Polygamy Now

Thanks to All of You! We're Moving to Facebook.

2008-10-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

We're moving on! Don't panic, we didn't fall apart! Our polygamous family is as strong and happy as ever! You can follow our family adventure by befriending Martin Henrickson on Facebook.

We accomplished what we set out to do-- to show the world that consensual polygamy, divorced from religion and devoid of child brides, welfare fraud, and other crime, is a viable lifestyle choice. It's not for everyone, but when it works, it works very very well.

By reading through our blog, you can find entries on the pros and cons of polygamy, the nitty gritty of living together, thoughts on jealousy, alternating legal marriage, the biological and demographic facets of polygamy, and other related topics.

Thanks for being our audience for so long! Keep your eyes on the horizon, and don't look back!

Sincerely, and with love,
Martin, Karen and Lisa.

Men in Polygamous Cultures Live Longer

2008-08-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

It's in the news, so it must be true. Men who live in polygamous cultures live 12% longer than men who don't.

Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, suggested that after accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations.

Actually, this is quite an innovative and careful study, and factors out the gross national product of the culture, the "grandfather" effect, and other variables. You can read more at

Study suggests polygamy may lead to a longer life.

Chris Wilson, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, believes the care and attention of several wives who depend on the social status of their ageing husband could explain everything.

"It doesn't surprise me that men in those societies live longer than men in monogamous societies, where they become widowed and have nobody to care for them."

Our Articles in the Magazine Orato.com

2008-06-09T19:53:00.000-07:00

We recently contributed two articles to the online magazine Orato.com. Orato is Latin for "I speak". You can read the articles by following the links below.

Why Polygamy? I'm Glad You Asked

To quote Indiana Jones: “Archeology is the study of fact, not truth.” I might add that on the way to fact, you’ll find a great deal of conjecture. Are we humans polygamous by nature? My wives and I certainly think so, so I set about reading up on the subject.

Where to start? I don’t think polygamy is mentioned in the Dead Sea scrolls, or in the five books of Confucius, the sixth of which is lost forever. But you can find it in the Old Testament, and in the Human Relations Area Files, a marvelous record of explorers and their first encounters with previously undiscovered tribes. By these accounts, polygamy is apparently an integral part of the human condition.

[ We continue by talking about the sociobiological, biological, demographic, mythical, and economical perspective of polygamy. The photo is a cross-section of a chromosome, courtesy of US Dept. of Energy Genomics. ]

My Wives and I

My wives and I lead pretty normal lives, so I don’t see what the big fuss is about polygamy. I put my pants on one leg at a time, toe first, like every other man I know. I go to work to put food on the table, and come home each night to my wives, who bring me my slippers, one slipper each. Actually, they don’t, but we do sit together and ask about how the day went, and what the kids are up to.

[ We continue by describing our family in more detail, how it works, how and why we got together, and so forth. ]

An Excellent Investigation of Polygamy

2008-05-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

Blaine Robinson has written a detailed report on the history, religion, and politics of polygamy. You can read it at http://www.blainerobison.com/concerns/polygamy.htm.

Blaine drills down on Jewish, biblical, Catholic, Protestant, American and world polygamy. His section on answering the usual objections to polygamy (It's illegal, it's harmful, it's immoral) is an especially good read.

Here's Blaine's opening paragraph:

Polygamy has become a hot topic in America due to the various lawsuits challenging state constitutional bans on the practice and the growing numbers of polygamous families in the United States. Some Christian conservatives have joined with secularists to attack polygamy as an aberrant and immoral behavior, lumping polygamists in with homosexuals. This article represents my own investigation of polygamy in its historical, biblical, and contemporary context to help Christians better understand the issue.

New PBS FrontLine Series on Mormons and Polygamy

2008-02-13T17:43:00.000-08:00

From the much acclaimed American Experience and FrontLine series comes and history and documentary of the Mormon faith. From their web page--

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, two of PBS' most acclaimed series, join forces to present The Mormons, a new documentary series about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In two, two-hour episodes, filmmaker Helen Whitney (John Paul II: The Millennial Pope and Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero) explores both the history and the current reality of the Mormon faith.

You can watch this series online for free at http://www.pbs.org/mormons/view/
or you can buy the DVD at http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2657899

Three chapters might by of particular interest to you:

The Origins of Polygamy -- 1843

The Renunciation of Polygamy -- 1890

Those Who Still Practice Polygamy

Film Spree with the BBC

2008-01-19T19:29:00.000-08:00

We were contacted last month by an English film company that produces documentaries for the BBC. After several email exchanges, followed by several lengthy phone conversations, we agreed to be filmed. For photos, see our Facebook album.

This is the first time we've ever agreed to be on film. We've turned down Dateline NBC, the Tyra Banks show, and others programs as being too sensational. BBC explained that they wanted to shoot a documentary, and not a news story. That meant they weren't going to seek out contrasting point of views, but rather intended to tell our story to the world. "Ok," we agreed, "let's go for it!"

The director, Ian, arrived from England, and the film crew from San Francisco. We'd never seen so many lights and sound equipment (but only one camera). The film crew holed up in a nearby town, but it seemed as if they were with us day and night, or at least 12 hours a day for three days. The schedule was intensive-- change clothes, change location, get miked, setup lights, camera rolling, answer a lot of difficult questions, have some fun, and start all over again. And again. You can see my stepsons (right) taking their part in the film.

The BBC is a class act. They got permission from boutiques in Kirkland to film us shopping, and rented an entire dance studio to film us dancing. That was a trip! After shopping, we were to count to five, then exit the shop, turn right, hold hands, and walk down the street a block or so. The camera was set up outside in a parking space.

We had to repeat this "take" about twelve times! Sometime we turned the wrong way (or at least one of us did), and once an entire busload of seniors emptied out in front of us, many of them gawking at the cameras. And just when we thought the coast was finally clear, a motorized wheelchair zipped by and almost collided with us.

We felt the filming went very well, and are dying to see the results. The film is currently being edited in England, and should air February 6th or so. Sorry, but it will not be broadcast in the United States, a condition we insisted on. We'll tell you more about the program as soon as we've had a chance to see it ourselves.

Would we do it again? Yes! But not quite yet. It was a lot of fun, and it's great to feel special and appreciated-- and to believe that we're playing a part to change the world by letting people know that for some relationships, consensual polygamy is a real and viable and a fine alternative to monogamy.

How to Find a Sister Wife

2007-09-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

We get email asking this question all the time. Here's a recent request--

We are very happy to have found your website. We enjoy reading it. It gives us an insight into the life we so dearly desire. [...] After discussing it for several months we have decided it would be nice to add a Sister Wife. We are new to this idea and have no idea of how we should approach it. We have seen the personal ads and just are unsure if this is the route that we would like to pursue. We believe that special person is out there for us, we are just unsure of how to find her. [...] Any advice you may have for us would be greatly appreciated.

Sometimes the husband is looking, sometimes the wife. Here's our common sense approach, based on our correspondence, and some common sense--

Come completely out of the closet! That's the hard part, and may take some time. But once you do, your friends can help you look, their friends will hear about you, and you can approach interesting women without feeling deceptive or embarassed.

