCO members: Turn, Turn, Turn (USCO did the soundtrack), Ghost Rev, Diffraction Film, and Down By the Riverside.[3] Yalkut works can be found in The Experimental Television Center Collection.[10]

Stewart Brand, although not a formal member of the group, held close relations to USCO and was considered a peripheral member who played a major role in connecting countercultural networks with groups of researchers in the developing cyberculture.[1][3] Other peripheral members included Lois Brand, California painter Dion Wright, tie-dye artist Bob Dacey, and light artist/architect Paul Williams.[3]

History

California and New York background (1948–1964)

Gerd Stern was a German Jewish refugee who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area starting in 1948.[3] Stern's background in the Bay Area Beat community grew out of his involvement with Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley, where he met Lew Hill, Allen Ginsberg, Harry Partch, Henry Jacobs, Michael McClure, and Harry Smith.[1] Stern and Hill collaborated on a poetry series for KPFA, with Wallace Stevens, Alan Watts, and Grace Clements, giving Stern the opportunity to use a wire recorder for the first time. Stern stated, "I was always interested in sound and the preserving of sound."[11]

Michael Callahan had been technical director of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, when he met Stern in 1963 through the SF Tape Music Center's Morton Subotnick via Michael McClure.[2][3][12][13] Callahan's experience working at the SF Tape Music Center taught him how to make do with whatever technology he could scrounge and build, due to lack of funds.[2] By 1963 he was purchasing surplus IBM computers to use the parts for customized kinetic art.[14][15]

Steve Durkee, raised in New York, studied art at Columbia University. By the time he graduated in 1960 he was living in New York City as a renowned Pop artist and friend of Robert Indiana, but became ambivalent about Pop aesthetics a few years later. Around this time he and Stewart Brand, a lieutenant photographer in the U.S. Army, became friends. Durkee was included in a 1962 Art News feature on Pop art titled "The New American Sign Painters," and Callahan later explained that "Pop was part of Gerd's and Steve's attraction to each other."[3][15]

New York (1964–1966)

In 1964 Steve and Barbara Durkee bought an old church to use as a studio, located in Garnerville, Rockland County, New York in the Hudson Valley.[3][5][16] Later that year Gerd and Judi Stern moved to Woodstock, New York near Garnerville, and arranged to have Callahan join them. Callahan moved in with the Sterns in Woodstock, and then the three moved into the church with the Durkees in 1965.[3][16] Gerd Stern stated, "Without our names, we decided to call ourselves 'USCO', the company of Us, because we were anonymous artists."[16] Callahan stated they came up with the name USCO, "Company of US," to create something more inclusive than using their individual names; it was also a way of "bringing people together in an ad-hoc living arrangement."[2] Living not too far from the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, they were invited to visit the communal Millbrook group; they then became involved with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner.[17]

The USCO group collaborated with artists, engineers, poets, and filmmakers. Influenced by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, USCO used stroboscopes, oscilloscopes, projectors, closed-circuit television, computerized control systems, and audiotapes in their "multi-channel media mix" performances.[1][2][3][5][7] They often reused and repurposed technology from surplus parts.[2] To underline the community character of the project, USCO used the phrase "We are all one".[1][5] They mixed film, tapes, slides, light, kinetic sculpture, and live actors in audiovisual performances in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and at university campuses across the United States.[1][3][5][7]

In 1965 USCO collaborated with Leary and Alpert's Castalia Foundation, a precursor to the League for Spiritual Discovery, to reproduce the LSD experience in an "audio-olfactory-visual alteration of consciousness" psychedelic art event in New York City.[4] USCO became a client of Nina Graboi's Third Force Lecture Bureau in early 1966. Graboi became director of the League for Spiritual Discovery's New York Center later that year.[18] In 1966 USCO exhibited at the Riverside Museum in New York City and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Brand lived at the church for two months while helping the group prepare for the Riverside Museum exhibit.[3]

USCO's leftist politics were expressed in terms of relations rather than direct political action; they thought they were "beyond politics."[2] Judi Stern didn't see a separation, explaining, "Most of our work was involved in two things: Changing consciousness...and changing the world." For example, USCO added to their slide mix sympathetic photographs of people in Vietnam, due to the disturbance USCO felt about the Vietnam War. Brand, on the other hand, thought USCO's work had "zero political elements."[3]

Judi Stern and Barbara Durkee developed innovative techniques for silk-screening USCO posters.[3]

New York and New Mexico (1967–1968)

At the end of 1966 Steve and Barbara Durkee left Garnerville, and lived with Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass). For a short time period, Steve Durkee lectured with Alpert on "LSD: Illusion or Reality?" before Alpert left the U.S. for study in India.[19] In 1967 the Durkees formed the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, New Mexico north of Taos with Jonathan Altman, and assistance from Alpert.[3][20][21] They created a spiritual community on land purchased by Altman, with its main structure built with others in 1968 in the shape of a dome.[22][23] Barbara Durkee stated, "We came to get away from the conservative world that was pretty tight and boxed-in, non-diverse and not very spiritual."[22] At the time, Lama was one of approximately thirty communes in Northern New Mexico.[21]

After the Durkees' departure, the other members of USCO in New York continued to produce and exhibit work under the USCO name through 1968.[3] During the late 1960s, USCO exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Art (1967), Walker Art Center (1967), Brooklyn Museum (1968), and Whitney Museum of American Art (1968).[3]

Post-USCO (1969 to present)

Gerd Stern was offered an Associate in Education faculty position at Harvard University and moved with Callahan to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they used USCO equipment to begin their own company in cooperation with a group from Harvard Business School. Stern and Callahan co-founded Intermedia Systems Corporation in 1969, the year the company handled some management and administrative details for the Woodstock festival.[1][3][24] Intermedia Systems Corporation made pioneering hardware to control audiovisual programming.[25] In the 1970s, Intermedia Systems Corporation produced multimedia art internationally.[1] Callahan worked at Harvard University from 1977 until 1994, at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts. He and his wife Adrienne co-founded Museum Technology Source in 1990. The company, based in Winchester, Massachusetts initially made electronic devices that allowed museum patrons to use video and interactive exhibits.[24]

The Durkees helped Ram Dass with Be Here Now, which was published by the Lama Foundation in 1971 and became a best-seller.[22][23] Its original title was From Bindu to Ojas, with illustrations by Lama community residents.[21]

In 2005 Gerd Stern and Callahan worked together on an USCO retrospective at Anthology Film Archives.[3]

In 2015 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota included four major USCO works in their exhibit Hippie Modernism: The Struggle Toward Utopia.[26][27]

In 2016, the Garnerville church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[28]

Multimedia and intermedia works

Verbal American Landscape, Contact, and McLuhan

Prior to Gerd Stern's move to New York, while still in the San Francisco Bay Area, he began to project slides of words found on street signs, forming a poetry collage later known as Verbal American Landscape. After invited to give a poetry reading at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Stern instead staged a two-night performance in November 1963 titled Contact Is the Only Love, which involved sixty-four performers. The slides were shot by Stewart Brand. Callahan (in his late teens) assisted with audio, using equipment borrowed from the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Stern and Callahan created a four-channel mix of conversation, announcements, and popular music by simultaneously playing, mixing, and switching four pre-recorded tapes and live cut-ups of radio.[2][3][12][14]

Contact Is the Only Love evolved out of Verbal American Landscape. Stern and Callahan built an octagonal kinetic sculpture for the show, seven feet in diameter. It featured flashing neon lights, loudspeakers, amplifiers, and tape loops. In the center were painted signs with words such as "Go," "Merge," and "Enter with Caution."[3][15][29]

Stern described the performance:

