Fostering strong communities

In a 1995 essay Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital Robert Putnam expressed a concern about declining involvement in the kind of activities that fostered in-person social engagement with other members of one's community. He hypothesized that without the bonds formed from such interactions and without the information about one's own community and the needs of fellows citizen both the communities and democracy itself would suffer.

Do you agree with Putnam's general thesis and, if so, which civic and social activities do you think are most important for the health of communities and countries?

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Comments

[Froborr]

I will think about this more on the way home (I am about to leave work), but I was thinking about something related just the other day: I vastly prefer online communication to telephone, and I think you get much more closeness and sense of community from online relationships than telephone-based ones. But neither can hold a candle to in-person interaction.

Anywho, will try to expand more on my way home.

[Caretaker of Cats]

Hmm. The most communal activity I've participated in recently was helping friends move to a new house in one day, which we concluded was the secular equivalent of an Amish barn raising. It served as a bonding opportunity for members of the wider social group who were previously at "we're both friends of X" status.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Spent yesterday in Dublin at a meetup of h2g2, a mainly British-based online community of which I am a long-standing member.

Spent the two nights with a couple I met through the Discworld Conventions.

These aren't exactly traditional communities, but they work for me.

TRiG.

[Kirala]

I'll say straight up that I don't know any plausible ways of achieving this, but I think it's very important to have strong local meatspace communities so that everyone has someone they can call when they're sick and need someone to make soup or in need of some service and unsure whom to trust. I think it's important so that people can have sensible local development. I think it's important to have a community to which people belong regardless of common passions or blood, so as to learn how to deal with people who have uncomfortable differences without demonizing or othering. (Granted, depending on the locality, there may be plenty of othering left to go around. But it's harder to demonize along, say, rationalist/emotionalist lines, because any given community is going to have a mix of both.)

And to be clear, when I say "strong local community", I mean a community which does not exclude membership for anyone who qualifies as "local". Obviously strong local cliques are at least equally likely to be forces for evil as for good.

[Froborr]

As it turns out, I am far too brainfried to expand. Sorry. Everything Kirala said seems true, and I wonder whether 20-somethings are showing signs of reversing the trend Putnam describes?

[lonespark]

(In which I go off the topic, or at least skirt around it.)

This is an interesting subject. I feel like the trend isn't continuing in an isolating direction in this community, but I guess it depends who you ask.

The park down the street is the town Common. When I was a kid the central area of the playground space was an expanse of broken asphalt where defunct tennis courts had once been, strewn with broken glass and trash. We played there because it was our park, but it wasn't very safe or appealing. Today that same area is a concrete area painted with a track for kids to bike/skate/run around, filled with a wide variety of vehicles for kids to come and use, both purchased by the city and donated by locals. Families come from a lot of neighboring cities to play there on the weekend. There are events at the Common for holidays, and rec dept. folks lead games for little kids every day in the summer. There's similar stuff at parks around the city.

That's all a really good thing, offering a lot of opportunities for free healthy play for kids, and making life easier for caregivers. I don't know what it means about community and bonding, especially among adults. There's a still a snobby, clique feel to a lot of interaction, especially when you're new to the area. People mostly socialize closely within specific groups like churches or parenting groups or volunteer orgs... I don't know what the barriers for entry are to things like that. There still seems to be a lot of just not considering marginalized people, but it depends on the issue and I think it's improving.

The city has always had a lot of resources for seniors, and it's a walkable place with decent bus service, with six or seven neighborhood centers where folks can buy groceries and get haircuts. They just made full-day kindergarten free to everyone. (That has to do with state funding, I guess? But the choice was still made locally to pursue it.)

When I was a kid the place was Republican-controlled. (One of our former mayors went on to be the president of the national Log Cabin Republicans.) I don't know about all the offices now, but the long-serving mayor is a Dem, and so are the state and national reps. When I was a kid the population was declining. Not sure what's happening now with that.