Use the demographics in your favor. Are you willing to move to an area where there are far more women than men? No? Well, at least start hanging around places where there are lots of single women--

art classes
cooking classes
dance classes
personal growth workshops

Even if you don't find anyone, you'll learn how to dance and cook!

Yesterday, I saw about a dozen young beautiful women jogging through the town in shorts. At the end of the double column was one guy talking animatedly with two of the women as he ran. He had obviously discovered the principle of demographics. When I was a professional dancer, there were twenty beautiful, healthy, sophisticated women for every straight man.

Use your imagination. Have you tried placing an ad, or doing a story in your local newspaper? Reporters would love to get to know you! Dress up like an American Gothic couple and stand outside a singles fair with a sign "Looking for a sister wife". Too scary? Then just start meeting people. Lloyd's razor applies here--

It doesn't matter how you meet someone, be it at church, at the bus stop, in a bar, or wherever. You'll find the same spectrum of personalities-- suspicious, willing to try anything, shy, vegetarian, and so on. So if you're looking to meet a special someone, go anywhere where you can meet a lot of people.

If you're quietly waiting at home for the Lord to provide, remember that he helps those who help themselves. Hope this helps!

Martin

Tom Ka Gai Cookoff

2007-08-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Our intentional community has seen a decline in common meals, so I proposed a challenge -- cook up a pot of an exotic soup and we'll see who has the best recipe! I suggested Tom Ka Gai (Thai chicken soup). This wonderful soup is flavored with lemongrass, lime leaves, Thai ginger root, coconut milk, and other unusual and tasty ingredients.

Six cooks stepped forward to take up the challenge. We had no idea how many neighbors would show up to eat, so I cooked a triple recipe (twelve bowls) just in case. Lisa and I provided a good bread and salad for everyone, and the game was on!

The evening was a hit, and many of our neighbors attended, sampled the different soups, and stayed to chat. We've decided to do it again in three weeks, next time choosing Indian food (not soup) as a theme.

My special ingredients were the juice of fresh limes and a Vietnamese fish sauce made from fermented anchovies (not all fish sauces are alike). My recipe got a lot of compliments, but I actually preferred Jocelyn's, which had a richer coconut and more complex pepper taste. David's Indonesian soup was also a winner. Was that curry I tasted? (He's not telling.) Honestly, all the soups were excellent.

You can see the recipe I followed by clicking on the picture of the soup. I modified it somewhat, adding more lime juice and removing the Thai peppers before serving.

If you're looking for a skill that fits well with a family, community, or tribal environment, cooking is a great choice! If you aren't used to cooking for the masses, just start with a recipe for four and scale it upwards. Then invite all your neighbors (or tribemates) for dinner. Mastadon au vin, anyone?
------------------------------
An octogenarian prophet took a beautiful 18-year old bride. The eager young thing burst into the bedroom wearing nothing but a flimsy neglige and asked excitedly, "How'd you like some sup-er sex?" "I'll take the soup," he answered quietly.

Toward Enlightened Community

2007-08-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

Big Love fans, have you ever wondered why Joey and his wives Wanda and Kathy refuse to leave their compound? Or why most polygamous families live in polygamous communities? Or why Karen, Lisa, and I would be reluctant to leave our intentional community?

It's because we've found our tribe -- neighbors with whom we live cooperatively, who know us well, and who care enough about us to tell us their truth and ours. And the social, spiritual, and economic advantages of living in community are incredible!

We recently received a gift from another community in the form of an e-book they wrote called Toward Enlightened Community. Click the photo, and you can read or print a copy for yourself. Here's what this community had to say --

We are a successful community who has been around for over 20 years now. Most of our members have been with us for at least 10 years. In those years we've learned a great deal about what it really takes to live together harmoniously. It has certainly been a challenge -- a very HEALTHY challenge. We've discovered a lot about ourselves, about human nature, and about what makes community really WORK, in the process.

Here's the introduction to their book --

Since the hippie heyday of the 1960s, when communes popped up like mushrooms and faded just as fast, community has lost popularity in the United States. Indeed, the popular mind has turned against community, citing innumerable problems and pitfalls as evidence that community living is, in general, foolish, if not dangerous. Thus, the very possibility of community living is viewed with considerable skepticism, and even irrational fear, by many. ...

However, despite its pitfalls and challenges, community has much to recommend it. The benefits of community living run the entire gamut from spiritual, emotional, and psychological, to pragmatic. But that, of course, is something that must be experienced to be believed.

The book is excellent. Whether you live in a community or would like to find one, you really should consider reading it. We'll be offering copies to our own community.

Here's a selected list of chapter titles --

Motives for Community
Community and Utopian Ideals
The poor track record of utopian ideals
The shopping list approach to finding community
A realistic approach to community

The closest possible approach to Utopia
The glue of shared belief
Why marriage and family is not enough
Elements of a good, spiritually-sound support system

Community’s Downsides Are Its Upsides
The Advantages of Not Always Having Things Your Way
The Benefits of Being "Stuck with" People
The economic costs of having your own same thing
The only person that you can really change is yourself

The chapters are short and easy to read. It took me only an hour to read the entire book online.

The book emphasizes the spiritual benefits of community. It's a little light on the nitty gritty of finding, creating, or living in a community. For that, try Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World by Carolyn Shaffer.

In Memoriam to Our Friend Deb

2007-07-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I was called home Wednesday afternoon with the tragic news of the sudden death of our friend and neighbor, Deb. For the past two days, our community has gathered to mourn her sudden passing with potluck, ceremony, sacred fire, and memorial service.

Deb was in training to be a unitarian universalist (UU) minister, and wanted eventually to counsel people nearing death in a hospice. She was expansive, open-hearted, and one-of-a-kind, the only kind we blog about. In short, Deb was a hoot!

She loved to sing and organize caroling, and sometimes asked Lisa to accompany her on the piano. I arranged for her to sing in a local jazz band. Deb was also a frequent visitor to poker night, serving apple martinis or fuzzy navels to everyone. We will sorely miss her.

At the last poker night, a week ago, Deb asked us to call her answering machine the next day and leave a birthday greeting. She shared that she recorded and counted the greetings every birthday. So we did, complete with accordion accompaniment.

You may remember Deb from earlier in the blog. She was the minister who married us last November. She wrote the vows herself, and they were truly both inspired and inspiring.

We just returned from Deb's memorial service at the local UU church. The minister there was the minister who was working with Deb during her training. He had just decided to turn his weddings over to her when he heard the news of her death. He came to our community that evening to help us through the shock and grieving.

At the end of the service, he read a healing poem by Mary Oliver to us. I've reprinted it for you below -- the last two lines touched me deeply.

When Death Comes

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes like the measle-pox

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower,
as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

-- Mary Oliver

Thoughts on Living Out Loud

2007-07-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

Each lunchtime at work, I walk a two-mile route to the nearest Starbucks and back (my reward for walking). Today, in the 90 degree heat, I saw an earnest young gentleman sitting outside alone at a table. He had a large rectangular birthday cake cut into pieces in front of him, none of them eaten. Two pieces of cake, and two glasses of water, were carefully placed on the table.