At the museum, M. C. Richards gave Stern her copy of John Cage's manuscript of McLuhan's Understanding Media, which Stern described as a report that McLuhan had written for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) while still in Canada, and then had turned into Understanding Media with very little, if any, editing.[2][14] Stern recalled, "I read it, and it was a revelation; I understood immediately that his perceptions were seminal for my development. Particularly things like his statement that what you need to do is pay attention to the effect rather than the content."[30]

Stern and Callahan were then invited to Vancouver, by a University of British Columbia gallery director who had also been at the San Francisco Museum of Art show, to do a performance with a lecture by McLuhan.[2][3][31] The gallery director had noted the inclusion of McLuhan's ideas in the San Francisco performance, from a quote by McLuhan in the performance handout.[31] Callahan later stated:

Psychedelic Explorations and Expanded Cinema

After doing several performances in the Bay Area, Gerd and Judi Stern performed at several college campuses en route to New York in late 1964. Steve Durkee, meanwhile, started making Super 8 movies. The group began experimenting, with Durkee developing image banks to Stern and Callahan's performances. As Stern explains, "We did electronic music, mostly meditational in nature, and before long we stopped doing the performances as individuals.[3][16] They then became interested in replicating the psychedelic experience through sensory overload.[2]

USCO's collaboration with Timothy Leary and his Castalia Foundation took place in July 1965. They reproduced the LSD experience in an event titled Psychedelic Explorations at the Psychedelic Theatre (the New Theatre in New York City).[4][7][32] During one part of the event, while Leary lectured about psychedelics, USCO played a recording of Artaud screaming.[32] A 1965 review of the show for The Nation by Howard Junker described USCO's event as an attempt "to stimulate multiple levels of consciousness by audio-visual bombardment."[7]

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas presented a series of multimedia productions in November and December 1965, under the title New Cinema Festival 1 (later referred to as the Expanded Film Festival), at the Filmmakers Cinematheque in New York City. John Brockman was Program Manager. Participants combined cinema images and projectors with live actions and music. The series featured two nights of an USCO collaboration with Carolee Schneemann, as well as other emerging psychedelic light show artists such as Don Snyder (whose multimedia event included Ralph Metzner and Angus Maclise), Jackie Cassen, and Rudi Stern.[33] According to Gerd Stern, USCO was asked to participate because "they thought that our multimedia performances were kind of simulations of psychedelic experiences."[34] Callahan explained USCO "took incandescent lamps out of slide projectors, and replaced them with intense strobe bulbs, so the projected image itself would flash on the screen."[2] Other participants in the series included well-known and emerging figures such as Angus Maclise (with members of the Velvet Underground), John Vaccaro, Nam June Paik, Jerry Jofen, Jack Smith, Roberts Blossom with Beverly Schmidt, Stan Vanderbeek, Alfred Leslie, Dick Higgins, Aldo Tambellini, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol (with a precursor to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable), Ken Dewey, Ken Jacobs, Louis Brigante, Elaine Summers, Al Hansen, Ed Emshwiller, David Bourdon, Robert Whitman, ONCE Group, Larry Rivers, Stan Brakhage, Robert Rauschenberg with Trisha Brown, and La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela's Theatre of Eternal Music (with John Cale and Tony Conrad.[33]

Mekas presented another multimedia event by USCO the following month, for a week in January 1966. Titled Hubbub, the event was promoted in the Village Voice in an ad that described it as "Expanded Cinema! Psychedelic Cinema! Media Mix! Marshall McLuhan! Timothy Leary! Film, oscilloscopes, stroboscopes, computerized, kinetic and live images. A visual feast."[35] Mekas, in his Village Voice column of spring 1966, interviewed Steve Durkee about USCO's use of strobe lights. Mekas asked, "What is the strobe light all about?," and Durkee replied, "Strobe is the digital trip."[6] USCO's strobe environments, which relied on electronic modulation of fluorescent tubes, invoked the more complex emerging technology of the digital computer.[6] Mekas also wrote about USCO in a 1966 review of their Riverside Museum show, comparing their work to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and stating USCO went after the mystical experience in a more conscious way.[3]

The World

USCO participated in, and helped design and produce, New York DJ Murray the K's psychedelic multimedia event The World, which took place in an abandoned Long Island airplane hangar and was dubbed the first discothèque.[2][15][36][37] The April 1966 event was negotiated by John Brockman, who had previously included USCO in the Expanded Film Festival.[3] USCO used around twenty to thirty slides and one of the first video projectors to project superimposed images and 16mm film onto the crowd, and Callahan built a large-scale programmer to control the slide machines.[15][36] USCO included experimental films by Jud Yalkut and Stan Vanderbeek, as well as graphics with words such as "Act" "Slit," and "Is."[15] They also utilized closed-circuit television technology, with three cameras projecting the stage and floor on a super sized screen.[37] Music acts that performed included The Young Rascals, The Hollies, Del Shannon, The Isley Brothers, and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.[15] The World was featured on the cover of Life magazine in May 1966.[2][37]

External links

• Gerd Stern, "From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978," an oral history conducted in 1996 by Victoria Morris Byerly, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2001.

References

1. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library.
2. Kuo, Michelle (May 2008). "Special Effects: Michelle Kuo Speaks With Michael Callahan About USCO" (PDF). Artforum. pp. 133–136.
3. Oren, Michel (Winter 2010). "USCO: Getting Out of Your Head to Use Your Head" (PDF). Art Journal.
4. Ulrich, Jennifer (4 June 2012). "Transmissions from The Timothy Leary Papers: Evolution of the "Psychedelic" Show"". New York Public Library.
5. Davis, Douglas (20 August 1973). Art and the Future: A History/Prophecy of the Collaboration Between Science, Technology and Art. New York: Praeger. p. 157. ISBN 978-0500231814.
6. "A Digital Trip: Strobe Light and the Birth of New Media Art". University of Notre Dame Department of Art, Art History & Design. 7 November 2016.
7. Junker, Howard (5 July 1965). "LSD: 'The Contact High". The Nation.
8. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 141.
9. Zinman, Gregory (4 September 2013). "Dream Reeler: Jud Yalkut (1938-2013)". The Brooklyn Rail.
10. "Experimental Television Center: Artists". Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. Cornell University Library. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
11. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 34.
12. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 73–74.
13. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 265–268.
14. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 268–274.
15. Chapman, Rob (10 May 2016). Psychedelia and Other Colours. New York: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0571282005.
16. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 80–81.
17. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 83.
18. Graboi, Nina (May 1991). One Foot in the Future: A Woman's Spiritual Journey. Aerial Press. pp. 140–146. ISBN 978-0942344103.
19. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 95.
20. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 94–95.
21. "Lama Foundation Oral History Project". Social Networks and Archival Context Cooperative. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
22. Romancito, Rick (22 June 2017). "Lama at 50". The Taos News.
23. Boyle, Molly (12 May 2017). "A time to every purpose: Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest". Santa Fe New Mexican.
24. Holland, Roberta (1 May 1999). "Peace, love and interactive media". Boston Business Journal.
25. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 102.
26. "National Register of Historic Places Program: The USCO Church". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved October 26,2017.
27. "Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia". Walker Art Center. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
28. "National Register of Historic Places listings for August 5, 2016". U.S. National Park Service. August 5, 2016. Retrieved August 9, 2016.
29. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 72.
30. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 67.
31. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 76–77.
32. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. pp. 90–92.
33. Comenas, Gary (2014). "Expanded Cinema?". warholstars.org. p. 1. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
34. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 84.
35. Comenas, Gary (2014). "Expanded Cinema?". warholstars.org. p. 2. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
36. Stern, Gerd (2001). "Oral History: From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948-1978". The Bancroft Library. p. 87.
37. "Ramapo College Exhibition Features Installation By NJ Poet and Media Artist Gerd Stern". Ramapo College. 11 August 2005.

