 [This is written by Rob, one of our neighbors in the intentional community in which we live. The woods he's referring to are literally our backyard.] The light lingers late, slanting through the trees after 9pm, highlighting mossy wonderlands on the branches. There is movement in a tuft of moss and a tiny nest materializes, perfectly matching the moss and lichen background.The movement is from the tiniest of birds, nestling Rufus hummingbirds. The tiny trio shift and squirm, barely fitting in the tiny cup, waiting for an adult to return with perhaps a snack of spiders. Two days later, they are gone, hopefully fledged into the world full of sunny flower gardens. A dark shadow weaves through the branches, a crow, seeking nestlings to feed its own offspring. This morning the air was full of the indignant squawks of a fledgling crow incessantly demanding food from a harried parent. There is a pair of crows working the trees in the woods, the four youngsters, every bit as large as the parents, sit around and complain until they are fed. Sheesh. Teenagers. The world is full of exploration right now as bumbling babies take their first paths. A fledgling towhee runs out of the ferns in hapless pursuit of a ground beetle. It puts its whole body into the effort as it pecks at this morsel, then the bird jumps back, as if not to sure what might happen next. The beetle changes course and the bird jumps back and watches, turning its head to gauge the next strike. A screaming jay sweeps out of the woods and the towhee melts back into the brush, having clearly learned one of life's most important lessons. Sitting on a sunny log at the edge of the wood I noticed movement on my pants and discovered that I had inadvertently intercepted the web network of dozens and dozens of tiny spiderlets who had just hatched from a large yellowish fuzzy nest. The swarm on my pants congealed into a mass, with layers of spiders, one atop the other in some places 3 or 4 deep. This seemed to me to be a bad strategy, with all the spiders in one place wouldn't it be easier for some predator to eat them all at once? I got interested and tried to estimate the percentage of the spiders who clustered vs. those which disbursed and as I looked about I was surprised to find an even larger cluster of spiders nearby. The sun reached me and the spiders on my pants began moving into the shade and off of me. Once in the shadows the mass of spiderlings was almost invisible, their many bodies fitting almost imperceptibly into the bark. A shaft of light against the afternoon tree shadowed background highlights an insect aerial highway. Teeming thousands of flying insects pass by each hour, heading somewhere quickly. The sheer volume of bugs passing by in just one spot boggles the calculating part of my brain as I try to comprehend the vast numbers throughout the whole woods. The staggering amount of life in the air of course is many fold multiplied in the soil. Swallows zip and dive into the bug stream gathering protein for their young. Cleaning up some wood in the back yard I encounter a ground beetle gathering, more than 50 beetles under an old piece of plywood. As I kneel down for a closer look I find a thick pile of elytra, the hard outer wingcovers of the beetles. Somebody has had many a beetle snack here. There are twisting pathways carved in random patterns, and rodent droppings are thick. As I poke into the midden pile of beetle remains a huge reddish spider emerges, waving its frontlegs as if spoiling for fight. A world under a board. I feel a bit bad rearranging this tiny world for the worse, but then again, I left the board there in the first place, so godlike, I can take my board world back if I so choose. But it is an instructive lesson, that something so simple as a scrap of plywood can create a useful and well inhabited niche. The Salmonberries are at their peak ripeness, a fact well known to the Robins and Cedar waxwings who gulp down great numbers. The Elderberries have turned red and the full fruit pyramids are weighing down the ends of branches. In a couple of weeks these will largely be gone. The Red huckleberries are also out and ripening, although this seems to be a light huckleberry year. The forest rings with the laughing call of the Pileated Woodpecker. This crow-sized bird might be one of the most important ecological forces in our woods. Each year the massive bill of this bird excavates a 14-24 inch nesting hole to raise its young. They then abandon this resource and create a new one the next year. These snug and dry havens are crucial for many species, including flying squirrels, wood ducks, bats, and Douglas squirrels. More than 30 species rely on Pileated woodpecker holes for nesting and also for winter cover. So our largest woodpecker is the forest housing contractor, each year making available another cavity for others to use later. Pileated woodpeckers mate for life and can live a decade or so, each pair remaining more or less on the same territory year around. A Pileated chooses a forest for the amount of death it contains, searching out decaying and dead