I asked inside if there was a birthday party going on. "Oh, he's been waiting for someone," they informed me. It looked like he'd been waiting quite a while. I suddenly felt a deep sadness for him. As I passed him again, I wished him "Happy birthday!" and he thanked me for it (but didn't offer me any cake :)

As I walked away, my sadness switched to admiration for someone willing to put his heart on the line, take chances, and be alive! Do you know people who are wholeheartedly themselves, seldom compromise, and are one-of-a-kind? The frequently annoying and sometimes interesting people who don't care what you think, and whom you either have to accept 100% or not at all? The cirque du soleil living among us? I know several folk like this, and think of them fondly as "living out loud".

Lisa hates this expression. "Sounds like psycho-babble," she says. I love it.

What would it be like to be fully myself, and not a dim reflection of what others want me to be? Would I walk down the streets singing in the nude? Would I be arrested? Would I lobby for a clothing-optional jail? Would I stand (clothed) in front of congress, a wife on each arm, asking them to either make polygamy legal or fornication illegal (as an early LDS legislator suggested)?

I'd like to think I'd be expansive, humorous, distinct, and larger than life. If I dared.

A question for you, fearless reader -- If someone ever did a movie about you, what would your character be like, and what would you do in the movie?

Our Community Work Day

2007-07-04T15:20:00.001-07:00

Take Care of Our Community day is one of the more popular events in our intentional community. Everyone selects a task or two from a list. Signs need painting, road shoulders need clearing, weeds need pulling, and so forth.

The day begins with homemade rolls and coffee in the morning, and ends with a dessert potluck and a slideshow of ourselves doing the work of the community.

Lisa and I chose to prepare lunch for everyone. (Karen was exhausted from chemotherapy and slept through most of the event). We teamed up with our neighbors David and Jocelyn. Jocelyn had devised recipes for wraps with all kinds of good things in them, from turkey to goat cheese. We spent the night before and day of the event rolling wraps, hundreds of them. We also prepared fruit salad and other goodies, which you can see in the photos.

More than half of our community of 55 adults and 45 kids turned out for the event.

Our Wedding Vows

2007-05-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Several of you have asked about polygamous marriage ceremonies. Here are our own wedding vows. If you wish, repeat the Vows and Pronouncement for each wife.

Reading
From Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea --

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to.

And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, in in growth, in fluidity -- in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in wanting or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.

For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept their limits -- islands, surrounded by and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.

Vows
I, ________, take you, ___________, to be none other than yourself. Loving what I know of you, trusting what I do not yet know, with respect for your integrity, and faith in your love for me, through our time together, and in all that life may bring us, I accept you as my partner.

Community Vows
You who are gathered here are the core of a sacred community, supporting this couple and this household in its honoring of the many different forms that love can take. Do you here promise to do what you can to honor and support the intentions of this marriage and this household? If you can, please answer "we will".

Pronouncement
_______________ and ______________, you have consented in marriage and have witnessed this before us. You have pledged your respect and love to each other and have declared this by exchanging vows before those. In the spirit of Life and Love, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss each other.

Blessing
Let us take a moment of reflection to bless this household. The three of you take risks that others would be afraid to take. You express love and deep friendship with freedom and honesty. May all here bless this household for your courage, your open hearts, and your willingness to experience love without restriction. Blessings on the family. Amen.

Polygamy Tax -- Good News!

2007-04-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

It's tax time, and this year the news was good. Karen and I did a marriage transfer last year, so this year I'm legally marriage to Lisa, who I support. We expected the transfer to significantly lower our taxes, and it did.

Lisa and I went to H & R Block and met Doug, a retired auditor for the IRS who was supplementing his income. We decided to come fully "out" and see what happened. "This is my wife Lisa, and we're polygamous. You'll meet my wife Karen next week." I showed him a photo of the three of us.

This was Doug's first contact with polygamy, and he was interested. After the understandable confusion and reassurance that only one wife was legally married, he dived in and prepared our tax return. Lisa and I filed jointly, and Karen filed separately.

When the smoke cleared, Lisa and I had a $6,000 refund, and Karen owed $2,500. I immediately wrote her a check for $3,000. So we had a $3,500 refund altogether.

Last year, with roughly the same income and expenses, we had just about no refund. So being polygamous saved us $3,500 this year, which in addition to my recent promotion is even more reason to celebrate!

The bottom line -- if you're polygamous, legally marry your poorest wife! Don't do this just to save money, though, since the IRS might object. Find another legitimate reason. And don't be afraid to tell your tax preparer that you're polygamous. He/she might be able to help you, since it's their job to suggest ways to save you money.

Martin's 60th Birthday

2006-12-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

Due to family illness, inclement weather, and other disasters, we decided to forego the usual elaborate right of passage (to old age?) . Instead, we had a small intimate gathering of three for Martin's 60th birthday. After eating Lisa's homemade cake, Karen and Lisa treated Martin to a birthday massage. Very nice!

Benefits of Living in Community

2006-12-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

One of our neighbors sent this out to our community. The intentional community we live in has about thirty five families. We've changed some names per request.

Many of you are aware that I had a bit of a car accident during the recent snowstorm. My aging, high-mileage car sustained enough damage that it would cost me more to get it in driveable condition than it is worth. I have been without a car of my own since then. This has turned into an opportunity for me to really see all the good that is here in our community.

Having abandoned my car on the road, just off of the freeway, the tow truck driver told me he was unable to tow it to the shop for repair without my keys. During a heavy hailstorm, Deb was willing to drive me to my car to meet the tow truck driver with my keys. This is the same Deb who is scared to death to drive in such weather and whose car is no better equipped for snow than the car I crashed in was. She insisted on taking me until after her own car slid twice, getting no traction, before we even reached the first stop sign. I then had to insist that we abort the mission, but the fact that she was willing to do it for me under those conditions was very touching.

The tow truck driver ended up towing it for me sans keys, so now my car was at the shop but they could not look at it without any keys. Another neighbor knew of my situation and when she was going into Monroe to run some errands, she went out of her way to come over and invite me along so that I could deliver my keys to the shop. I can't tell you how much this meant to me as I had been trapped here for a few days at that point and very much needed to get out. She took me along on her errands to the store where we both did some shopping and she waited while I arranged with the shop to have my car looked at. I felt so relieved to think that I would have my car back soon.

Then my daughter became ill and called me from school needing to come home. Prior to my daughter's call, I had just made plans to go to lunch and a movie with Deb. I called Deb back to cancel our plans and she immediately dropped everything to drive me to my daughter's school to pick her up and bring her home to our community. I'm sure all of you parents can relate to how much something like this means.