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:52 am

Take the No Out of Now: Multi-Media Artist and Poet Gerd Stern at the Kelly Writers House
by The Kelly Writers House
September 26, 2000

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

"NO OW NOW," the electronic mantra, reproduced from the exhibit "from USCO through Intermedia, 1962-1979" at Thorpe Intermedia Gallery, which opened on September 9, 1979, assembled by Michael Callahan, Gerd Stern, Zalman Stern, Lind Von Helwig (Sparkill, New York)

Gerd Stern is a poet and multi-media artist. His book, First Poems and Others, was published in 1952. A second volume, Afterimage appeared in 1965. During the early 1960s Stern started using cut-out words to create visual collages, and soon after that started making kinetic pieces using flashing lights, and electro-magnetic components to construct poem sculptures. These were first shown at New York's Alan Stone Gallery and in Stern's first one-person show at the San Francisco Museum of Art. The next phase of Stern's work included multi-channel word visuals and sounds cut out of the real world, titled "the Verbal American Landscape." Influenced by Marshall McLuhan's written work, Stern appeared and was associated with McLuhan for a number of years.

Stern was one of the founders of "USCO," a group of artists, engineers and poets creating multi-media performances and environments which toured the U.S. museum and university venues during the sixties. Their work appeared at the Museum of Modern Art, Brandeis University, the University of California, the Walker Art Museum, the Riverside Museum and many others. USCO also designed one of the first multi-media discotheques, named "The World" (and featured on the cover of Life magazine).

Stern has been a visiting lecturer in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

The painters, engineers, poets and sculptors who formed USCO worked out of an old church in Garnerville, New York in the 1960s. Their work included images, sound, and technology executed by a community of participants, some living at the church, and others in various parts of the country and world. What they produced became the subject of a considerable body of journalism and critique. During the late sixties some members of USCO initiated the Lama Foundation in New Mexico. A number of others helped found the Intermedia Systems Corporation in Cambridge, Mass.

When the Thoepe Intermedia Gallery presented its exhibit "from USCO through Intermedia, 1962-1979" (1979), one of the pieces shown was "NO OW NOW," a contraction of an USCO mantra ("take the no out of now - then - take the ow out of now - then - take the then out of now - then -"). The work was an electro mechanical mantric device, with manual and automatic modes, utilizing the basic, Our Time Base Is Real USCO timing circuit. A limited editions of three pieces of NO OW NOW were on display, made of IBM surplus parts. Another piece of kinetic sculpture shown at the Thorpe Gallery in 1979 was "Monolog to Digital ("if you can't count don't blow"), a voice operated assemblage of first-generation solid-state counting modules, dated 1966.

A sampling of USCO productions:

• Psychadelic posters and other graphics
• Various kinds of machines and electronic devices, such as strobe lights and programming units
• Electronic audio-visual aids, such as a counting unit for the New York production of Norman Mailer's The Deer Park
• Kinetic artistic-informational displays, such as a much-appreciated media-mix about the Lower East Side for New York's Jewish Museum and the Smithsonian Institution
• Miscellaneous sound and light effects for all kinds of pacifist benefits
• An elegant kinetic meditational tabernacle for their own house
• Consultation in environment creation, including what one critic called "hyped-up rooms intended for psychiatric purposes"

During his Writers House visit, Stern may read from a set of eight Conch Tales with drawings (silk-screened) by David Weinrib.

Stern now lives in New Jersey and also spends time at his home, "Poetsreef," in Jamaica.

**************************

Scene and Not Herd [Excerpt]
by Richard Kostelanetz
December, 1967

USCO functions as a frame, as well as a signature, for individual artists who move in and out, contributing to the collective effort and yet preserving their personal identities. The quickest measure of USCO's impact is the relation between its age and achivement; for in less than four years, it has completed a multiplicity of projects and established an international reputation.... USCO has produced objects of all sorts--posters as well as machines--but their primary medium has been the theatrical event. Some have been conventional performances, where an audience arrived at a certain time, paid an admission price and then took their seats, but USCO prefers to work in what Gerd Stern calls "the environmental circumstance," where "you take a space and en open-ended piece of time, and you see what you can make it do to people."

The four-room environment USCO constructed at the Riverside Museum in May 1966 was probably their most elaborate and brilliant exhibition. USCO designed this "system" to be a "meditation room," full of basic symbols and materials--male and female, heartbeats, and above, seven spheres representing the seven planets....

Back in 1960 Gerd Stern read an early draft of Understanding Media (1964) in the form of a report McLuhan submitted to the National Association of Educational Broadcasters in 1959, and that experience persuaded Stern to consider the artistic potential of the new media. Soon after, his own poetic impulses took off from the problems of black words on while paper and were channeled into tape collage. McLuhan himself has joined USCO for two performances... USCO concurs with [McLuhan's] prophecy that today's cities will soon disintegrate into small communities, electronically interconnected; and from him, they also recognized how sensory overload in their home environment could recircuit their own sensibilities. "When you live in a twenty-four channel system, day in and day out--as we did when we were doing our things at home [at USCO], running them for twenty-four hours a day, almost," said [Steve] Durkee [a USCO painter in his late twenties], "you can become pretty much omniattentive.

From McLuhan, along with the Indian aesthetician Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, they took the theme that the contemporary artist should be as anonymous as the medieval artist; but interpretations of 'anonymity' create a constant argument within the USCO house. Their work is clearly anonymous in the sense that it contains neither an individual signature nor earmarks of personalized expression. However, to Stern, their impersonal result does not deny individual artistic contributions....

The young producer consultant John Brockman does so much work with USCO that he is an associate in all but name, and along with Gerd Stern and Michael Callahan [an electrical engineer specializing in the "languages of switches and circuits"], Brockman is co-authoring an introductory textbook on intermedia.... [B]y now USCO seems an example of what can be done--a recognized avant-garde revolutionary elite; and just as their innovations in the arts of media-mix have influenced scores of other artists and groups of artists, so USCO itself has become a model for other new American tribes in sync with the electronic age.

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 3:09 am

Happy 90th Birthday Gerd!
by Franz Kunst, Processing Archivist
Stanford Libraries
October 12, 2018

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Since today is his birthday, I can't think of a better time to announce that the papers of poet and media artist Gerd Stern (1927-) are now processed and available. How do I begin talking about what an experience it's been? As with a few other collections I've been honored to work with, the roots and branches are seemingly endless. Stern connects McClure to McLuhan, Brockman to Brand, de Angulo to di Suvero. A tireless networker with deep involvement in many fields, his collection provides many avenues for research. While Stern is perhaps best known as a primary force behind the arts collective USCO and later president of media production company Intermedia Systems, his papers also contain a great deal of his activity prior to USCO, especially in the swinging San Francisco of the 1950s in which commercial and artistic worlds freely intermingled. A cursory outline of Stern around this time: He managed composer Harry Partch, was namedropped in Herb Caen columns, wrote for Playboy magazine, dated Maya Angelou, read at poetry gatherings, was a publicity agent for food, wine, and fashion, went fishing with S.I. Hayakawa, marketed bamboo bongo drums, ate peyote with Philip Lamantia, hosted jazz parties on his Sausalito barge with musicians like Chet Baker along with films and dancers, and produced fine press poetry broadsides with his wife Ann London. Stern worked at public radio station KPFA and was close to founder Lew Hill. He had met anthropologist/storyteller Jaime de Angulo in Big Sur on his first trip West and was an early champion of his work, as well as later that of Marshall McLuhan. Perhaps the best part is that Gerd maintained dated outgoing drafts of all his correspondence, so we have a solid chronology on top of it. Two researchers have already begun working with the collection. The first of many!