trees. Their primary winter and fall food is the fat and nutrient rich larva of carpenter ants which inhabit decaying wood. The soft decaying wood is no match for the strong sharp bill of the Pileated and sometimes a bird will whack out so much of a standing dead tree that the tree will collapse, hastening its further decay. This bird also eats fruit and readily comes to suet feeders when available. I have watched at close range the force and wood removal capacity of this bird. The bird uses its chisel bill to remove large chips and flakes of wood, which it may toss 3-4 feet from the tree. After removing a wood chunk, the bird closely examines its work and then directs its supple tongue into a crevasse to extract its prey. Pileated woodpeckers are a balancing force, bridging life and death and so these birds are a good omen of forest health and vigor. The warm evenings are serenaded with the ascending spiraling calls of the Swainsons thrush. This is the bird of summer for our woods, and all too soon it will join the other summer visitors as they depart our northern forest. So enjoy them while they are there -- Rob, Naturalist and Writer
  Karen wanted to get to know Lynn Gross [photo on left], a local dance instructor, so she signed up for a six-week class in beginning footwork. Karen, who has won a few state dance championships herself, needs a beginning class like I need a third nose. But I thought this might be a good excuse to have a regularly scheduled night out, so I signed up Lisa and myself, too. Karen decided it would be more challenging to learn the men's part. You can see her on the right trying it out with Lisa. Lisa's getting to be a pretty good dancer. Her favorite dances are the polka and the Viennese waltz. Karen's favorite dances are the New York hustle and night-club two step.
Apparently after our recent trip to Leavenworth, I brought home an unexpected souvenier -- solar keratitis, otherwise known as sunburned eyeballs. I thought I had already learned the first rule of practical accordionship -- don't march behind the horse! But marching in the parade without sunglasses left me with eyes that felt like sand.
After a few days of tearful driving, I headed over to the urgent care facility. The doctor dutiful dropped some anaesthetic into my eyes, then dyed them orange. An ultraviolet light revealed the scorched areas of the corneal lining. While I waited for the cure, eyedrops that were literally on steroids, the nurse administrator came in to ask a few questions. "Martin, do you still have the same address and phone number?" "Right." "And is your wife Karen still your contact?" "Yes." "And your other contact Lisa is -- ?" She waited politely for a reply. "My other wife," I answered nonchalantly.
Her reaction was as I expected, somewhere between horrid fascination and deer in the headlights. I've seen the same expression on my cat when I rub my finger along the tines of a comb. "You mean your wife's best friend, something like that?" "Actually, we're polygamists."
I could sense her pulse revving, but she didn't miss a beat. "Oh, I've heard of that," she mumbled, and I caught the word "jealousy" as she fled the room. I hope I made a good impression, in case I have to come back someday.
 [See also our previous blog entry.] We had no performances scheduled for the first day, so we took a few accordion workshops and went to see Janet Todd perform. After the show, several musicians sat on stage jamming out waltzes, polkas, tangos and other fine dance tunes.  Lisa and I jumped up and ran to the cleared area in front and began dancing. Soon several other couples joined us, including the costumed dancers you see with Lisa in the photo to the right. The dancer to the right of Lisa is Glen. More about him later. I have several snappy moves that get the audience laughing -- sneaking a kiss, peeking up a skirt, dancing up the aisles. When we saw the costumed ensemble performing the next day, sure enough Glen had picked up the kissing move. He and his wife started hanging out with us and came to watch us perform in the town gazebo. [Can you find us both in the upper left photo?] . We must have impressed him, because he bought an accordion and took his first lesson that same day. We encouraged him to march through town in the accordion parade with us, even though he only knew two notes -- and he did! Before we left, he invited us to come and stay with him at the bed and breakfast he's creating. Talk about inspiring someone! Neither he nor his wife have any idea we're polygamists, and we didn't want to tell them for fear of blowing a fuse.    After three days of playing, dancing, and partying, I was bushed! That's the problem with having a younger wife. Lisa was still going strong, and I was ready to sleep. We decided that Lisa should go on to the final late night beer fest and jam session alone. I wasn't worried. Lisa has made a lot of friends in the accordion world, and I knew she wouldn't be drinking alone. You can see her here with three well-known accordionists [from left to right, Tom Dempski, Rick Hatley, and Murl Allen Sanders.]