I'd say there's a long way to go on being truly inclusive. It's easy to be left out when you don't have the time and resources to participate, and it gets tiring repeating, "But that's not easy for us because 3 jobs/REALLY LOW INCOME/single parent/language barrier/waiting list for aid/no family in the area..." But there's a lot of strong community spirit, and I feel like the situation continues improving in spite of the economy, and to a certain extent that cognitive dissonance works in our favor. Theoretically Scott Brown supporters don't want to offer free stuff to poor people. In practice, they also like free kindergarten and holiday festivals on the Common and selling to companies building low-income housing.

[lonespark]

Hmmm, Froborr, while I'm not deeply in touch with the young people these days, I feel like the trend is slowing, if not reversing, and some of it has to do with the economic circumstances, as well as cultural shifts. I think there's a lot less division between lives online and offline, and maybe even between work and school and everything else? Young folks drive less and don't join as many private clubs. Young folks starting businesses are willing/happy to pile in to innovation spaces with communal cafeterias, to work on a shoestring, to work remotely, to DIY for a remarkable range of things. It's not all hopefulness; a lot of its cynicism and distrust of institutions...but there's a lot of opportunity there to be be the change and build the world you want/need...

[Mike Timonin]

Oddly, I haven't read Bowling Alone, but I have read some reactions to it. I think the best is Lizabeth Cohen's A Consumers' Republic, which addresses a lot of stuff in the post WWII period, but also Putnam (IIRC. I loaned my copy to a friend, so I can't check immediately). Cohen's point, I think, is that Putnam's focus was too narrow. When you broaden the definition of community groups, people are as engaged as they ever have been - just not in the Elks, or the Eagles, or the Lions, or what-have-you.

The problem (as per Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors) is that our communities have become increasingly homogenized since the 1950s. When everyone around you looks and acts and thinks the same way, it's easy to assume that anyone who doesn't look and act and think like you do is wrong.

I think the early internet helped shake things up a little, exposing people to a whole world of different looks, actions, and thoughts. However, I think we've started to see the suburbanization of the internet. Even spaces which strive for inclusiveness (like this one, among others) tend to homogenize. I think this is a natural process, and I'm not sure what (if anything) to do about it.

[lonespark]

I have lots of ideas about what to do, but none of them seem politically tenable. Communities should be integrated. Housing should be affordable. Public schools should be very well funded, teachers should be very well paid, students and families should have lots of good options... Cities should be planned, bullshit gated communities should be way less common... Utilities should be public. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Everyone should be eligible for food aid. More public transportation! More money to start businesses! Higher minimum wage! Affordable childcare for all!

Um. Yeah. Socialism. I likes it.

Basically, I wish we could get it to where a diverse, inclusive community is the standard, and you have to go to some effort to opt out of it.

[Izzy]

I think that part of it is having activities where people *do* stuff.

Speaking for myself: I'm really not that interested in talking to strangers for a couple of hours, even strangers who happen to live near me for the moment.* But I would be interested in ballroom dancing, or board games, or spending an evening at a soup kitchen. There's a point to those activities, there's a finite end-date, and if you end up talking a little bit while that's going on, it makes people more comfortable with each other.

I mean, partly meat-space communities *are* going to have to change or die. The Internet has made it easier to find people who share your interests; I *don't* think it's especially important, or virtuous, to make yourself spend time with people with whom you have little to nothing in common. Life's short: I don't think anyone looked back on their deathbed and wished they'd spent more time making small talk about the traffic on I-93. But I think in-person social stuff does add something valuable to life.

One of the things some friends of mine do is co-housing: a bunch of little apartment-type units around a common area, like the grown-up and less squalid version of a college dorm. That seems like an awesome solution for those who can manage it.

Otherwise, I like the idea of public parks, and community centers with lots of programs, and a variety of events. This is one of the things libraries are really good for, too: whenever I went to my old one, I saw flyers for movie nights and talks and something about reptiles at one point, which I was sad that I'd missed.

*And increased mobility is also a thing: if I'm not likely to stay around for more than a couple years, which I haven't been, I'm not likely to bother getting to know the people around me, because...why?