Here's a few glimpses of what can be found:

Boobam article
"BUSINESS PARTNERS" in Boobam manufacture try drums. Left: Gerd Stern; at piano, David Wheat, Loughborough.

Partch signature
-

Acapulco article
The News ... In Acapulco
Mexico, D.F., Thursday, March 31, 1960
Third Section
Page Eight-C
A SEMI-BUSINESS MEETING at the Luster house when all of the Playboy Magazine crew came by for some information and drinks. Left to right: Don Bronstein, photographer, Arthur Paul, art director, Pedro Juarez, one of Mexico's better photographers, Alicia Disney, Jean Sanders, model, Gerd Stern, writer from San Francisco, Shirley Lewis, model, and Vincent T. Tajiri, picture editor. (Photo by Ronnie Luster.)

Who R U flier
"... in the electronic age whose media substitute -at-onceness for one-thing-at-a-timeness. The movement of information at approximately the speed of light has become by far the largest industry in the world ... Patterns of human association based on slower media have become overnight not only irrelevant and obsolete, but a threat to continued existence and sanity." -- H. Marshall McLuhan
WHO R U?
&
WHAT'S HAPPENING?
Conceived and produced by poet Gerd Stern in association with painter Ivan Majdrakoff, sociologist Howard Becker and the San Francisco Tape Music-Center. Judy McBean, coordinator.
Starring Live Public Figures, Tape, Telephone, Television, Projected images ...
from
THE VERBAL AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
On Tuesday, November 12, 1963
& Thursday, November 14, 1963
at The San Francisco Museum of Art

anti-LSD flier
WARNING! LSD: LESS SELF-DIRECTION

KPFA wine program listing
KPFA FOLIO
3:45 WHO IS A WINE SNOB?: The matter is discussed by Leon D. Adams, author of "The Commonsense Book of Wine" and co-founder of the Wine Institute; Alexis Merab, owner of Alexis' Tangier Restaurant in San Francisco; Dr. Robert T.A. Knudsen, vice-president of the Medical Friends of Wine and official judge at the California State Fair; and Mrs. J.F.M. "Mary" Taylor, of Napa County's Mayacamas Vineyards. Gerd Stern moderates.

anti-Vietnam War flier
HAD ENOUGH WAR? COME TO A WALK FOR LOVE & PEACE & FREEDOM
START AT WASHINGTON SQ PARK 11 AM & TOMPKINS SQ PARK 11:15 END AT PARADE COMMITTEE PEACE TALKS 41ST & 6TH 2 PM SATURDAY NOV. 5TH
LOVE STOPS DESTRUCTION SPEAK WITH YR CLOTHES & YR MUSIC SIGN LANGUAGE INSTEAD OF LANGUAGE ON SIGNS LOVE STOPS DESTRUCTION
ALLEN GINSBERG, GARY SNYDER, PAUL KRASSNER, THE FUGS, USCO, YELLOW SUBMARINE, BRING: MOTHERS, LOVERS, BABIES, BALLOONS, FLUTES, FLOWERS, WHISTLES, ROLLERSKATES, & ALL OTHER BEAUTIFUL THINGS
AIDED & ABETTED BY VETERANS & RESERVISTS TO END THE WAR IN VIETNAM 227-5335

USCO flier
YIELO TURN AHEAD CONTACT IS THE ONLY LOVE in a world of simultaneous operations you con't have to be first to be on top if you can't count don't glow
THEN TAKE THE OW OUT OF NOW TAKE THE NO OUT OF NOW
OUT OF NOW THEN WE ARE ALL ONE
THE WAY COMING HIGH FREE THRU SAFE
INTO 006 ON TURN GOD

PM West program listing
12:15 - 5 - PM West. O'Flaherty is host to avant-garde Poet Gerd Stern who reads his works to the bongo playing accompaniment of "Mr. Bongo" Jack Costanzo

Pablo Light Show sticker
PABLO MEDIA ARTISTS & TECHNICIANS 9 BLEECKER ST. NYC 10012 212 475 9125

Woodstock logo letterhead
August 1, 1969

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 3:35 am

Gerd Stern: Media artist and cheese maven and the author
by Edge
Accessed: 6/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

GERD STERN is a poet, media artist and cheese maven. He has several published books of poems and his oral history, From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist 1948-1978 has just been published by ROHO, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. He was a founder of the arts/technology cooperative USCO, an early member of The Reality Club, president of the public company Intermedia Systems Corporation, consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation arts program, for NEA and NYSCA and remains as president of Intermedia Foundation. He was born on the German/French border and presently lives in New Jersey and on the island of Jamaica.

Contact Info:editor@edge.org
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Copyright © 2019 By Edge Foundation, Inc All Rights Reserved.

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 3:40 am

History of the Lama Foundation: A Dramatic Reading
by Steve Fox
April 17, 2010

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Many Taoseños have connections to the Lama Foundation, just north of San Cristobal, and many more know of the eclectic, spiritual intentional community through its printed prayer flags, Dances of Universal Peace and annual summer retreats. Many around the country and across the world have heard of Lama because the foundation sold and distributed, beginning in the ’70s, the famous “Be Here Now,” Ram Dass’s account of his conversion to the guru Neem Karoli Baba’s teachings in India. Hand printed and assembled loose in a box, the book sold 770,000 copies in 32 printings by 1991, providing Lama a small stream of income that helped keep the community stable.

While all the other collectives and communes in northern New Mexico—and in most other U.S. locations—faded from the scene years ago, Lama endures, even after the catastrophic Hondo Fire in 1996 created a raging firestorm that took 1,000 firefighters four days to control and destroyed 20 of its 23 buildings. Rebuilding drew in volunteers who helped with spiritual renewal as well as structural, after Stewart Brand printed an appeal in the Whole Earth Catalog.

How Lama was born, faced its crises of doctrine, fire and succession of core membership—and kept regenerating itself—is the subject of “Lama Genesis/Lama Incarnations,” a two-act dramatic reading that spans the history of the Lama Foundation since its founding on land in northern Taos County in 1968. This production draws from 100 hours of interviews to tell Lama’s dramatic story in the words of the founders and other residents. It tells of Lama’s efforts to create and recreate itself over 40 years of changing conditions.

Lama Foundation rode the wave of the back-to-the-land movement in the late ’60s. It remains a viable intentional community, founded on the principle that all spiritual traditions maintain a “kernel of truth” and are practiced and respected as such. Its dedication to consensus decision-making, respect for the land and ecology, conflict resolution and life-affirming paths continues to invite and inspire all comers.

The interviews were conducted over the last five years by Ammi Kohn, who began spending summers at Lama a decade ago and realized that no one had begun taking its oral history. Such stories from within are very important for anyone trying to learn from this place that is one of the handful of Sixties collectives still viable after 40 years, anywhere in the country. Oral histories have been taken from the charismatic founders, the average “Lama Beans,” and from those “coordinators” who took on the task of overseeing, for a year, Lama’s rich network of shared work assignments and what they call “tuning,” or dispute resolution and tension reduction.

The reading will include voices explaining the impact of the “Holy Wars,” when founder Steve Durkee returned from Saudi Arabia in the ’70s, having converted to Islam, and demanded that all Lama residents convert. A community confrontation ensued in the main geodesic dome, with complicated personal relationships and new alignments facing off in a climactic struggle over community identity, decided by popular vote.

The chief challenge for spiritual groups started by charismatic founders has always been to establish effective succession of leadership, and then to continue appealing to second and third generations of members. This reading will address how Lama has fared in that rare process. Because of funding from the state Humanities Council, a question-and-discussion session will be held after each performance, with humanities scholars familiar with Lama’s history available to provide context.