 Lisa and I drove over the snowcapped mountains at nearby Stephen's pass to spend three days in Leavenworth playing at an accordion festival. We stayed in the Cascade room at the All Seasons River Inn that overlooks the Wenatchee river. [Three days is too long for a single blog entry, so we'll break it into two.]  The Cascade room has a special feature that we like so much that we request the same room each year. The jacuzzi tub is in a bumpout that makes us feel as if we're suspended over the river, which is white with the waves of melting snowcaps. The three sides of the bumpout are half-silvered mirrors. We can look out, but no one can look in. Several candles complete the scene. Staying at a bed and breakfast means a tasty meal and a breakfast conversation with other couples who are usually celebrating their relationship. These conversations can be a bit awkward for us. "How long have you been married?" ["To which wife?"] We decided to test the water first. "So what do you do for a living?" "I'm a writer." "How interesting! What do you write about?" "Emerging technology and polygamy." Everyone maintains a polite blank look, so we decide to leave it at that. Susan and Dale, the new owners, are well aware of our situation -- we commiserated with them last year about the difficulties of finding a bed and breakfast that can accomodate us. [When the three of us travel together, we stay at a hotel.] Karen stayed home to keep the fire burning. Lisa wants the Leavenworth accordion festival to be her exclusive territory, and she and I have developed several rituals around it. Karen took a separate vacation the week before with her son [my stepson] white water rafting down the same river. [We'll blog about this when the photos come back.] Lisa insists that Karen and I create an exclusive parallel vacation. So Karen and I plan to visit Las Vegas together later this year, just the two of us. Perhaps Las Vegas will become Karen's territory.
 This week we had the 4,000th visitor to our blog. According to the traffic report, the average visitor spends about five minutes reading about two blog entries, and about half of you are regular readers. 4,000 visitors isn't bad for a new blog, although we expected 5,000 visits by now. Requests for media interviews have also declined. I'd guess that the end of the [first] Big Love series and the beginning of summer are the main reasons for this. Evidently there's a season for interest in polygamy, and we'll learn its tides and turns as we go. By the way, if you use Bloglines.com or some other reader, you can add our site feed (Atom) to it and be notified of new entries. We try to put out at least one new entry every two days. Email from our readers -- - I have just read your website and wanted to say Thank You for being so open and honest about everything. Explaining how you feel and how you live (which I understand you shouldn't have to explain to anyone) has really helped me and others to understand the life of polygamy.
- I wish you only the best and wonderful things for your life. Thank you again!
- Keep it up!
- I just wanted to say that I absolutely love reading your blog. It’s refreshing to see and read about such a beautiful relationship!
- I want to be a pologymist too!
And much more! Actually, there wasn't a single disparaging email this month. Did we meet our goals? Almost all of them! We talked about jealousy and fighting fair, finding wives and 2wives.com, legal marriage transfer, and Lisa made her debut. We continue to define ourselves through our blog. This month we learned that by posting tasteful nudes, like Spencer Tunick's art photo in Polygamy and Nudity and Big Love, we inadvertantly distance ourselves from Christian polygamists. Sorry about that, but that's who we are -- nonreligious consensual polygamists who are willing to live out loud. Our interest in nudity is part of this revelation, just like our photos and personal insights. So coming up in the near future we'll be blogging about Christian Polygamy and Christian Nudity :) These two topics are eerily similar, as you'll see. We've also received quite a few emails from women and couples who would like to form polygamous families. We'll complete our review of Internet matchmaking resources, and then choose some way to help readers make connections. Also coming up -- We'll take the next steps of our marriage transfer. We'll give you a photo tour of our house. We'll talk about intentional family, a term Martin coined in 1995. And of course we'll continue reviewing polygamy resources and keep you up to date about important events in the unfolding story of polygamy. Meanwhile, Karen's just back from whitewater rafting, and Lisa and I are off to play accordion in Bavarian-styled Leavenworth for the tourists for three days. We'll blog about this, too!
 In Finding or Forming a Polygamous Family, I talked about how I think polygamous relationships form, with a promise that I would review some internet matchmaking resources for you. In a more recent blog, I reviewed 2wives.com, aka Polygamy Personals. In this blog, I continue by looking at SoulfulHarmony. SoulfulHarmony is a recent entry into the wordlet of polygamy matchmaking. There's even one of our blog entries in the left column, Polygamy is not Codependency. SoulfulHarmony gives the appearance of generic dating service matchware that's been tweaked for polygamy. It's absolutely free. What do you get for your money? From their site -- Welcome to SoulfulHarmony.com
Create your free SoulfulHarmony.com
profile to begin the exciting journey towards finding your Perfect Match(es).