[lonespark]

TW: Depressive thinking

if I'm not likely to stay around for more than a couple years, which I haven't been, I'm not likely to bother getting to know the people around me, because...why?

So you can miss them. So you can stand in your f***ed up house and wish you had a friend to help you clean or cook or even just eat. So your kid can reminisce about sleep-overs and brownie-making and cry. So you can stare at your empty house full of board games and wish somebody would invent a frakking transporter already. So when you make new acquaintances you can wish they were as cool and helpful as the old ones. But then a few years later they will be, though in different ways...but maybe you don't get to stay that long.

Hrrrm. In related news, I would love to invite some slacktivites over to play board games. In August, maybe?
Alternately, a festival or a movie (Brave?) or a sandcastle festival. (Revere? Ipswitch?)

Co-housing of some sort sounds great to me, despite my strong introvert tendencies. Especially co-cooking/eating. Cooking just takes so damn much effort, and some people like it/are good at it, whereas others are good at appreciating it/doing the dishes/paying for food. I feel like the idea that everybody, including single people, should cook their own food is kind of new. Didn't we used to have boarding houses and...stuff?

[Mike Timonin]

I would love to play board games with slactivists - where and when?

[mee]

I get irked when essayists go off about how much better things were when we all made our friends on the basis of accident of geography because it just strikes me as so, um, mainstream-priviliged. It's great for people whose interests are Shopping, Movies and Sports, who meet Freudian-approved standards of extroversion, who are the "right" race, religion, gender and sexuality for their community, who are willing to bite their tongue and not make a fuss when the neighbor complains about All The (Epithet) You See Around Here These Days. For people who would be happy never talking about Kierkeggard or Doctor Who.

I remember when i was a kid, being a social outcast because an accident of geography put me in a rural area with no other nerdy kids within a five mile radius. ANd I remember this one kid who wanted to be friends with me, and I didn't want ot be friends with him. I don't remember why any more, and I know that it was probably wrong of me and that one should try to be friendly to everyone, but what I remember most is what my mother told me. She said "*you* don't get to choose your friends. If you were popular, you could. But you're not, so you have to take what you can get." (I am sure she phrased it in a way that was less forthrightly hurtful, but that was the message I got out of it: Popular kids got to choose their friends, everyone else had to take any chance they were offered).

A person ought to be able to choose their friends, not settle for whoever is nearby due to accident of geograpy.

And on the other hand, I know full well that the other thing we've gotten out of our digital connectedness is that if I choose, I can surround myself with people who think like I do and consume only news that reinforces my worldview, and neveer be challeneged in my prejudices. So there's that.

[Kirala]

A person ought to be able to choose their friends, not settle for whoever is nearby due to accident of geography.

And that's why I'd never want to eliminate the Internet or online relationships - I mean, I've been fortunate in meatspace to have a very geeky sister and geeky cousins close by with whom I can share my interests, but the Internet has been a boon.

On the other hand, I've gotten immense benefits belonging to a church full of people my age who are interested in Shopping, Movies and Sports (well, okay, it helps that these days blockbusters are often also geek movies so our interests will overlap there). Even when I'm bored to tears or their eyes glaze over as I describe this awesome book I just read, we have a commitment to supporting each other regardless. It would be nice to see that ethos expanded. I also get reminders that Fox propaganda victims are not universally evil, irredeemable people. (It's encouraging to actually watch the Right lose adherents and cohesion as it gains rabidity.)

The most important reason for meatspace connections is what lonespark describes - the need for someone to share the work that goes into caring for the body. All the internet friends in the world couldn't share a meal or a roof. Sure, one can work around it - one can work around any number of things, and certainly online-only is preferable to real-world bullying and ostracism - but the ideal would have a community of people bound to be aware of and help with each others' needs. I may not be able to share interesting small talk with many of my church friends, but I can be aware that so-and-so is unwell and needs help with dinner and childcare. Someone should be able to fill that role for everyone in the world.