Then my daughter's condition worsened. Her fever went up and she rapidly broke out into a hive-like rash all over her body. I managed to get an appointment for a doctor to see my daughter that evening. But still, I had no car and no way to get her to the doctor. Carrie told me to take her van, despite the fact that her wife has a compromised immune system and I did not know how contagious my daughter might be. I don't like to ask for favors, but here my daughter was feeling ill and very scared about this rash that was spreading over her body right before our eyes and though I tried to act calm in order to ease my daughter's fears, I was pretty scared myself. The loan of the van meant quite a lot to me and I wrapped my daughter up in a clean sheet to try to shield the van from any germs she might have.

Having given my daughter Motrin just before leaving, the fever went down significantly and amazingly, the rash all but disappeared by the time the doctor saw her. Of course, it came back full force a few hours after we arrived home and we were up most of the night, with me applying cortizone to each new area that broke out throughout the night. I needed Benadryl but did not have any. I put out a plea in email and got many many responses. Before I had a chance to read them all the next day, the doorbell rang and there was Alia with a box of Benadryl in her hand for my daughter to use. And what a difference the Benadryl made. Each time my daughter began to break out again over the next 2 days, she took the Benadryl and the rash stopped spreading and cleared up within minutes.

Who needs a car when you've got Robert arranging to have a Turkish rug dealer come right to our very own Common House with a large selection of beautiful rugs to buy? And no, I wasn't able to walk away without buying a very nice one for our living room.

Yesterday, as I was getting into Carrie's van to pick the girls up from the bus stop, Jane saw me and asked why I was in the van. She then offered for me to use her and Brand's car over the next week in the event that I do not have a car soon. And then today, Jack rang my doorbell because he had heard I had no car and he was headed into town and was offering to either take me along or pick something up for me if I needed anything.

Being without a car and spending more time here in our community has allowed me to take the time to talk to folks more too. I was treated to a wonderful evening a few nights ago as I got to listen to Lisa's and some of Martin's life stories. Both were engrossing and quite fascinating. I got the chance to witness Carrie sending some freshly made pot roast over to Warren in response to Cate's concern that he would not eat well while she is in Tennessee. In the process, I was able to have a wonderful little discussion with Warren about the preciousness of life and catch up some with Warren who also has some fascinating life stories. I have had the chance to talk with Rob and hear about his steady recovery and about his recent scenic hikes and wilderness walks. I'm very encouraged to hear how well he is doing despite the aggressive treatments he is enduring. Erin, knowing I don't get all the our community list mail, personally stopped by to speak with me about the White Elephant party this Saturday. I had considered bowing out, but how can I be disinterested in it when a fellow community member cared enough about my attendance as to walk over to my home and personally invite me? I got to connect with Paula who got me re-energized about the Good Vibes team and all the exciting learning opportunities and possibilities it represents.

All of these recent experiences, and probably more which I've forgotten to include, remind me how fortunate I am to be here and how special our community is when you really are in need.

Canadian Parliament to Consider Polygamy

2006-12-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

Some brave souls in Canada (unnamed at their request) are submitting a packet of briefs to the 300 members of the Canadian parliament. The cover letter below speaks for itself.

We've added a Briefs link to our Resources column for navigating to these briefs. They're somewhat detailed, but make for excellent reading. Our own family is described in one of the briefs.

Dear Member of Parliament,

The following briefing notes about the issue of polygamy have been prepared for you so that you can be better informed about this issue as it becomes more prominent on the political stage.

There is a growing civil rights movement in the U.S. (see Briefing Note No. 1 and No. 5), which aims at having anti-polygamy laws declared unconstitutional and having polygamy recognized as a legitimate family structure. There are currently two court cases that are working their way through the American judicial system. It is the aim of each of these court cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The first court case, entitled Bronson versus Swenson (see Briefing Note No. 3), was launched in 2003. On September 25, 2006, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted written briefs. A three-judge panel is now reviewing these briefs.

The second court case involves Rodney Holm’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (see Briefing Note No. 4). On Friday, November 17, 2006, a letter from the U.S. Supreme Court was received by Utah’s Attorney General’s office. In the letter, U.S. Supreme Court officials requested the Attorney General’s office to respond to the petition by December 13, 2006. After it receives that response, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. The fact that the high court has requested a response from Utah’s Attorney General indicates that there is interest in hearing the case.

Given the arguments made in the written briefs submitted for each of these two court cases, it is highly probable that anti-polygamy laws will be declared unconstitutional in United States. When this happens, it will be difficult to argue that Canada’s anti-polygamy laws will withstand a challenge to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, since the Canadian laws would be struck down using similar legal arguments.

The Canadian government did commission some research papers on the issue of polygamy (see Briefing Note no. 2) and released these research papers to the public in January 2006. Many of the research reports were written by people who currently work as professors of law, at various universities in Canada. Two of the four research papers called for the decriminalization of polygamy and the creation of laws to protect the rights of the people living within that family unit. So far, the Government of Canada has not chosen to act on that legal counsel.

Irregardless of what happens in the U.S., there are good reasons why polygamy should be decriminalized and recognized as a legitimate family structure. Two single mothers will soon be sending to you a position paper outlining these reasons (see Briefing Note no. 6 for an executive summary of the paper).

It is also important to realize that, here in Canada, polygamy was accepted as a legitimate family structure in aboriginal cultures before the arrival of European missionaries and it was a family structure adopted by officials of the Hudson Bay Company during the fur trade (see Briefing Note No. 7). Early Mormon immigrants to Canada accepted plural marriage as a legitimate family structure (see Briefing Note No. 8). Normal men and women descended from all of these polygamous family structures and their descendants are prominent in Canada. Recent immigrants to Canada also practise polygamy today because polygamy is accepted as a legitimate family structure in their country of origin (see Briefing Note No. 9). Polygamy has been a legitimate family structure for thousands of years in human history and continues to be in other cultures and countries.

There are other people, in both Canada and the U.S., who live in polygamous family structures and these people reject characterizations of their lives as abnormal, sex-focused or prone to child abuse. Some of them have been courageous enough to publicly declare that they live in this type of family structure and that they have harmonious, loving homes (see Briefing Notes No. 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 for their personal stories). Children raised in polygamous families were courageous enough to participate in a public demonstration (see Briefing Note No. 5) in order to tell the world that they have never experienced the horror stories they have heard about in the media. They also want to tell the world: “We are not brainwashed, mistreated, neglected, malnourished, illiterate, defective or dysfunctional … [we] are useful, responsible, productive members of society…freethinking and independent.” You will also learn that Nelson Mandela was raised as a child in a polygamous family structure (see Briefing Note No. 10). He states that it was a very positive experience for him as a child. He never felt alone; he felt loved and secure; and he was very happy.

I look forward to hearing from you about this issue. The position paper will be forwarded to you within the next few weeks. We hope that you will find it very informative and helpful to you, as you deal with this issue.

Martin and Lisa Wed -- Karen's the Bridesmaid!

2006-11-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

Whew! Our family recovered from illness just in time! If you're reading us for the first time, Karen gifted Lisa with a year of legal marriage to Martin, which began with today's wedding. For more photos, see our Facebook albums.

It was a white wedding -- held in the middle of an ice blizzard which closed all roads to our intentional community. Fortunately, the wedding party and all guests lived in the community, except for Lisa's mom, who stayed in the guest room.