Polygamy on this site is defined as one male with or seeking two or more females
for life long companionship.
Browse real profiles of Families, Couples, Single Men and Women who are
searching for the same things you are in a polygamous relationship on this
TOTALLY FREE safe online relationship service. Here is where you can find the Emotional support, commitment, understanding and
benefits that are not always available in a typical monogamous relationship and
a Greater Chance at a Successful, life long companionship. [...]
As usual, I find myself in a bind. I can't get into the site without posting a personal ad, and I'm not looking for another sister-wife right now, so I'd be out of integrity. But I noticed that refreshing the display brought up a new random selection of profiles. By refreshing several times, I was able to guess that the site has about 20 profiles. I recognized taratoot and tribalchristian as legitimate profiles from other polygamy websites. About half the profiles were couples looking for a woman. The other half were harder to understand. A woman looking for a woman? Women looking for a man? I read all the profiles, and only a third provided much detail. The rest were "tell you later" or entirely absent. Unfortunately, like 2wives.com, there's no obvious way to contact the site or reach the webmaster. Nevertheless, I'd keep my eye on this site. It shows promise.
 Last family night we watched the season finale of Dr. Who. We also watched the HBO documentary Naked World, which follows the artist Spencer Tunick across seven continents. Spencer invites large crowds to pose naked for him. You can see one of his photos to the left. He's been arrested [at least] five times in New York, and yet got 4,500 people to pose for him in Melbourne, Australia, with the help of the local government, and in the rain! If you want to participate in his next work, sign up at spencertunick.com. So why are we blatantly showing nudity on our blog about polygamy? Is it for the same reason Big Love began their first season with scenes of Bill Paxton's naked fanny, and Chloe Sevigny's naked bosom? Maybe, but unless an HBO writer comes knocking at our door, we won't know for sure. You've got to admit that it's fun to speculate about it, though!  Is it all about simple curiosity? Is it the primitive drive to know who's got the banana, and who's bonking whom? As Americans, we are intently curious about nudity. This summer in Seattle [where we live] the famous naked bicyclists will appear, as they do every year, in the Fremont parade. This in itself is curious, since a second arrest for public nudity is a third-degree felony in Washington. [By the way, Ryan T, who is on the board of the travelling nudist club of Seattle and one of the bicyclists, will be visiting us to experience the group house. Maybe we'll blog about it afterwards.] Or is it that many people associate polygamy with sexual variety [and not family], and will follow their curiosity to a new show? Once there, they can be titillated [the word comes from "tickle", and not "tit". But who knows where the word "tickle" comes from?] and then weaned [um, never mind] from a sexual plot to a family plot. Is this the underlying strategy of Big Love? Or is it that Big Love made an early decision to push away from the LDS Mormons? Early interviews with LDS Mormons showed that few of them were [willing to admit] watching it. The early letter writing campaign to end the show failed, so if this was Big Love's strategy, it was a good one.
 This week we cooked for our community. Twenty-five adults and ten children under 12 signed up to eat. Children under 12 count as half, because in theory they eat half as much as adults do. Hah! Anyway, that gave us a total of thirty mouths to feed, and a budget of $80 to feed them. Meals normally get a cook, a helper, and two cleaners. We like to cook and clean as a group house, as part of family night. Karen or I cook, Lisa and Josh help, and all of us clean up. I decided to cook Broccoli chowder Andy, a recipe straight out of college, or rather out of The Campus Survival Cookbook #2, by Wood and Gilchrist -- 2 boxes frozen broccoli, 1 cup milk, 3 cups chicken broth,
4 Tsp butter, 1 cup light cream, 2 cups (8 oz) shredded Swiss cheese Cook broccoli in chicken broth 8 minutes. Do not drain. Add everything else.
Stir over low heat and eat right away. Serves two hungry people.