[Froborr]

I know that it was probably wrong of me and that one should try to be friendly to everyone

Bull.

You have a right to choose your friends; that includes choosing not to be someone's friend if you don't want to. That doesn't mean being needlessly cruel or callously indifferent--you still have to treat all humans as humans--but you don't have to respond to every friendly overture in kind.

[Literata]

Drive-by w.r.t. what Mike said about it not being the Eagles or Elks or whatever anymore. A geeky friend recounted a story about how another geeky friend tried explaining to his grandfather about belonging to a local unit of people who dress up like Star Wars Stormtroopers. When it finally clicked, the grandfather said something along the lines of oh, it's just like the Lodge: you wear funny outfits, do things that look weird to non-members, do community events (apparently this group did a Stormtroopers For Charity kind of thing), hang out, and drink beer. Totally normal. Thereafter said grandfather had less trouble understanding the stormtrooper thing than the person's parents did.

I also recently encountered a Tarot group that was clearly as much if not more about the socialization as about doing Tarot together per se.

[Izzy]

I have not tried Meetup.com in any significant way, but the idea sounds like it could be good for this sort of thing: you enter your ZIP code and an interest, and it finds groups of people within however many miles who are also interested.

@lonespark: Yow, hugs. And boardgames in August would be awesome!

I like the idea of co-cooking/eating too, as long as it's something you can opt out of if you feel like eating on your own. (Or where you can get a plate and do the dishes later, but not have to handle the chitchat.)

@mee: I second many aspects of your comment. Yeah, it's great if you have people within a certain radius whose company is actually a boon and not a chore. Otherwise, meh.

As far as the physical benefits of a community go, I'd ideally prefer a world where the government provided most of those. State-run healthcare--including in-home carers if need be--and childcare seem like better options because they don't connect anyone's physical needs to fulfilling standards of friendliness. It's great when your friends support you, if they're really your friends and you're theirs, but people should be able to be antisocial curmudgeons and still have help when they want it, and people should be able to avoid those they feel lukewarm or worse about without guilt.

[Mike Timonin]

My experience with meetup has been less than glorious - I attended a meeting with a guy who claimed to be looking for D&D players. He was also the local contact for pagans (or so he claimed), ghost hunters, and something else. He decided to hold four concurrent meetings. He was creepy, the other people who attended the meetup were uncomfortable, and the whole thing was awkward. Nothing resulted from the meeting, positive, negative, or otherwise.

[Laiima]

I joined Meetup a year ago. The place where I live is affluent rural so heavily Republican -- oddly enough, I rarely see groups forming that I would want to join. The most interesting groups I do see are in Washington DC, or the Beltway area. Which is a long way to drive (or drive and then use Metro) if it's just going to be a waste of time anyway.

[lonespark]

Aw, that sucks. We used Meetup to organize early meetings for Dean for America. That went pretty well, but doing it through the DFA website for free was better. I've tried using it to look up Heathen groups and board game groups, but I've never attended any.

[lonespark]

Mike T, If you want to come to Massachusetts in August and play boardgames, that would work. Otherwise maybe we could Skype you?

Alternately, some kind of massive rolling Slacktivite meetup in various location? Bi-annual Slacktivite meet-up days? Service projects? Pilgrimages to Fred-related events? I leave that to other regional groups, though.

[Froborr]

This thread reminds me, I need to go to more DC Board Game Club and DC Brony Society events. Haven't been to either in months.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

"Especially co-cooking/eating. Cooking just takes so damn much effort, and some people like it/are good at it, whereas others are good at appreciating it/doing the dishes/paying for food."

I used to LOVE cooking, when it was just me and cjmr's husband. Even when it was me and husband and eldest (he has an adventurous palate, despite his food allergies). Now I hate cooking, because the majority of the eaters are no longer of the "good at appreciating it" category. (At least they'll do dishes.)