The performance is directed by Bruce McIntosh and produced by Metta Projects Theater of Taos. Four performances are scheduled: April 22, 23, 24 and 25 at their Metta theater, located in El Prado at 1470 Paseo del Pueblo Norte. An eight-page portfolio of pictures spanning Lama’s history, taken by Ahad Cobb, will be available free (donations to cover costs appreciated). Linking key quotes from the reading performance, the portfolio will give the audience images to go with the oral history’s significant phases.

For further information contact Steve Fox at 758-8101 or Ammi Kohn at 719-256-5080.

by **admin** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 3:50 am

Part 1 of 2

Lama Alive -- Lama Foundation: The Little Village That Could
by Lama Foundation
December, 2006

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Photo Courtesy of Willie Peck © 2006

Inside This Issue:

• Our New Coordinator
• The Residents
• Rebuilding Lama Foundation
• Hondo Fire, Ten Years After
• To Market, To Market
• Church of Conscious Harmony
• American University
• Sacred Sites
• Maqbaras
• Photo Album
• Donors
• 2007 Summer Schedule
• Raffle Winners
• Oral History Library
• Lama Endowment Fund
• Ways to Help
• Wish List
• Flags

A message from our new Coordinator -- Kathy Lyons

…..So I hiked up to the Healing Tree this morning. The intention was to receive a transmission of truly phenomenal words that I could then write for the newsletter. I didn’t hear any words, but I was aware of my heart pounding in my ears, the wind through the golden aspen, and the elk with their unearthly bugling cry. Was this it?

…..So I slipped and slid down the path to the Maqbara and sat on the new flagstone seats that encircle the grave. Along with my heartbeat, the wind, and the elk, I heard zikr and dances (Ancestors, Sky People, all here today, hear my heart song. Hear my respect. Hear my love. Hear my grateful tears fall. I am truly blessed.) weaving in and out and around my memories of the now, then, and when. Was this it?

…..So I followed the path down and around to the springhouse and listened to the water bubbling up from the depths of the Mother. I listened here for a very long time. I think I fell asleep because when I opened my eyes I noticed the sun had shifted lower on the horizon and there was a trail of ants crawling over my foot. Was this it?

…..So I let the path take me to the Tipi Circle, whirl me around the labyrinth and launch me towards the ISC where I sang my thanks to the open sky and firm ground. (You are truly blessed. We are truly blessed.) The path led to the gardens, once abundant with squash, beans, corn, but now tattered with frost bitten stems and leaves. I stood there feeling a sense of awe at the limitless possibilities represented by a garden. Was this it?

…..So I ended up in the Dome, looking around at the vestiges of Chris and Rita’s wedding: the benches still covered in the white muslin that we use for our prayer flags and, here-there, a dried marigold petal, crispy, yet retaining the fragrance of summer. The wind has picked up a bit and the Dome ceiling creaks and shifts with it. It's amazing, really, how long this space has been here. The view from the window expands and contracts as I breathe in and out. I pause to listen for the heartbeat and voices of those who came before me and of those who will come after me.

Kathy Lyons

Kathy (with her husband Austin and their two cats) has been at Lama Foundation for three years and has held a number of guardianships during this time. Most recently, she has turned over the Kitchen Manager and Secretary positions to fellow Beans. Kathy eagerly anticipates the next stage in the ongoing saga of her relationship to Lama and the Mountain. She is also quite fond of Fritos (or anything salty-crunchy) and scalding hot showers.

Purring through the Winter Membership Meetings

Dearest Beloved Lama Friends,

Greetings and Salutations from Lama. Here is an update of the happenings from the kitty perspective at Lama Foundation. As some of you know, Keshiva and I are still the oldest current residents here at Lama. Many have asked "what is your secret for surviving the consensus or what are now called winter membership meetings?" Simple -- the art of purring through the meetings. We have noticed that none of the human residents are bothered by our presence here in the winter. That helps as well. But, just to make sure that the circle is content with us, we keep purring.

(Keshiva) - Keeping my claws sharpened and my coat loaded with dust helps keep the humans in check.

(G) - Well, our mousing ability, or lack thereof, certainly has no impact on our membership!

(K) - Yeah, I still think it's hilarious that they have a guardianship filled to do our job as Mouse Guardians.

(G) - As a non-voting member, I do wish to express gratitude for the warm laps and good petting qualities of this year’s candidates. I feel that all of them have done an excellent job of keeping our food and water refreshed promptly, and they do a decent job of opening the doors for us. I feel this is a result of good communication skills between the human residents.

(K) - Are you saying that you’re forgiving them for leaving you trapped in the Dew Drop over night?

(G) - Oh no, that was an act of intention on my part, it was sooo cold that night, and I wanted to make sure that I stayed indoors.

(K) - That reminds me of the reputation you had before of being the tent hopper. Off from one tent to another.

(G) - O.K. Keshiva, let’s not go there.

(K) - Ah, I remember the night I went to teach Thomas Renault a very important lesson about boundaries.

(G) - Oh yes, you were quite ruthless!

(K) - Silly man, he let me right into his nice warm sleeping bag, right in between his legs. Then, hee- hee, when he wasn't focused on me, I went right for the jewels! Though I must say, the man has some quick reflexes. He did use a broomstick to create the necessary boundary between my claws and his suffering!

(G) - Well Keshiva, I'm glad that the two of you are still getting along. Oh, and I am glad that with Beth's help as mediator, we are now getting along.

(K) - Well, I think that's where the humans have it made. They can work out issues in a tenth of the time that it took us.

(G) - You know, there is the milk-offering issue I still feel needs smoothing out.

(K) - Nothing to work out G, the milk offerings are all mine!

(G) - Not if you get trapped in the Dew Drop when it's offered, hee-hee!

Blessings from GiGi and Keshiva Katz
Translated by Mouse Guardian Kunga Chokyong

The Residents

♥♥♥The New Circle - Who, Where From, How Long They’ve Been Here, and Their Practice ♥♥♥

Kathy Lyons
Overseas - 4th Winter
Chado/Zen/Sufi

Krishna Das Rayfield
North Carolina - 5th Winter
Sufi

Lynn Farquhar
Colorado - 4th Winter
Hindu/Catholic

Kalman Gallay
Canada - 3rd Winter
Goddess-Centered Worship/
Insight Meditation/
Native Earth-Based

Mika Kraemer
New Mexico
Returning Resident
Radical Faerie

Jack Cormier
Pennsylvania - New Resident
Zen Buddhist

Mia Cohen
Tennessee - New Resident
Judaism/Earth-Based

Meredith Mason
Wisconsin - New Resident
Melody/Human

Kunga Bill Brower
Colorado - New Resident
Tibetan Buddhist

Paolo Caserta
Louisiana - 2nd Winter
Buddhist

Alia Caserta
Lama - 2nd Winter
Precious Love Light

Lori Cohen
Florida - 3rd Winter
Earth-Based

Beth Garrigus
Midwest - 4th Winter
Sufi/Prayer

Austin Babcock
California - 4th Winter
Music/Tea/Sufi/Builder

Blessings to our
2006/2007 Winter Circle

Meeting of the Ways

We come as many
Gathering around a single Truth.
Let our differences dissolve
In the light of reality,
That we may join together
In a single purpose,
A unified vision,
A purified desire,
For what we forever share unchanged.

Alia… Precious Love Light

Being at Lama as a family is such an amazing blessing. Having so many loving people around her, Alia is really thriving, and she is so happy! She is full of noises and expressions which make us all laugh constantly. At her first birthday, August 2, Alia met her two little cousins, Gabe and Zach, who came all the way from Florida to celebrate with her. Her first words were “Ya Fattah!” (it’s true!) followed by hi, baby, Momma, and Amen! Alia started walking around thirteen months, and she loves her new mobility. We have found that she is incredibly musical! She loves Kirtan and Zikr and has a tendency to be dancing, making up songs, or finding something to create music with, especially shakers and drums.

