| Blog Post Published on: | 26th October 2022 |
| Title: | Louise Strandness Gosho on the Idea of a Homestead at Circle Pines Center |
| Lead Author: | Louise Strandness Gosho |
| Type of Blog Post: | cpc_history |
“Vitally interested in community and decentralization since meeting Ralph Borsodi in 1939, Louise Strandness [Gosho] began a first-hand study of these subjects at the School of Living in Suffern, New York, at Pendle Hill, and at Teaburyport. She made the first list and record of all such communities, and her correspondence began the Rural Cooperative Communities file. She and her husband, Lewis Gosho, met at Circle Pines, and with a group of members have purchased land and begun a homestead community adjacent to the Center. This article was written during the summer of 1944, when the homestead plan was under discussion.”
1944 Circle Pines Center Anthology (p. 40)
I want to live on a homestead because I want to be a whole person. To live fully I must use all sides of my being. I am more than body, I am more than mind, I am more than spirit. I want to work with my hands in a way that uses my mind and has a spiritual meaning. I refuse to be pigeon-holed into a factory (using only my hands) or even into a profession where I tell others how to live so many hours of the day that I have little chance to live rightly myself.
I want to enjoy all of life. To do so, I must certainly enjoy my work; but how few today really enjoy their work! It is because most of them are only earning dollars to buy life. Too often the tension of such work makes them incapable of using leisure time in a recreative way. My day’s work has real meaning only if I see it as a part of a life-process through which I provide for myself and those I love. Even weeding is creative when it means health for those I love. Though it I am not only producing food more nutritious than any with which dollars could supply me, but I am using muscles God gave me to use. The satisfaction in the process can also contribute much toward mental health.
Life to be full must give not only a healthy mind in a healthy body, but it must also stimulate spiritual growth. A man grows spiritually only through assuming responsibility. Responsibility, in turn, is rarely possible unless an individual can plan, execute, and feel the result of his labors. Increasing millions today are expected to be responsible in their work, though only participating in a minute part of only one of these three functions – execution.
I want a homestead not only because I want to be a complete person; I also want to be a real wife. I have chosen to live intimately with another. I am a much more complete person thus; but I know that love does not grow in a vacuum. If we are both to be stronger than either could be alone, we must work together on something meaningful. Yet if my husband worked only for dollars in a tiring city job and we lived in a city home, I would have also to find work outside our home, both because our living costs would be so high and because without a task there I’d be only a parasite. I am sure in such a set-up we wold soon wear on each other’s nerves.
I do not mean that on a homestead we will not work for some cash. It is rather that such work will be just part of our day’s toil: the part that will buy salt and oranges and pay our taxes and doctor bills. And even that work, we hope, will be done for our neighbors, not for an unknown consumer. To start a homestead will require money, so we’ll probably need to go to some city to earn the initial outlay; that that need not be for long. We know that we can only afford to live very simply, but we believe that simplicity is a most important ingredient in beauty. And how much more exciting to live in a home we have built for ourselves, eat the food we have produced, and wear the clothes woven from our sheep’s backs!
“How about cultural pursuits?” many ask us. We believe, with Eric Gill, that whatever cultivates man is culture. Whatever makes life more beautiful is a cultural influence. Important as professional productions of the operas and symphonies may be, we would rather have many sing, play, dance and write in an amateur manner than have fewer and fewer be creative, as is the trend today. Considering the future of radio and transportation, however, we do not think we face the problem of “either, or.”
I want a homestead not only because I want to be a whole person and a real wife; more important is the fact that I hope to be a good mother – a mother of children who are free because their parents are free and live in a setting that permits freedom; children who are forever learning because of constant real problems to be solved; children who are responsible because they have learned to plan a job, see it through, and suffer or enjoy the result; children who love life because they feel themselves such a real part of its many processes.
Money cannot buy such advantages in the city. At progressive schools children play at the processes which can be a necessary part of everyday living on a homestead. Instead of having them in school for twenty or more years and then suddenly put to work, we would like our children to have their work, learning, and play inseparably related during childhood and throughout life.
We should hope to have our own elementary school where children may receive in half a day more than they now gain in a whole day, leaving many hours of every day free for creative activities with their parents and neighbors. When I think of our children’s high school education, I hope that the other communities beginning throughout our country will develop so that there may be an exchange of young people for at least two years, at this age when they are craving independence. Beyond high school I hope that folk schools may care for the majority. In them we hope our boys and girls will come to recognize the dignity of all forms of labor and want to study as apprentices to develop the various skills needed in their own or other cooperative communities. For the few who are especially capable and desire to go on into the professions, I feel we ought somehow to establish a fund, making their training a cooperative responsibility, and trusting that we have made our life together pleasant enough that many will return to be our doctors, teachers, lawyers.