----

Anyway, board games in August sounds cool. If it's at the end of August, we'll even be able to arrange play dates for our kids. Their bffs will be visiting family the first couple weeks of August.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

A friend of mine in Dublin has had good results from Meetup. She's in a group which goes out to different comedy venues once a month or so, and then discuss the show after in a bar. Or something like that. I, in the midlands, have not been so successful. There's a bookclub, but it's a little way off, and I don't drive. And there's a Free Software group in Limerick. I've not actually been to any of these meetings.

At the last Toastmasters meeting before the summer break, I was elected club PRO. So when we reconvene in September, I'll put the club up on Meetup. May as well.

TRiG.

[Mike Timonin]

Where in Mass? It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility. Skype might be fun, too, though...

[lonespark]

I warn you I have never skyped before.

I am in North Metro Boston. We could be at somebody's house or at a game store...

[Mike Timonin]

Skype is freakishly easy, especially if you have a laptop with a built in webcam. Also, probably the most realistic.

However:
Boston is only 5 1/2 hours away, but I would need to be travelling with the family; one me, one wife, two kids (9 and 19 months in August) - what are the circumstances re: crash space?

[lonespark]

We have no crash space. Well, technically, we have some crash space; it's just unhelpfully located in NE Vermont.

[tottenham]

"I have lots of ideas about what to do, but none of them seem politically tenable. Communities should be integrated. ..."

Actually, Putnam's more recent work strongly suggests that integration decreases community.

Or to be more precise, increasing diversity within a community diminishes the trust both between member of the same groups and between members of different groups.

[Mike Timonin]

Hmmm. Vermont is also 5 and 1/2 hours away, but in the wrong direction. That is inconvenient. Perhaps we should plan on some sort of Skype (or Google +) virtual attendance by me. We do plan to visit Boston at some point, because we hear it's awesome (with nice history and a really big bookstore), so perhaps when that becomes reality, a general visitation will be in order.

[lonespark]

Yeah, come visit sometime, and look us up. There is lots of good stuff (IDK about a bookstore...maybe Izzy knows?)

[MercuryBlue]

tottenham: citation?

And supposing it's true, what do we do about it? Continue to have rich folk living separately from poor folk, suburban and rural areas predominantly white and urban areas skewed towards people of color, so that the privileged groups never have to get too close to the problems of the groups lacking privilege, and so that a kid (especially a privileged kid) might be college-aged before getting to know someone different well enough to realize that 'different' doesn't mean 'lesser'? Anyway, if members of a group such as 'white' or 'middle-class' trust me because I belong to that group more than they trust you because you don't, I'ma be backing slowly away from those people.

[tottenham]

MB - here is a link to the paper that I _think_ discusses this: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract;jsessionid=0950AE474D5CF7D827FF2CE12C566313.d01t02

I know I didn't read it in that format so there must have been a popular press version out there a few years ago, but I can't find it.

What to do about it? Good question. If you want to build a strong "community" then Putnam's research suggest that increasing "diversity" is exactly the wrong way to go about it. Then does that mean that community should be sacrificed for diversity? (Assuming, of course, that Putnam's findings are accurate.)

And, IIRC, the thing I found interesting about Putnam's findings were that the trust diminished even intra-group as diversity increased. In other words, to flip your example, as diversity increases poor folks of color will increasingly distrust rich white folks, but they will also increasingly distrust other poor folks of color.

[Izzy]

@Mike: Ugh, sad. I have a friend out in Seattle who's had sort of positive experiences with it, so I miiiight try it at some point, but we'll see.

On Boston: Pandemonium Books and Games is awesome and geeky and awesome. I would be glad to host, but unfortunately--well, not unfortunate most of the time, but for these purposes--live in a studio.

I like cooking sometimes, but I sort of hate doing dishes, especially cooking dishes, which are often too big for me to wash easily.

[Kirala]

I like cooking sometimes, but I sort of hate doing dishes, especially cooking dishes, which are often too big for me to wash easily.