Alia is very much a part of the Circle – she joins hands with us when we circle up and copies the hand movements during Dances of Universal Peace. One of her favorite things is being outside, whether picking flowers or playing with dirt or rocks. She has meant so much to all of us. It is such a gift to watch her and learn; she is often referred to as our teacher. Alia loves books - especially ones with animals, and was a ladybug for Halloween! She still hasn’t had a haircut, and it has been said that people pay good money for hair like hers….

Lori Cohen

Alia Caserta - Teacher in Residence

May the sun
bring you energy by day,
May the moon
softly restore you by night,
May the rain
wash away your worries,
May the breeze
blow new strength into your being,
May you walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life.
Apache Blessing

***

Thank you to our departing residents!!
Erik Memmott, David Vargo,
Nathan Wherly,
Chris Daniels, & Rita McElmury
Blessings on your next journey!

***

Little trees grow where big trees fell
Prayer flags they don't burn so well
We breathe, we share, in One we're found
The Dance of Hope goes round and round

Little green trees on a mountain of love
Water and earth and sky above
We build here now and sing this song
The Dance of Hope goes on and on

It’s up to You, it's up to Me, it's up to Us:
the Dance of Hope, HOPE!

"Dance of Hope"
Lyrics by Frank Meyer, Steve Kemble, and Rob Norris

Rebuilding Lama Foundation

During these past ten years of rebuilding, re-visioning, and rededicating Lama Foundation, a new branch of the Lama family tree has blossomed: the natural builders. They brought state-of-the-art mud and straw knowhow, a passion for after-hours fun such as dancing and drumming, and most importantly, a heart-centered dedication to re-building Lama with an emphasis on both beauty and function.

The only buildings left intact after the Hondo Fire were the Dome Complex, the Old Kitchen, the New Kitchen foundation, the Dew Drop office, and a single residence. This was barely enough to keep Lama Foundation in operation. The wintertime vulnerability of straw bales wrapped around trailers, thinly insulated tipis, yurts and domes challenged year-around residency. This in turn destabilized the on-going rebuilding effort. Nevertheless, Lama supporters threw themselves into the fray and gave until they had nothing left to give. And yet, Lama Foundation's special "magic" remained intact; new people came up the mountain each year, fell head-over- heels in love with Lama, and continued the huge task of rebuilding.

Starting in the summer of 1996, thousands of willing hands came up and felled trees along the contours of the land to preserve the top soil, planted baby trees, developed a long-term building site plan, and worked diligently to complete new buildings. For several years, the task was overwhelming because building projects during the busy summer season competed with serving summer retreats, growing food, and enjoying the fruits of Community. However, because so many believed in Lama Foundation’s vision and supported it with donations and/or their time, Lama has not only risen from the ashes, it is soaring!

Community Center Portal - 1999 The Workshop - 2002

The Workshop - 2002

The Kanaat - 2000

The Tree House - 1998

BHN Apprentices - 2006

Myles & Clarity - 2002

Community Center Complex, etc.

Maqbara Hermitage - 1997

Mollie - 2006

Making Adobe Bricks - 2004

Keyline - 2003

Vault One - 2004

BHN Apprentices - 2003

The Bear Hermitage, etc.

Ten years after the Hondo Fire, the long list of building accomplishments is impressive:

• The "Community Center" complex with new kitchen, pantry, larder, outdoor eating area, meeting rooms, and office space
• Seven straw-bale buildings
• One chainsaw-joinery building for year-round resident housing
• One summer-housing building made of strawclay
• One chainsaw-joinery hermitage
• One straw-bale hermitage
• Three important infrastructure straw-bale buildings (a recycling materials building, a woodshop/workshop, and a land-tool storage building)
• Some of the ISC complex has been rebuilt.

In 2007, we are planning to finish and occupy another straw-bale vault for year-round housing and also the straw-bale Cottage Industries Building, which includes a studio for making prayer flags and other hand-made Lama products, office space, and a "Lamassary - Love Emporium" retail facility. These days Lama Foundation resembles a small village as seen from the old High Hermitage site. Not only has Lama's ever-changing community completed some one and a half buildings each year (and we're still going), but each building has unique details that reflect the hearts of the many hands who gave so fully of themselves.

A few important guiding principles were adhered to while rebuilding. The "Lama Foundation Site Plan" (written in 1998-1999) provided an important over-all perspective in harmoniously siting buildings with the surrounding landscape, road access, and overall mapping of Lama. An ever- deepening understanding of straw-bale construction together with passive-solar design has proven to be an inexpensive and environmentally-sound method of creating new buildings. Building projects have been overseen by building professionals in conjunction with Lama community members, and so we continue to learn how to accomplish each project a little bit better. The result is a "new and improved" Lama Foundation with warmer buildings, a more modern utility infrastructure, and vast spaces of land left untouched. One might say that the Hondo Fire catastrophe provided an opportunity to upgrade.

While there are many accomplishments, Lama Foundation is still lacking adequate indoor summer housing for the many visitors who do not tent, and we are in need of funds to complete the Cottage Industries Building, which will greatly enhance Lama's ability to generate year-round income. So, we will continue to rebuild.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support. Rebuilding Lama Foundation is a community effort, and we absolutely could not do it without you!

Blessings, Austin Babcock

Magnificent Manifestations Of Your Generosity!

The Community Center Complex

Flag Mountain Cottage Industries

The Solar Shed & Panel Array

The Workshop

The Recycle & Storage Shed

Hermitages

The Maqbara Hermitage

Housing

The Kanaat

The Greensong and the Keyline

The Bluebird

The ISC

The Eco Nest

Vault One

The Tree House

The Hondo Fire, Ten Years After

Yesterday was gorgeous with the Mountain displaying its full autumnal splendor. The reds, browns, and bronzes of Gambel’s oaks are more varied and vibrant this year, perhaps due to our abundant spring and summer rains. Oaks have replaced ponderosa pine as the dominant plant species after the Hondo Fire, and they seem to huddle together in clumps separated by grassy areas and pathways.

Immediately after the burn, the Land Restoration Team was primarily concerned with retaining the soil that had previously been held in place by the montane vegetation. Our hastily constructed check dams and erosion barriers functioned well to preserve a healthy substrate that now supports a much greater variety of plant life than was present pre-fire.

Rico Zook, Lama Foundation’s Land Manager for several years, said, “The land looks good now, and I am pleased on many levels. It is normal for oaks to move in after a fire, but they could be cut back to speed up the return of the ponderosas. In the near future, Lama will have several options, such as thinning the aspen grove to manage its health.”

The meadow area behind the Main Dome was the first area to fully recover. It is filled with thick grasses, oaks, and seasonal wildflowers, including bursts of purple asters this fall. Yellow-flowered chamisa shrubs line the roadway leading up to Central. Walking along the Maqbara path, I was delighted by the contrasting colors of leaves in transition: yellow snowberries, red wild roses, and yellow-green deer brush. Occasional ponderosa pine seedlings provided a refreshing dash of vivid green against the drabber grasses.

Many planted ponderosa saplings adorn the Maqbara Hill, some of them four feet high. Most of the burned pines on Foundation property have been felled by chain saw or the gusting winds. Yet a dead forest still stands in the Mountain’s upper reaches, towering like blackened grave markers. The land is more open and spacious now, with stunning views of the gorge and surrounding country, yet also possessing a rawness that urges residents and visitors to search ever more deeply within and without.

Resident Lynn Farquhar, head of the Land Team said, “All the rain this year was heavenly. The Mountain has been exploding with asters that combine with the yellow sunflowers to make an eye- popping spectacle.” She noted that mule deer, elk, black bear, raccoons, and bobcats are much more numerous in the post-fire landscape. The bird life has also become more varied with bluebirds, hawks, magpies, flickers, and ravens frequently seen.