The minister, Deb, created a ceremony just for us. She had to balance our wish to create a special day for Martin and Lisa with our desire to include Karen as much as possible. Deb called upon everyone attending to vow to support the marriage. "We do!"

Lisa was a nervous as any bride to be, and held on to Karen for the entire ceremony. Karen gave Lisa away, and Martin's friend Mark was his best man.

We had the traditional champagne toast and wedding cake feed. Kate and Warren brought a bottle of champagne from their own recent wedding, creating a continuity of blessing.

Emerging from the Closet

2006-10-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

One of our readers would like to emerge from the closet --

It's good to know there are people out there being public about their lifestyle. I wish I WISH I could be public. I am a school teacher in a southwest town where everyone knows everyone else's business. [...] It's hard, because my job could very easily be taken from me on the basis of unethical behavior. I essentially have to compartmentalize my life in order to deal with it all and still be happy. I love my job. I love teaching. I also have the need to share my love with more people than my husband. It's a tough space. Thank you for being public about it. At least someone out there is a voice of reason.

This reminds me of our own experience in "coming out". For more than a year we kept our relationship secret from our intentional community. We weren't yet living in one house and eventually neighbors "woke up" to my evening shuttle at 2 AM. They suspected that I was cheating on my wife Karen, and began discretely asking her if she needed support.

It reached a point where some neighbors were being openly critical of Lisa, yet we stayed in the closet out of simple fear. What if Lisa was evicted from her rental? What if no one would sit with us at common meal?

Finally Karen had had enough. After a brief powwow, she marched up to the general meeting and made the emotional announcement. We held our collective breaths.

One family explosively rejected us, and two other neighbors immediately distanced themselves. But then we got a river of supportive visits, email, and phone calls, along with curiousity and friendly interest. We nervously started to track who was with us, and who against, but it was soon obvious that almost everyone in the forty families we live with accepted us.

Oddly enough, one of the neighbors who distanced herself is very active in helping gays out of the closet. It was almost a year before she sat with us again at common meal.

Karen's children were quite upset that we had kept a secret from them. They've become mostly reconciled to our relationship, though, and it passes unremarked on family holidays. My boss took the news with barely a blink, even though I was afraid to tell him for fear of losing my job (I didn't). The same fear struck me when I started this blog for reasons I will blog about someday.

We're still in the closet to older relatives, who we believe to be too rigid to hear the truth. We came out to Lisa's mom only last month. She was lamenting that "all the good men were taken" so it seemed appropriate to tell her that they could be shared. Anyway, we wanted her at the wedding next month when we do our legal marriage transfer.

All in all, coming out has been surprisingly easy and an enormous relief. By the way, the striking photo "Closet" is by Kitty de Preeuw of Belgium.

Family Vacation on Orcas Island

2006-10-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

Orcas island in October is off the beaten tourist track. We took advantage of its rain shadow and a week of fine weather to rent a cabin usually reserved two years ahead. We had the three bedroom, full loft, full kitchen, wood stove cabin and fire pit to ourselves -- the neighboring cabins were unoccupied.

The ferry from Anacordes threaded its way between the San Juan islands and stopped at several of the larger ones. The terminal at Shaw Island used to be staffed by nuns, but the order was closed a few years ago. Instead, we were greeted by a bagpiper hidden in the woods.

Someone had painted a target on the landing, and passengers pitched their pennies for no reason other than the challenge of it. No doubt the money went to a good cause.

Ocean water this far north is too cold for swimming, even in the summer, but it's just right for rowing. The local boathouse had already transformed back into a pottery studio, but they let us rent a rowboat for two days, charging us for only one of them. Karen, Lisa and I rowed to nearby Picnic island and rested by the tide pool before rowing back.

The boys brought their fishing rods and improvised a crab trap from a soda can and some salami. They caught a crab that had tangled itself in the fishing line, which they freed and threw back. Low tide lowered the shoreline dramatically by about thirty feet, and we got up to go exploring by flashlight at 2 AM, but even the tide pools on the reef had little to offer except for an occasional neon blue starfish.

Our four days and three nights was spent productively, sleeping late, making fires, roasting marshmellows, drinking wine, and watching the sun set. We played board games, read books, took turns cooking, and played tourist in the nearby almost deserted town.

Cider and Honey for All

2006-09-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday we picked apples. The caretaker of a nearby farm offered to let us pick as many as we wanted from their espaliered orchard (branches grown on fences between trees for easy picking). We filled a third of a pickup truck before two big trucks, looking like a god squad, pulled up and ordered us off the property. It seems the farm had been sold to developers, who intend to bulldoze the barn and orchard and build forty homes.

Leaving with only a third of a truck turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The next day we fired up a donated cider press and pressed and pressed. Everyone's stomach and containers were filled with sweet fresh cider. The process went on for four hours, and we were frankly relieved to see the end of the apples. We took plenty home for drinking and freezing, then headed immediately to the shower.

Bruce, our neighborhood beekeeper, and his wife Erin took advantage of the gathering to sell honey. The hives are a safe twenty yards from our front door. Talk about local honey, and for just $3 a pound. Thank you Bruce and Erin!

Please enjoy these photos, but bear in mind that our community is not polygamous. We're the only polygamous family living here so far.

The Art of Community Northwest Conference

2006-09-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend we attended the Art of Community Northwest 2006 conference. About 250 communitarians gathered together to share information about their intentional communities.

Our intentional community had a minimal presence -- just Lisa and myself, at least on Saturday. We represented (unofficially) our community and (officially) our group house and (of course) PolygamyNow.org. We seemed to be the sole source of information on polygamous communities at the conference.

Much of the work of the conference was done by members of the local Songaia community. You can see them celebrating May day in the photo to the right.

We attended a session on community networking, another on creating rituals, and another on utopian communities like Twin Oaks, which was inspired by B. F. Skinner's Walden Two. There were always nine sessions happening at the same time!

There were farmers, activists, seekers, professional facilitators, and aging hippies, to name a few labels. Many of the men sported beards, one of them colored purple. Half-naked men lay together under teepees made of poles and Christmas tree lights. Tie-dye shirts and gypsy costumes were abundant. I guess you could say there was considerable variety.

Lisa is drawn to the exotic and colorful nature of the hippy and gypsy lifestyles. She wanted to stay for the Gypsy Nation dance, but pooped out instead. Anyway, she says, she could never get used to not shaving her legs.

Sari Shares an Ice Cream Social

2006-09-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

Our neighbor Sari answered an email contest and won an ice cream social for 100 people, which she kindly shared with her neighbors, our community.

Dreyers was looking for a suitable gathering to donate their ice cream to. Sari told them about our intentional community and about birthday Thursday, when we celebrate all birthdays that happen that month. This must have gotten their attention, because they provided the ice cream, toppings, and cups.

The ice cream, all ten light flavors, was delicious. And while only about fifty of us showed up, we each ate at least two helpings and finished it off. Thank you, Sari!