Applying a little basic math and knowing that people eat less than I think, I scaled the ingredients by ten -- 12 large packages chopped frozen broccoli, 3 qts milk, one jar of chicken boullion paste,
1 package butter, 3 qts light cream, 5 one pound blocks of Swiss cheese. Then it's off to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, and then to CostCo, our nearest giant food wherehouse, where I added -- three long loaves of potato rosemary bread, a package of one dozen large muffins
(chocolate, poppyseed, blueberry), a large bag of chopped salad greens, and
another of chopped roumaine, and three tubes of sausage. Then back to the common house to begin preparation. I started two 10 quart pots boiling with 15 cups of water in each, scraping half of the boullion paste into each pot. Then I started the sausage cooking in a large frying pan. While the water was boiling and sausage frying, I rammed 5 quartered bricks of Swiss cheese through the food processor. Once the water boiled, I dumped in the chopped frozen broccoli and let it come back to a boil. That gave me time to finish the sausage and slice the bread. Then I added the cheese, milk, cream, and butter to the broccoli and let it heat up. Did I mention that the predominant spice is cholesterol? I put the sausage into one of the pots, designating the other pot as the vegetarian option. People were starting to arrive, so I finished up the show. I mixed two bags of greens into two large metal bowls and put olive oil and balsamic vinegar nearby. Then I removed the paper from the muffins and sliced each into quarters. Viola! Forty servings of dessert. It was a succesful meal, and we had enough left over for dinner for five the next day. That's less than three dollars per person for a three-course meal, with a total preparation time of one hour.
 Google "polygamy" and you'll find a few sponsored links. We reviewed TruthBearer.org in a previous blog. This time we'll review 2wives.com, aka Polygamy Personals. This review ties nicely into our recent blog entry Finding or Forming a Polygamous Family. 2wives.com began life as 3coins.com, a website started by Mike and Kathy Shone. 2wives.com and truthbearer.org are now coordinated by Mark Henkel, aka the "response team" at truthbearer.org, via so-called pro-polygamy email aliases, available for a small monthly fee from pro-polygamy.net. A quick perusal of this straightforward website tells the tale. Three married couples posted ads there in 2006, looking for a sister-wife. A few single men are also looking. How about single women? Sorry, but you're going to have to become a member to find out. That will cost you $29.99/month (or $89.99 for 6 months). Single women can join for free, but only if they're posting a personal ad. You pay an additional $9.95 every three months if you want your ad to have a photo. So how many single women are listed there? Did you really think we're going to pay $29.99 to find out? No, instead we took a look at their FAQ. During times of famine, like four months in 2004, there were no new personal ads for single women looking to be sister-wives. During times of feast, there is about one new personal ad for a single woman posted each month. If there are equal amounts of feast and famine, that would average out to one new woman every two months. We don't know for sure, and neither do you. [But if you join, please write and tell us about it!] Contrast this to our blog. We receive about five new emails or comments from women who want to be sister-wives every month. If there's enough reader demand, maybe we'll organize a matchmaking service on our website. As far as contributing your money to the cause of polygamy by joining 2wives.com, again we refer to their FAQ. In order of the causes listed there -- 1. Your money goes to support 2wives.com and its members. 2. Your money goes to support pro-polygamy.net (and you get an email alias). 3. Net profit supports the labor and expertise to fight for polygamy rights. Unfortunately, neither truthbearer.org nor 2wives.com lists exactly how your money goes to fight for polygamy. Did any go to Winston Blackmore's legal defense fund for his noble effort to fight for the acceptance of his family in B.C.? We don't know, and neither do you.
 The Microsoft Developer Division awarded Martin and his fourteen teammates the prestigious Lighthouse award for technical innovation, seen here on the left.  The crystal lighthouse stands about ten inches high and is unfortunately transparent, making it difficult to see. Martin received the award for his technical publications on how to make Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 extensible for 3rd party application developers.
 Hello from Lisa to everyone out there in blog land! I ‘ve been wanting to write sooner, but not all of us have time to put into blog writing, so you may hear from me more intermittently than consistently. After all, if the three of us took the time to write everyday, we would never get the household work done and other family needs met! As our relationship of three deepens with each year that goes by, I marvel at how practical it is during crisis and everyday stressors. It is now to the point that I probably could never go back to a traditional relationship now that I have experienced the added benefits of polygamy. Most people have no idea what this could possibly mean until you have lived it. Let me try to clarify further. So, a couple of weeks ago, Martin and Karen were both feeling ill at the same time. There were numerous other mini crises and stressors happening simultaneously. Without my support, life would have been much harder to deal with during this time. The same thing happens when I’m feeling low or ill, etc. Karen or Martin is always there to pick up the slack. We seem to take turns doing this as life throws its surprises. There is so much more strength with the three of us. With Karen I have a built in sister and support person. We were both only children so this is a nice benefit for us. Neither one of us has to be the sole cook and bottle washer. We take turns with cooking and numerous other tasks. Things don’t have to get boring, mundane or stressful when you don’t have the whole kit and caboodle on a daily basis. In my previous marriage of 18 years, I wonder if things would have been different had there been another wife for my husband. As I was bedridden with an illness for 3 years, it eventually brought us to divorce. How can each spouse in a traditional relationship possibly get their needs met when one is down for a long time. In my opinion an extra spouse certainly could be a life saver.