The aspen grove has come back full force with trunks reaching twenty feet skyward as their golden leaves gently sway in the breeze. Overgrown stacks of felled aspens remind me of the fierce flooding that swept over Lama just two months after the Hondo Fire. These barriers protected the springhouse from those destructive waves that roared off the denuded slopes above the Foundation.

The plant life along the drainage is thick and luxurious with young narrowleaf cottonwoods rising above snowberries, clumps of Rocky Mountain maple, mullein, and nodding brome grass. Check dams in the creek bed still slow the erosive forces of spring runoff and summer thunderstorms.

Our tree planting, reseeding, and erosion control certainly helped to minimize the effects of fire and flood. Yet it was the restorative, regenerative forces of Mother Nature that revegetated and that will eventually reforest this land. Once again, the Mountain humbles me. And, once again, I am grateful.

jai cross

Lama Goes To Market

After Kathy and I attended several organizational meetings this past winter and spring, it was exciting to be 'on the ground floor' of the new Questa Farmer's Market this summer. Each Sunday, we'd go set up our booth, evolving from a comedy team like Lucy and Ethel struggling with our canopy parts in the grocery store parking lot to a smooth team of booth organizers, growers, bakers, and candle/cream/ lipbalm producers, interacting with our customers, and enjoying the camaraderie of fellow marketers. It was a delight getting to know our neighbors and swapping stories and bread and produce with others passionate about community building and organic food.

As luck would have it, our booth wound up right next to where most weeks a musician (including fiddle-playing Meredith with her beautiful voice and banjo-playing Mia with HER great voice!) or group of musicians would play and sing to make the time zip by. It's been so inspiring to develop relationships with these folks, with their wealth of knowledge and stories about planting, harvesting, baking, and just living in beautiful northern New Mexico. As a result, I've a feeling that, more and more, Lama's produce will be coming directly from our own gardens and greenhouses as well as from local farmers like Daniel Carmona of Cerro Vista Farm, who gave such a fascinating and inspiring presentation during "Build Here Now, Grow Here Now, Live Here Now".

We really lucked out with this summer’s rains, and consequently we were able to enjoy lots of homegrown produce all summer long, and we still have root crops going strong! During the cold season, we're looking forward to visioning about which crops to grow where, how to perfect our 'value-added products' like candles, and ways to expand the number of people enjoying the new Questa Farmer's Market. See you there next summer!

Lynn Farquhar

Church of Conscious Harmony
From a conversation with Youth Minister Don Hale

The Church of Conscious Harmony in Austin, Texas, was co-founded by Tim Cook 18 years ago after he experienced a spiritual awakening during a Ram Dass retreat at Lama Foundation. Its Abba is Father Thomas Keating, a monk, author, and founder of the world-wide ministry of Contemplative Outreach. Church of Conscious Harmony (CCH) youth and chaperones first came to Lama in 1997, a year after the Hondo Fire, in response to requests for help with rebuilding. Another group returned to Lama in 2001, and CCH youth have returned every summer since that time.

The journey is a multi-leveled pilgrimage, an opportunity to go more deeply into prayer and to see prayerfulness modeled by practitioners from different spiritual traditions and walks of life. To experience the open-hearted welcome and acceptance of the Lama community in which the youth feel safe and held has a much greater impact on their lives than simply reading about religion. Lama has become a second home.

Youth Minister Don Hale explained, “The youth prepare for every pilgrimage by raising funds through the sale of calendars, peaches, baked goods, and an annual spaghetti dinner attended by over 100 people, but we try not to get lost in the fundraising. The week before our departure, we participate in an all-night vigil with centering and contemplative prayer. Each participant contributes to a group aim. This gives the youth a sense of the trip and an opportunity to deepen both individually and in their relationships with one another. Our departure is blessed by our pastor, Tim Cook and his wife Barbara, family, and other community members.”

“Our first ‘official’ stop is the cross overlooking Santa Fe, where we do a sit. We spend the night in Espanola and do morning devotion at the Hanuman Temple in Taos. One of our goals in taking the centering prayer to different sites is to realize that although external environments change, the inner environment is the same.”

“We come to Lama to serve and work with the community. Through the relationships that form with members of the summer community, the youth have an opportunity to see how they affect others’ lives. Watching the Lama Community open to them is an experience they don’t get anywhere else. They feel the ancient wisdom of the Mountain and the natural world that surrounds Lama, manifested in members of the community, and come to realize that this wisdom is part of their nature as well. At Lama, they experience a world that is slower – in a different rhythm – than the world from which they have come and so they learn to match rhythms with those around them.”

Mountain Learning

We arrived at Lama with the air of hustle hovering on our shoulders. We were excited and nervous to see just how a course entitled “Contemplation and Sustainable Design” would unfold on the side of a high-desert mountain.

Under the guidance of Professor Paul Wapner, seven American University graduate and undergraduate students left the walls of our Washington, D.C. campus this summer and embarked on the adventure of a non-traditional class. The course syllabus had prepared us for training in natural building techniques and global environmental politics discourse. Our days were spent mixing cob and slathering it onto the blossoming Cottage Industries Studio, reflecting on global issues within a personal context, and incorporating all of this into artful journaling. We soon learned that what was not on the syllabus offered an equally important lesson: Seva, tuning, lodges, Shabbat, yoga, sweat, tears, connections to the soul, sharing meals made with intention, looking for thunderheads, exploring the raspberry trails on the land, sleeping hard, and living lightly.

We left Lama with song, presence, and love in our hearts. We are fortunate to have lived a bit of Lama’s place, people, and spirit. The residents, summer stewards, and other visitors transformed a “class” into a course on the intricacies of life. Thank you to all of our Lama teachers!

Leah Baker ( AU student of Paul Wapner)

American University Workshop: Contemplative Sustainable Design
July 29-August 13, 2006

We came to the Mountain to reflect on and even try to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems. We wanted to learn how to respond to climate change, loss of biological diversity, increasing scarcity of fresh water and the overall degradation of the earth’s air, water, soil and species diversity. As students of global environmental affairs at American University, we understood that our current ways of life are unsustainable. We wanted to know how to steer ourselves, our nation, and the world in new, more hopeful and sustainable directions.

We came from Washington DC, arguably the belly of the beast. We were used to trying to change the world by staring at computer screens and competing against each other and many others to win the attention of policy-makers or, really, anyone who would listen. Many of us were worn down by the frenetic politics and the city itself. We came to Lama for refuge and to experience a model of sustainability. Lama was our summer laboratory for experimenting with ourselves and our grand ideas of how to make the world a better place. When we arrived, I asked Das what to expect. He replied, “Well, let’s see what happens.”

Things, in fact, did happen. We helped build the new Cottage Industries Studio with mud, straw, and, as Austin always reminded us, love. We sat in the prayer room and listened to our breath, heart, and souls. We practiced yoga, walked in the woods, stared out across the gorges, valleys and mountains, and shared our fears and thoughts about global environmental problems. Most of all, and most rewarding, we joined the community.

Tuning, eating, talking, dancing and smiling with the residents and summer staff is a profound experience. Lama continues to be a place where people come together to support each other’s journeys and the community’s unfolding, and this proved to be our biggest lesson about sustainability. We learned that, more important than all the technical know-how revolving around environmental well-being, at the root of things is finding a way of living together that honors each other’s souls, cultivates a sense of caring about each other, and harmonizes our lives with the natural world.

At the end of our stay, as the shuttles left the mountain to the sound of the conch shell, these kinds of things started to sink in and we were able to appreciate the deeper meaning of sustainability. We did so, it turns out, by becoming different people. We arrived as individual students dedicated to environmental protection. We left as a thankful community more understanding of ourselves and more supported in our political and spiritual aims. Over our three weeks at Lama, we grew thankful for the land, for the opportunity to live alongside the wise folks of the Mountain, and for the transformative powers that flicker at the center of life.