An Interesting Letter About Polygamy

2006-09-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

[David was kind enough to share his history and thoughts on polygamy. With his permission, we pass his letter on to you.]

I like your site and it gives me some interesting perspectives other than the normal monogamous dogma that im use to hearing. I am a evangelist and im presently married to a Chinese wife (Qiulan), but I have a Ugandian lady (Martha) whom I've been friends with for eight years who im really in love with and she loves me, she is coming to visit me and my family.

Martha lives in Kentucky but she is wanting to move in with us, if like your situation, things go well. Martha is accustomed to polygamy for in her native country only a few years back 80% of men were in polygamous relationship my Chinese wife knows of sects in China that are polygamous and she even knew of one man in her village that was a polygamous so I am hoping things can come together for us.

Martha loves me and I find it difficult to think of her living out her life with another man that in her heart of hearts she doesn't love, just to maintain a monogamous status within society. One thing I would hope and pray for is that if Martha becomes a part of our family, which in my heart I already feel that way, Qiulan and her will be like sisters and love and support one another. I pray for both Martha and Qiulan and ask the Lord for His wisdom and guidance.

On another note: I have seen monogamous couples who have spent 30 years in marriage and end up divorcing each other whose to say that there ever existed real love between them yet those who hold polygamous world views are condemned as degrading women etc etc. My entire family ie. mother, father and immediate relatives are all monogamous in world view I think they will find it difficult to accept my position as a Christian evangelist and as well a polygamist. I am glad to have found others out there that I can share my opinions and views with that will not immediately condemn my ideas or views that run contrary to a monogamous oriented society.

David

Polygamy Youth Rally

2006-08-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

A pro-polygamy rally at the Salt Lake City-County Building attracted around 250 young people, many from polygamous families. [Photo by August Miller, Deseret Morning News.]

From Jennifer Dobner, Associated Press --

The rally [...] is thought to be the first of its kind, said Mary Batchelor, co-founder of Principle Voices of Polygamy, a pro-polygamy education and advocacy group that helped organize the event.

All of the speakers praised their parents and families and said their lives were absent of the abuse, neglect, forced marriages and other "horror stories" sometimes associated with polygamist communities.

"Because of our beliefs, many of our people have been incarcerated and had their basic human rights stripped of them," said a 19-year-old identified only as Tyler. "Namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I didn't come here today to ask for your permission to live my beliefs. I shouldn't have to."

Salt Lake City Tribune's Brooke Adams also covered the rally -- Polygamists' Children Speak. Al Hartmann took the photo on the right, and many others to create a photo album of the event.

Walking through the Seattle Hempfest

2006-08-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to the Seattle HempFest. For photos, see our Facebook album.

The nation's leading cannabis policy reform event turns fifteen years old this year. Since 1991 Seattle Hempfest has been bringing you the nation's leading experts, activists, and advocates for industrial hemp and marijuana law reform, amid multiple stages of music and hundreds of food, crafts and information vendors.

In the photo to the left you can see thousands of visitors crowding Myrtle-Edwards park by Eliot Bay, a marijuana-leaf bedecked stage on the left, and a faint view of Mt. Ranier over Karen's hat.

Marijuana fairies mingled with Seattle's mounted finest. The dress code ran to prominent tattoos, Rastifarian dreadlocks, and colorful or revealing outfits. Karen and Lisa dressed as hippy wannabes and I dressed as a German tourist to mingle into the crowd.

While the official theme this year was the legalization of marijuana, the colors, textures, and odors of the numerous vendors made for a truly sensual event. No herb was openly displayed, although we were quietly offered a suspicious looking jar of green butter. We declined.

Karen and Lisa enjoyed poking through the booths, looking for exotic jewelry, scents, and clothes. They each bought the outfits you see them trying on in the photo to the right.

I stopped by the ACLU booth and asked the volunteer, "So when will you start working to legalize polygamy at the federal level?" "We think it should be legal now," she replied. Another volunteer asked us if we'd ever seen HBO's Big Love.

We left the festival at 5 PM and found ourselves by the Spaghetti Factory. Surprisingly, we were shown immediately to a table.

We ordered two dinners -- one spicy spaghetti dinner with sausage, and one baked lasagna. The dinners came with bread, salad, ice cream, and coffee tea or milk -- more than enough for the three of us to share. Our total, including tax, tip, and Karen's beer, was less than thirty dollars.

The Peacekeeping Rule

2006-08-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

You can find the peacekeeping rule at work in every ecological, social, political, and economic system. It goes something like this --

It's ok to compete to the best of your abilities, but it's not ok to deliberately destroy the competition.

Who enforces the peacekeeping rule? It enforces itself, and powerfully so!

Let's take an example from Daniel Quinn's excellent book Ishmael (not to be confused with the Star Trek episode by the same name).

Suppose you have a savannah ruled by lions. Normally these lions eat antelope and an occasional zebra. Hyena inhabit the savannah, and they eat antelope, too.

One day the lions decide to get together and systematically wipe out the hyena and all other animals that eat antelope. Fewer competitors, more antelope for the lions.

But why stop there? Zebra compete with antelope for the grass they eat. Wipe out the zebra and there will be more antelope for the lions. And grass competes with bushes. Destroy the bushes, and there will be more grass, and more antelope for the lions.

Eventually you wind up with an ecosystem with just one animal/plant in each niche. Such ecosystems are very brittle. I can't give you a real example, because any ecosystem that violates the peacekeeping rule destroys itself. A blight on the grass means no antelope, and no more lions.

In the business world, an example of such an aberrant system is a monopoly. Monopolies are brittle, unresponsive to consumer demand, and unmotivated to improve. Remember Microsoft going to court about whether it required new computer manufacturers to buy an operating system preconfigured to support Microsoft products? It's ok for Microsoft to put out the best operating system it possibly can, but the question was did Microsoft attempt to destroy competition with unfair practices (in violation of the peacekeeping rule)?

Almost anytime you find a group of people passing laws that tell another group of people how to live, you find a violation of the peacekeeping rule. Early Americans, afraid that they couldn't compete with the economic and political advantages of polygamous communities, tried to utterly eradicate them by law. This strategy cannot possibly succeed in the long run, and polygamy will eventually be sanctioned -- count on it!

Hoorah for Blueberry Pizza!

2006-07-28T16:07:00.000-07:00

This is Melissa, our dinner goddess. In our intentional community, we have the opportunity to eat shared dinners up to four times a week -- if anyone's willing to cook and clean them. Melissa makes our common meals happen.

Melissa puts up the monthly meal calendar and comes up with creative ideas if not enough cooks or cleaners sign up. Tonight she decided to hold a potluck. Potlucks are unusual for common meal. If it's a common meal, the cooks and cleaners do the work -- if it's a potluck, everyone does the work. But potlucks make for a nice variety of food, and it's easier to prepare one dish for ten than to cook a full meal for thirty.

Common meals are voluntary and vary in attendence. Tonight, only four families signed up. More for us!