Because we are so convinced that a homestead can be the best setting for a good life for us, Lewie and I would, if necessary, establish one alone. In some ways it would be much easier than to help build a community; living on a closely cooperative basis with other families is not easy. But we do not want to homestead alone, because it would have so very much less meaning, as well as being more difficult financially. I cannot be a whole person, a real wife, or a good mother unless I recognize in my daily living my oneness with all of life, human as well as animal and plant, and grow with them. That is why I want a homestead in a cooperative community.
Important as the family is, it can easily become an extremely selfish unit. We must learn to live love with those nearest us if we are to live love in our community, nation, or world. We cannot put either ahead of the other in order of achievement. We must love many outside our homes – even humanity as a whole – if we are to share the best in life with those nearest to us.
Love does not grow in a vacuum in larger units of society any more than it does in our homes. We cannot learn to know and understand (and therefore love) our neighbors unless we live with them. I don’t want to divide myself into segments: one part of me working with one set of persons; another part playing with a second group; still another part worshiping with still other folks; and another part going to co-op meetings with the individuals who buy groceries in the same store. To do this is easier, in the sense that we don’t need to adjust too much; we can be all things to all persons, depending on the situation – but what a hectic way to live! No wonder increasing numbers become schizophrenic, or at least neurotic.
It is my conviction that today’s war is as much psychological as it is economic. People no longer feel they “belong.” War gives them the opportunity to work and sacrifice together that everyday living no longer gives. It also provides an outlet for emotions pent-up in our sterile ways of living. We will not solve the problem of war or any of our social problems until we learn to live together cooperatively in smaller as well as larger units.
I want to live in a cooperative community where, by working together, we can produce our own needs, selling only the surpluses. The surplus may be in the form of either goods or services; most likely it will be both. I want to study, play and worship with these same folks. Only by doing so can we live fully together.
These are but a few of the reasons why we want our homestead in a cooperative community. We expect such a life to be difficult, challenging. Some will try to escape from the bedlam of today’s world, but if it is an easy way out they are seeking, they will soon escape out of a cooperative community, as well. From an economic standpoint developing such a community of homesteads may be an only way for many when our next depression descends. We want to have begun showing – before that crisis – that life on a homestead in a cooperative community can be a good one, not just a desperate last straw.
An important question will always be: Where ought the boundaries be drawn between the individual family and the group or cooperative community? Let me pause here to say that I cannot wish to have a cooperative community of more than twenty family-homesteads. A group larger than that seems too unwieldy for cooperative democracy.
The division of functions ought, of course, to depend on the individuals concerned. There are many productive functions which are most economically carried on in a family unity. That will be increasingly true as more ingenuity is transferred to the invention of small-scale machinery, ans as families are enabled to grow in size. On a homestead older people as well as children can be economic assets rather than liabilities. The individual family ought not be discouraged from having its own garden, if it so desires, even though gardening were found more efficient on a community scale. We must continually remember that it is freedom for the growth of the individual – as a member of a group – that determines ways and means of developing the best cooperative community.
I want more than a homestead in a cooperative community. I want that homestead to be at Circle Pines Center. It was at Circle Pines Center five years ago that Lewie and I first met Ralph Borsodi and began out thinking along these lines. Since then I have lived at the School of Living, at Pendle Hill, and in several wood-be cooperative communities. Not until returning to Circle Pines Center last spring was I sure that at last I had found the place where I desired to stay. There are many reasons for this.
Circle Pines Center was begun is is owned by a large and growing group. No one individual can claim prioity here. All must assume their share of leadership, though perhaps in different realms. Circle Pines Center is composed of persons of many kinds of interests and abilities and dreams. A cooperative homestead community developing here would have much greater hope for success as well as greater significance than in any other situation with which I am familiar.
Another reason we anticipate the opportunity to create our homestead in Circle Pines Center is because we share with other the hope that a real folk school will soon be in existence here. It will be an educational and cultural center not only for our cooperative community, all of our neighbors in the surrounding community, and members of Circle Pines no matter where they live, but perchance also for broader circles of cooperators.
History is against us in this undertaking. The lives of cooperative communities have been notably short; only those with a very strong religious bond have survived for more than a few years. Is our vision broad enough, our determination great enough, and our patience deep enough to make our undertaking a success?