Paul Wapner

Ned O’Malia

Three Credits and an Outhouse

There is a long familial bond between Lama Foundation and the Honors Program of the University of New Mexico. For almost 20 years, Lama has been host, academic center, and spiritual guide to an unusual Honors seminar entitled: Sacred Sites of Northern New Mexico. Using Lama as a home base, this ten-day, three-credit seminar allows fifteen students to experience Lama and visit other spiritual communities.

For me, there is no greater joy than driving to Lama during Community Camp, wondering who will be there. We enter into whatever rhythm of spiritual life we encounter. Once, we arrived on a day of silence when an orientation and land tour were conducted by use of writing on a clip board. We have arrived several times to be greeted by the spiritual chords of Stew Baba Britton’s saxophone kirtans. We once arrived to the music of three Iranian men from Denver playing archaic Iranian instruments most of the night in the Dome.

Sacred Sites has a Web page (http://www.unm.edu/~nomalia/) which relates some of the history of this seminar. In time we will have photos of each of the seminar years. There is a section entitled “Sacred Characters” to honor the people we meet in our travels who have had a profound effect on us. This year at a roadside picnic stop near Abiquiu, we met Roy C. Johnson, a cowboy traveling with his horse and bed roll from San Antonio, Texas to Spokane, Washington. He had already been on the road for 71 days and expected to be riding for another 6 months. His wife told him he was not the man she had married and that he should go find that man. Roy was on as true a Yantra as any soul flying to India. Fatima Rigsby is one of our favorite “Sacred Characters.”

One of my greatest pleasures in teaching Sacred Sites has been seeing the familiar through the new and enthusiastic eyes of students. It is a tradition that we stop in the lower parking lot and walk slowly and consciously in silence up the longest route to the Dome. In the Dome, we circumambulate clockwise seven times and then sit in a circle to begin our orientation. The experience of seeing this spectacular building on the top of the wide meadow, then feeling the wooden floor, danced on and prayed over so many times, creates an electric wave about all of us.

In the hallowed tradition of Seva, the Sacred Sites students became quite good at building and refurbishing outhouses in the very beginning of this long union. We would usually tackle one of the hermitage outhouses, dig a new hole in rocky ground, move the outhouse, replace worn boards, and paint it with the brightest paint we could find. We took endless photos of these grand creations, and I once showed former Governor Jerry Apodaca photographs of the seminar. When he asked about the outhouse I told him that we build them as part of the seminar work. He replied, “Finally a resume item worth something.”

Roy C. Johnson, (Cowboy), Ambrosia Ortiz (Teaching Assistant 2007), Ned O'Malia

Our grandest Seva was moving building materials, including a wood stove, to the High Hermitage. Plans were under way for this movement, which included talk of a helicopter lift, when I chimed in that I had college students eager to work. We placed the cast iron wood stove in a wheel barrow, and in the Chinese style, I attached three ropes to the front of the wheel barrow so that the stove was pulled and pushed up the long rocky path to the High, and the old one brought back down.

Even when I think I am beyond being surprised by student reactions to Lama, I am surprised again. A young woman boldly stated that she enrolled for this seminar because it was shorter than a semester and looked easy. After a week, I met her one night crying, saying she had just called her mother and had asked to be baptized in their family church. If there is a trend with my students at Lama, it is that they reawaken to the discarded religion of their childhood. Now they see the adult version of that teaching with its complexities, mysteries, and opportunities.

Sacred Sites is not all outhouses, sweat lodges, teepees, or Willie’s wondrous cinema. Each student writes a research paper, which is shared with the class. Each student creates an annotated workbook of writings, musings, questions and 25 images, which can be photographs, drawings, found art, and once a bone fragment. These workbooks are a gift to that student later in life. They are a record of a moment in their lives, which most will never experience again. Some of these workbooks are of museum quality with high imagination and huge creativity; some are merely adequate to meet the goal.

I am often surprised by where and when the seeds planted during this seminar come to sprout. In May of this year, I spent an afternoon in the Maqbara reading the hermit journals. One stated, “I first came here twelve years ago with a college class; I have gone downhill since that time. I am back to recover something.” He signed his name, which I immediately recognized, as he was somewhat of a pain in the neck. Of all the people on all the seminars, how he found his path back here still amazes me. Plus, as he was carrying his Blackberry with him, he was able to contact the Hermit Master Krishna Das through the Internet for his daily supplies. Wow!

In reflection, I am grateful that over 300 college students have felt the heartbeat of the Lama Foundation, walked the meadows, drank tea, danced in the Dome, cooked silently in the morning kitchen, and met great spiritual beings. There is no measure of how the Lama experience will translate into their lives. I am aware of the smiles shared and the tears dropped. I have felt heart spaces open in many students. I am thankful to have been a part of this Lama Foundation – Honors Program seminar. I am thankful to have learned something from each student - about them and about me. With the grace of the Goddess, may it long continue.

Thank you Lama Foundation! Ned O’Malia

Maqbaras on Lama Mountain

Murshid Samuel L. Lewis’ Maqbara

Samuel L. Lewis was Lama’s first “teacher”. Following is an excerpt from his diary of that time (1970): “Here I am in a spiritual commune way up in the Rockies (Lama), where they practice, practice, practice what others preach, preach, preach. It is marvelous. It is the New Age. It is the New Age without any recent Messiahs. Just human beings who demonstrate love and humanity, and worship according to the forms of all religions and don¹t waste time on endless lectures.”

Murshid Sam was buried on Lama Mountain in the deep of winter in January 1971. The Maqbara of Murshid Samuel L. Lewis, like the shrines of Sufi teachers in the East, is a place of Baraka, of blessing, of peace. It is a place of pilgrimage where we can reconnect with spiritual reality, recharge our batteries, and seek an answer to life’s problems. Lama celebrates Murshid’s birthday on October 18th and his Urs (day of passing, or wedding with the Beloved) on January 15th. All are welcome!

Funded by Sufi Ruhaniat International, work was done this past summer to improve the seating around his Maqbara. The crescent above the grave was expanded and new stones were laid along the top. The area can now seat 25 to 30 people.

Toward the One
The perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty
The only Being
United with all the Illuminated Souls
Who form the Embodiment of the Master
The Spirit of Guidance

Murshida Vera Corda’s Maqbara

This summer a group of volunteers from the local community, lead by Rahaman Brown worked on a beautification project at Murshida Vera Corda’s Maqbara.

Excerpted here are a few words Shabaz Juan Lopez shared about the project: “(The) volunteers lovingly hauled over two tons of rock, stone by stone, from the base of the trail...to the Maqbara site. It is quite steep... The cement used was made with rainwater (gathered from the roof of the bench shelters at Murshid Sam’s Maqbara up the hill)... The cookie jar urn (with Murshida’s ashes)... is now under the floor of the little grotto in the center of (a stone) crescent... There is still work to do. The monument still needs some finishing details. The path and landscape will be (improved) and two beautiful benches (made by John Murray who built the bench shelters at Murshid Sam’s Maqbara as well as the Maqbara hermitage hut) will be set (in place). The floor and walls of the small grotto will be decorated with (quartz) crystals being collected... Hopefully the honoring of our teachers will carry on the four winds to the highest heaven.”

This project (materials and food for the volunteers) is being funded by donations to Holistic Human Development, Inc., a trust set up to further the work of Murshida Vera Corda. Contact them c/o Zahira Rabinowitz (mzahira@ comcast.net) (707) 763-6078.

Pilgrims are welcome to visit both Maqbaras any time.
Please call for road conditions.

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