The highlight was Melissa's pizzas. My favorite was pizza made with a spinach artichoke spread, sun-dried tomatoes, organic chicken, pesto, and six cheeses. For dessert, Melissa took a pizza crust, added sugar, spread freshly picked blueberries, and baked it. Simple and very tasty!

Here's our occasional disclaimer -- Please enjoy our photos, but bear in mind that our intentional community is not polygamous. Although some of our neighbors have quietly expressed an interest in polygamy, Lisa, Karen and I are the only polygamous family so far. Melissa tells us that while she's not a polygamist, she "gets" how it works. We think she really does.

Christian Polygamy and Christian Nudity

2006-07-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

What do Christian polygamy and Christian nudity have in common? Plenty!

Both are illegal in many places -- nudity at least is legal on private property.
Both are mocked and despised by most conservative Christians.
Both claim they support positive family values.
Both claim they are supported by scripture.
Both offer selective dating services.
Both are misunderstood.

You'd think that with this much in common, polygamists and nudists would get along. Apparently not so. We've heard that some Christian polygamists regard nudity as pornographic, and that some Christian nudists regard polygamy as a perversion.

As a reader of our blog, you're probably familiar with the arguments promoting Christian polygamy. For arguments promoting Christian nudity, we'd recommend these links --

From sources like these, you can learn, for example, that "In the early centuries following the New Testament period [...] baptism was performed in the nude." -- Laudemont Ministries

Polygamy and nudity both play an important role in our family life. We regard both as positive family values that remind us of who we are and what our place is in the natural world.

A Eulogy for Lisa's Dad

2006-07-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

Lisa's dad Richard was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1924.

Dick graduated from high school in 1942, entered the U.S. Navy where he became a hospital corpsman and a medical field technician in the F Marine Force. After combat in the South Pacific he was honorably discharged at Seattle, Washington in 1945.

He attended the University of Washington taking night and day courses in 1949-1950.

He met and married Lorene in 1948, then moved to Spokane, Washington to take over a cement contracting business for 20 years until retiring in 1986.

His daughter Lisa was born in 1959.

In 1964, Dick married Betty and raised her two children as his own.

Dick had a very full family life and his daughter Lisa spent most summers with him and his family in Spokane. Every August they would spend three weeks camping on the Washington coast.

Betty was a wonderful cook and canned salmon right in the camping trailer. Dick would bring in all varieties of fish, crab, shrimp, clams, and basically anything that he could get his hands on as she prepared all the delicacies from the sea. The children always has a joyous time during these vacations.

As time passed and Lisa had children of her own, Dick would frequently come by and visit in Seattle to see his grandchildren. He helped her and her husband built their house and taught his grandchildren to fish.

For well over fifty 60 years he has been learning and experiencing the fishing process from which he has gained a wealth of knowledge that (since 1965) he shares with the general public, non profit organizations such as sport fishing clubs, boy /scouts, YWCA kids, handicapped kids, grade school kids, Rotary Clubs, conservation groups and many sport shows.

He has held fishing seminars before thousands upon thousands of people on steelhead, salmon, walleye, bass, crappies, perch, bluegill, trout, whitefish, kokanee, and ice fishing.

Dick is survived by 3 children and 5 grandchildren.

Sojourn to Rosario Beach, Part Two

2006-07-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

We walked around the bluff at Rosario beach. The tidepools were strangely barren. We finally had a sunbreak, so we climbed a hill and lay in the grass, surrounded on three sides by an incredible view of lakes and islands. For more photos, see our Facebook albums.

It was time to check into the Island Tyme bed and breakfast. We barely made it, only to find that Lisa had inadvertantly booked the wrong week. Fortunately, they still had one room left -- the honeymoon suite. They let us have it for only $10 more. Talk about luck!

The honeymoon suite turned out to be two beautiful rooms, separated by partial wall with a stained glass view of the double jacuzzi.
The breakfast was fancy, and the proprietress amiable.

Island Tyme is advertised as twenty acres of quiet beauty, meaning it is out in the country and has a view of two goats. Lisa loves goats! Both Karen and Lisa raised farm animals -- goats, ducks, chickens -- and both share a fondness of (female) goats.

Sojourn to Rosario Beach

2006-07-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Karen's gone to Los Angeles for two weeks to visit her friends and her handicapped daughter Maria. Karen takes full advantage of having a sister-wife -- Lisa gets elaborate instructions on how to water the many indoor and outdoor plants while she's gone. For photos, see our Facebook albums.

Lisa and I decided to picnic at Rosario beach. We took a ferry to Whidbey island and crossed the bridge at Deception pass. An hour later, we arrived at the beach. We'd hoped for some sun, but the sky was partly clouded.

We trecked down to the beach with way too much picnic gear. The driftwood piles were massive, so it was easy to find a place to sit. We ate fried chicken, bacon and pea salad, potato chips, and grapes, which we shared with a not too shy chipmunk.

The beach is made of millions of small rocks, each a different color and texture. It's great for walking in shoes, but really painful in Tivo sandals, which let the rocks in. Next time I'm bringing aqua socks.

Rosario beach is quiet and flat. The waves rolling in from Puget Sound are only about an inch high, and the slope is gentle, but the water is cold! I waded out to my waist, until my legs suddenly cramped. Then I waded back in to sit and sip hot chocolate. The peace and solitude were magnificent. I can see why this is Lisa's favorite beach. [To be continued.]

The Muffin Fairy and No-Knock Houses

2006-07-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last night we were visited by the muffin fairy. An anonymouse neighbor in our intentional community has been leaving fresh muffins on porches these past few weeks, a truly random act of kindness. They look delicious, and we're saving them for a special occasion. The muffin fairy is a class act -- that's a cloth ribbon you see in the photo.

The muffin fairy could have left the muffins in our house, instead of on the front porch. Ours is a no-knock house. Let me explain --

When someone wants to build a house in our community, they run it by the architectural guidance team. We help them design the house to be friendly -- an inviting appearance, a front porch, a sitting area. We ask that they put the room they expect to spend the most time in at the front of the house. This is often a kitchen or study, with no curtains on the window, so that you can wave at neighbors or check out the action outside your door.

Bedrooms, bathrooms, and other private spaces tend to be in the back of the house, upstairs, or downstairs. The front of the house is "public", the back of the house is "private".

Several homes, like ours, have adopted a no-knock policy. After giving hundreds of tours of our community, I've noticed that some visitors get extremely nervouse learning about this. In my opinion, these are visitors who would be uncomfortable living here.

No-knock means we expect you to walk into our house without knocking. This has a number of advantages --

We don't have to get up and answer the door.
You can walk through the house and find us.

It also means that when we say "Our house is your house", we mean it. I've gotten up at 6:30 in the morning on occasion to find my next door neighbor rummaging through the refrigerator because he ran out of milk. Of course, I would never do anything like that to him. Instead, I might rummage through his refrigerator at midnight if I run out of ice cream. [Alas, that family left our community for Santa Barbara, but not because of this.]

Lisa and Martin at Leavenworth, Part Two

2006-06-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

[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 Martin at Leavenworth

2006-06-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Finding or Forming a Polygamous Family, Part Two

2006-06-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Cooking for Thirty -- Easy as Pie!