 [A few days ago, the Senate rejected a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage in such a way as to exclude polygamy. Michael Paulos, whose photo appears on the right, reminds us that the same drama unfolded a hundred years ago, when LDS Church Apostle Reed Smoot was elected to the United States Senate. You can read the full story in the Salt Lake Tribune.] One hundred years ago, congressional movers and shakers in Washington, D.C., were debating a constitutional amendment prohibiting the Mormon practice of polygamy. This chapter of the debate was spawned in part by the election of LDS Church Apostle Reed Smoot in January 1903 to the United States Senate.
Smoot's unique juxtaposition as both a Mormon apostle and an elected U.S. senator ignited a firestorm of protests and anger throughout the country. Smoot's most vociferous critics were Christian religious leaders, Christian church groups, national women's organizations and anti-Mormon senators playing politics with the issue. [...]For 40 years prior to achieving statehood in 1896, Utah's relationship with the federal government had been acrimonious. Beginning with the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, the federal government used punitive legislation to stamp out polygamy. The most devastating, the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, effectively forced The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to abandon the practice of plural marriage. [...]With numerous laws criminalizing polygamy already on the books, Smoot adamantly opposed such a constitutional amendment and once stated, "I have taken the position that I am opposed to any more constitutional amendments, and as a citizen of Utah, I am particularly opposed to an amendment that is directed against my people and my state. I have suggested that the best way to reach this question is to pass a national marriage law, and I have assured the Senators that I will support any measure, no matter how strict or what penalties it imposes, [with] provisions for the punishment of fornication, adultery, incest, unlawful cohabitation, and kindred offences. I hardly think that we need worry much about this constitutional amendment proposition." (Reed Smoot to Joseph F. Smith, April 9, 1904.) [...][Fornication means sex without marriage. Needless to say, no such proposed amendment has ever seen the light of day :)]
 In a previous blog, we introduced you to our marriage transfer attorney, Sean Fitzgerald. Karen has gifted Lisa with a year as my legal wife, after which time I'll divorce Lisa and remarry Karen, and so forth. First Karen and I must divorce, and action we call marriage transfer. Sean has enthusiastically accepted the assignment to be our attorney. In fact, he came over to our house to begin the paperwork. How many attorneys do you know who make house calls?  The first step is to sign paperwork that makes Sean our legal attorney and allows him to represent us in court. Sean presented us with three choices. I could sign alone, Karen and I could both sign so that Sean represents both of us, or all three of us could sign -- Lisa, Karen, and me. After some discussion, we decided that I would sign the paperwork alone. This decision was mostly to cut down on the number of times the three of us have to gather simultaneously to sign papers. Sean also had some suggestions to make about creating a trust for common property. We decided to talk more about this when we find a tax accountant to add to our team. We gave Sean a tour of the house, had a nice chat, and learned that yes, after two years of divorce cases, we are indeed Sean's first uncontested dissolution, that is, marriage transfer.