2006-06-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Practical Polygamy -- Starting our Marriage Transfer

2006-06-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

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.

A night out and about town

2006-06-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Oh Canada! Polygamy in the News

2006-06-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

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!

Finding or Forming a Polygamous Family

2006-06-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Take Care of Our Community Day

2006-06-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Karen's Memorial Weekend Project

2006-05-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

">This Memorial weekend it rained and rained. Karen had to change her parka and rain pants several times because they kept soaking through. It was perhaps not the best time to begin a major landscaping project, but we did anyway. In Seattle, if you let a little rain get in your way, you'll never get anything done.

We had a crew of four brought in -- a Vietnamese gardener and three Mexican gardners. They hoed the weeds, leveled the paths, repaired Lisa's brick patio, built several rock retaining walls, and built a brick patio enclosing a fire circle in our backyard.

The paths have become slippery streams of mud. We'll have to cover each path with landscaping cloth and a few inches of washed gravel. But that's for another hopefully drier day.

We were fascinated by the lunch these guys prepared. It was a true mixture of Vietnamese and Mexican food prepared by someone who cared. We wonder whether the crew lives together when they're not working. They asked if Lisa was Karen's daughter. "No, we're sisters!" she retorted.

Polygamy Now -- Family Night

2006-05-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

Once each week we celebrate family night. By coincidence, the LDS church celebrates family home evening each week. While the two have a superficial resemblence, they're not at all the same.

We started family night many years ago as a chance for both our family and our intentional family to spend quality time together. By intentional family, we mean whoever is living together with us in our group house. This is sometimes, but not always, a member of our biological family.

Family night has a structure. No phone calls, no television, no side conversations during dinner. Family night is held on whichever night we're all free, which is currently, and coincidentally, Monday night, the same as the LDS family home evening.

Lisa usually cooks. During dinner, we go around the table, sharing the news of what's been going on with us for the past week. After each person speaks, we may have a short conversation. Unlike LDS family home evening, we don't talk about religion, and there's no attempt to be educational, although we hope the conversation is sometimes inspirational.

After the last round of comment and conversation, we ask, "Does anyone need any help?" If anyone does, we talk about this, too. Then we address any issues we're having, and any decisions that need to be made as a group. Then we're ready for hot tubbing.

Probably the biggest difference between family night and family home evening is that we get naked together on family night. After dinner, we undress together and head out to the hot tub, where we continue our conversation. Afterwards, we dress in robes (or not) and head upstairs to watch television. Social nudity is an important part of family night. Perhaps we'll tell you why in a future blog.

Polygamy Tax

2006-04-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

President Bush reminded us yesterday that his administration has lowered the marriage penalty tax. I'm quite sure he didn't have plural marriage in mind.

Our taxes went up this year. Karen, my legal wife, and I are required to file a joint tax return. We fully own our house and aren't in debt, so we take the standard deduction. Since Karen and I both have an income, we are hit with the marriage penalty tax. That means that if we were allowed to file separate returns, our total taxes would be lower. But because we're married, we must file a joint return and pay two to three thousand dollars more in taxes.

Lisa is the housewife of the family, doing much of the cooking and cleaning. She has no taxable income at present. If we could file a joint return as three people, and if the IRS would accomodate us with appropriate tax tables, our taxes would go way down. But the weather report says its warm and sunny in the Netherworld, so we're not holding our breath. Until we catch up with Canada and redefine what family really means, we're pretty much stuck with the situation.

However, I learned today that since Lisa lives with us, and because we provide all her income, we can claim her as a dependent. Taking an additional deduction for her would lower our taxes by about a thousand dollars. We can't claim her youngest son as a dependent, though, because he's not a "direct relative".

I suppose I could divorce and remarry Karen and Lisa on alternate years. Believe it or not, this has been tried before and is now against the law, or so I've been told. It's apparently illegal to marry or divorce for the purpose of reducing taxes. But it's perfectly legal to marry and divorce to make a philosophical point, as far as I can tell.

Karen and Lisa could each spend time as my legal wife, and have the feeling of security that goes with it. That alone is worth a trip to Las Vegas each year. -- Martin

Our Profile

2006-01-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

How we met

Martin and Karen met at a dance convention in Palm Springs in 1995. They found common interest in dancing, biology, and building houses. They became dance partners and started competing together, winning championships in California and Washington in various dance styles.

Karen joined Martin in Seattle, Washington in 1998, where they built their dream home together in the greater Seattle area. They met Lisa in 2002, when she moved into the neighborhood with her two sons.

Lisa became a frequent visitor to Martin and Karen's home, playing duets with Martin and learning to dance from Karen. The three started going out together. A year later, Martin and Karen added a wing to their home for Lisa and her sons, and Lisa became Karen's sister-wife. Karen announced the relationship to the community at a general meeting in 2003.

A little more about each of us

Martin (59) has been a dancer, musician, Vietnam vet, lecturer, author, interpreter, and computer programmer. He's lived and worked in Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Germany, and Sweden. He has a B.A. in Asian Culture (Brown U.) and an M.A. in Dance Anthropology (UCLA). He currently writes for Microsoft.

Karen (62) is a retired AP (advanced placement) bilingual biology teacher. She has one handicapped daughter, Maria, and two sons, Martin and Michael. Karen has been a ballet dancer, house contractor, and jewelry designer. She has an M.S. in biology.

Lisa (47) is a piano teacher, Reiki master, and health educator. She has two sons, James and Josh. In Lisa's words, here is her story...

I actually had thoughts of my first husband having a second wife during my first marriage, but never spoke about it. We were monogamous and had a Christian background, so this was a taboo subject matter. I was very ill during the last 4 years of our marriage and a second wife could have relieved me and tended to the needs of my husband and probably could have saved our marriage instead of it
turning to divorce.

I had no idea that many years later I would be living in polygamy. I wasn't particularly looking for it, it just happened. We just happen to be the right people for each other. Perhaps we owe our success to our personalities and background that just happen to work for all of us.

The thing that I love most about our relationship is the support that we all have for each other. Karen has frequently helped me and Martin out of a few disagreements as have I with the two of them. I like that I can support Karen in the things she loves to do. She likes to work outside in the yard for several hours at a time, and Martin likes to have someone nearby and not feel left by himself. So I can fulfill this need for the both of them, by being with Martin when Karen likes to work outside. Also Karen likes to take trips to see her daughter out of state frequently. I can stay at home with Martin so he doesn't feel left behind. So Karen gets what she needs without feeing guilty, Martin gets what he needs without feeling left behind. And I
get my needs met by feeing that I have an important part of holding things together. I also have a strong need to not be alone too much, so this also fulfills my need in this way by being with Martin.

It is so symbiotic, that we frequently don't have to even discuss these matters. We just know intuitively what each other needs. We also can be honest with each other and all sit down and say what's on our mind if we aren't feeling great about something or feel that we have a need that isn't being met. We probably know more about each other than anyone has ever known about us personally. The realness and honesty are beautiful and really bond us together.