 Last night we went walking around our nearby town. We parked by the landmark nursery, which features an upscale garden furniture store, and an expresso cafe that also serves fine wine. We followed Lisa through endless aisles of plants, looking for an aloe vera plant. I had an insect bite on my hand that was itching furiously, and Lisa wanted to show me the effectiveness of the aloe, which we found near the succulents. This plant does not look medicinal at all to me, unless you live on the surface of Mars. It's a fleshy monstrosity with sharp spikes all over it. Little shop of horrors, eat your heart out! Lisa broke off a stem (commiting us to buying the plant), and squeezed it out on my hand. The itchiness stopped immediately. I was impressed. We left the nursery with the plant to take home and plant in our garden.  We continued our walk to the local Thai restaurant, where we sat and ordered dinner. Common meals in our intentional community tend to be a little on the bland side. The cooks try to cater for most existing community lifestyles/allergies/preferences. This usually means a chicken dish with very little salt, and a vegetarian option on the side. So when we go out, you can't blame us for craving brightly flavored and spiced foods. We started dinner with Tom Ka Gai soup, made from coconut milk, lemon grass, and ginger. We shared a Crying Tiger salad, with strips of marinated steak, and finished with a Panang curry over rice. By sharing all three dishes and drinking the excellent tap water, we were able to have an extravagant dinner for three for less than twenty dollars. We finished the evening at one of our five local Starbucks, flagrantly buying fancy coffees with the money we had saved at dinner. This was a so-called theme Starbucks, with a fireplace and overstuffed chairs. We pushed the chairs together in front of the fireplace, then cuddled up with a good game of Cranium, provided free by Starbucks. We'll present the most interesting game question to you below -- What is concealed inside the Matterhorn mountain in Disneyland? Pick one of the four below. a) An abominable snowman museum. b) Walt Disney's frozen body. c) A gourmet restaurant. d) A basketball court. Turn your computer upside down! The answer is d) a basketball court.
Polygamy in Canada is very much in the news nowadays. The Salt Lake City Tribune sent reporter Brooke Adams to spend an afternoon with Winston Blackmore's polygamous family in Bountiful, B.C. You can read more about it at Bountiful Summer-- An afternoon with the children of polygamists.  The article links to Trent Nelson's photoshoot of Blackmore's children. You can see one of the photos on the right. Here, Maraya Blackmore covers her ears as Sally Blackmore tunes her electric guitar. For more of Nelson's photos, see his album Children of Polygamy: The Winston Blackmore Clan Three of Blackmore's wives are facing deportation. They've been told to leave with or without their children, a truly terrible choice for a wife and mother to have to make.
On another front, Ottawa's Kathleen Harris of the Toronto Sun reports that multiple-wife marriages have been legally recognized in Canada to award spousal support and inheritance payments. From her article 'Limited' Polygamy --
While the former Liberal government maintained that polygamy is criminal in Canada, documents released to Sun Media through access to information show that polygamous marriages have been recognized "for limited purposes" to enforce financial obligations of husbands with multiple wives.
The censored documents, which include departmental background papers and ministerial briefing notes, outlined the last Liberal government's position on the controversial subject, which erupted during debates on gay marriage. ...
Diane Watts, a spokesman for Real Women, a Christian-based group that is lobbying MPs, warned the government will have few grounds to defend its anti-polygamy law if it faces a constitutional challenge on religious grounds. ...
A polygamous community has been operating in B.C., for years, but authorities have been reluctant to lay criminal charges because it could trigger a charter challenge.
Back in the United States, the Senate today rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, leaving the door open for both gay marriage and polygamy. A small but important victory for us!
Based on emails from you, fearless readers, it’s time to talk about creating a consensual polygamous family. This is a fascinating topic for me. First let me tell you how I think most consensual polygamous relationships form. I know of at least one in each category in the list below, and you can probably imagine others. - You’re a woman with a prolonged illness. You dream about having a sister-wife to help take care of your demanding husband and your kids. You could really use a break now and then.
- You’re a career woman who travels a lot. You and your husband are fairly open-minded and you’d like to find him a suitable sister-wife you trust to keep the home fire burning while you’re gone.
- You and your husband have a happy, solid marriage. You take in an attractive woman who has run away from her abusive husband. You protect her, nurture her, and over time she becomes your sister-wife.
- You and your husband have a happy, solid marriage. For many years, you’ve hung out with, traveled with, and grown older with another happy couple. Her husband unexpectedly dies, and you take her in. Over time, she becomes your sister-wife.
You get the idea. Our family is a hybrid of the first three items above. Here are some of my beliefs about forming a polygamous family -- - Polygamy is more attractive to women than to men. Why? I don’t know. Fear of commitment? Fear of performing sexually on a schedule? Limited income? If a man’s goal isn’t to father a lot of children, I doubt if many men would consider polygamy.
- It’s more difficult to form a polygamous family than to form a monogamous family. If you want a polygamous family, but you’ve had trouble forming a solid, satisfying relationship in the past, go practice until you feel confident and attractive.
- Chances of finding the right chemistry through the internet are pretty low, but stranger things have happened. Willingness to relocate is a plus.
I’m aware of several internet resources that purport to help you find your future husband/sister-wives. I’ll be reviewing some of them in future installments of Finding or Forming a Polygamous Family.
  Yesterday was Take Care of Our Community Day at the intentional community where we live. We cleared paths, painted trash cans, repaired the playground, pressure cleaned the common house, repainted the "Welcome Home" sign on the road, brightened the speed bumps, and went looking for lost toys. Some of us made breakfast (home-made rolls), lunch (sandwiches), and snacks (including crispy-creme donuts).  I wandered around taking photos which we watched together in the evening during an all-dessert potluck. Karen battled the everpresent invasive blackberries, and Lisa worked in the kitchen.  Lisa thought it might be fun to teach the kids how to make ice cream. Our newlywedded friends Warren and Cate had just donated their hand-cranked ice cream maker to the community. Nine quarts of heavy cream later, we had twelve quarts of heavenly vanilla ice cream.   Please enjoy these photos, but bear in mind that our community is not based on polygamy. Karen, Lisa and I are the only polygamists living here.
We recently heard from SteadFast[Love] of SisterWives -- Hi! We are a poly family. We call ourselves SteadFast, Antony, and Jadez. We have lived as a poly family since 1999. We have 6 children together. Like your family, we joined together due to love and not religious reasons.Steadfast maintains a new blog and an established forum for sister-wives.  SteadFastLove of SisterWives BlogWe entered a polygynous life because the three of us loved each other. Some choose poly for religious reasons, while others choose it for base reasons. For us though, it is due to our love for one another. We are Christian, but we are not Mormon. In fact, we have a Baptist/Non-denomination background. However, we did not choose to live poly because of our religion. We chose it for love. This is my journal about our journey together and the things I have discovered along the way.SisterWives ForumWelcome! This is a community for Sisterwives, potential Sisterwives, and Poly Friendly individuals. Feel free to look around, add here and there, and return to see how we progress. Join our community and help support one another. We are here to help others to reach a polygynous mindset more and more everyday!The forum has hundreds of messages from women who are or want to be sister-wives. If you are considering our lifestyle, it makes for an interesting read. SteadFast was kind enough to link to both our blog and our website, and we have returned the favor.
 In Is Polygamy Attractive to Women? A Personal Ad we presented a hypothetical personal ad. A few readers were upset with the promise No more loneliness, no more insecurity. Their objection went something like this -- "The idea that I need anyone in my life to be happy makes me angry." I respectfully disagree. I'll let Dr. Marion Solomon, author of Lean On Me, speak for me -- Our need for each other is profound -- and profoundly normal. We all depend on other people to help us define who we are. Our doubts, fears, and vulnerabilities bind us as surely as do our strengths and talents. Dependency is not a dirty word.
For two million years we've been living tribally in low-level warfare, where being alone meant being dead. Even today, it's well established that infants who are held and touched prosper, and that the elderly who live with others outlive those who don't. "The idea that I need anyone in my life to be happy makes me angry." Where does this anger come from? Wounds from a previous relationship? Why not "I don't understand why you think I need anyone in my life to make me happy." ? Despite the cultural icon of the Marlboro man, riding off alone (well, on a horse) into the sunset, we are not, and cannot be independent. Nor are we by nature codependent. We are by nature interdependent. Let's take a look at an extreme example. For two summers, I attended a camp at the John Woolman school, a well-known Quaker boarding school in Grass Valley, California. At that time the Quakers (who call themselves Friends) were fierce proponents of independence. Students came to the school to learn animal husbandry, horticulture, house building, cooking, sewing, and even how to make their own pottery. Their library was full of copies of the book Five Acres and Independence, promoting the idea that a family of four could live off the grid and provide for all their needs on five acres of good land. Over the years, the Quakers have realized that these families would naturally specialize, for example, some working with leather and others with metal, and would become interdependent traders. They changed their curriculum to reflect this insight, replacing animal husbandry and horticulture with biology and chemistry. The same dynamic happens naturally in every human relationship. One partner likes to cook, another likes to repair the house. Interdependence is stronger than either codependence or independence. Consider the word lonely. It means "I'm sad because I'm alone." Think of it! We have a word, and therefore a belief, that there is a relationship between sadness and aloneness. We have no such word for "I'm happy because I'm alone." All the languages I've studied, except Swedish, distinguish between alone and lonely. Maybe that's why the Swedes make such good explorers.
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