And this is EXACTLY why I enjoy sharing these tasks - many people I know are (bizarrely, in my opinion) perfectly happy to do the cleanup in exchange for my doing the fun part of playing in the kitchen. It's a win-win scenario.

[Izzy]

Yes!

And likewise, I kind of enjoy doing laundry, especially if I can listen to music and so forth, but I hate ironing. I know people who feel the opposite.

I don't want a roommate or even a live-in SO. But I wouldn't mind a...I dunno, commune-with-private space? Something like that.

[Mike Timonin]

There is, apparently, a huge warehouse of a bookstore somewhere in Boston, where the titles are not organized by topic, but by something else - author's last name, perhaps? It was in a book about the value of chaos that I read ages ago.

Right. Must plan on a trip to Boston, perhaps next summer - maybe in the winter? How is Boston in the winter?

[lonespark]

It...depends what you hate, I guess. The summer is very muggy. There is lots of stuff going on, in the parks, at the river, at beaches and historic mill towns and such.

The winter tends to be just ugly. If it snows traffic is even more impossible than usual. Don't drive if you don't have to. The subway and buses will get you just about anywhere in the main metro area. If it doesn't snow, (or sleet, or rain a lot... ) I would say it's not too bad, but you definitely need warm clothes and obviously if you want to go on whale watches or something you need to come in the summer.

[kisekileia]

I think the thesis of Bowling Alone has become a lot less applicable with the Millenial generation, because if we want scholarships and jobs, we're basically forced to "volunteer". I believe the research shows that Millenials tend to have a lot of community involvement, and I think the fact that these days you need to "volunteer" to get experience for jobs plays a big role in that.

[lonespark]

This is totally off-topic, but...

Apparently my religion now includes Dirty (Old Norse) Joke Fridays. My religion is awesome.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

The cjmr household may have kid-friendly crash space for Mike T., et al. We are near Worcester, MA. But I can't make a firm offer without consulting cjmr's husband. Is your 9 yo a girl or a boy?

[Izzy]

Autumn--any time from mid-August through early November--is usually pretty damn nice. More crowded, therefore, but pretty damn nice.

[Froborr]

I have only been in Boston in the spring (late March through mid-April, usually), but have found it consistently lovely. If you like brisk, which I do; YMMV.

[Mike Timonin]

My 9 yo is a girl, but she gets on well with boys if that's an issue...

I think my pirate-y friends might be concerned if I were to visit Boston in the Fall. I enjoy brisk - we loved San Fran in the summer.

[Froborr]

I think my pirate-y friends might be concerned if I were to visit Boston in the Fall.

Upset, sure, but it's not like they'd do anything... :-P

[Mike Timonin]

I think my pirate-y friends might be concerned if I were to visit Boston in the Fall.
Upset, sure, but it's not like they'd do anything... :-P

True. They rarely do anything at all.

[Caretaker of Cats]

Any Slacktivites going to GenCon?

(And lonespark: Ever get the urge to dress up as an eight-legged horse and follow around the inevitable Loki cosplayer at a convention?)

[lonespark]

You mean Marvel-Loki? If it was a decent cosplay, I'd probably be too busy drooling.

Although now that you mention it, I kind want to find a tall, striking brunette and convince hir to do it, and carry around mini-Sleipnir in a snugli.

[lonespark]

There's a pirate museum in Salem. It's quite fun. There used to be a World of Witches Museum, but unfortunately the economy got them.

[Froborr]

@Mike: Which leads me to ask the obvious question: Where is my hairbrush?

[Caretaker of Cats]

Yeah, I meant Marvel-Loki. I have an ex who could pull off the look if he let his hair grow out again and stayed out of the sun, but I don't have the money or the costume skills yet to throw the kit together for that level of costume.

[Mike Timonin]

I think I saw your hairbrush back there...

(On the DVD, one of the easter eggs is the hairbrush song in Japanese.)

[MercuryBlue]

Caretaker: Marvel-Loki wears suits on occasion. Would that be an easier costume to put together? I imagine the ceremonial armor and the antelope helmet would be more fun, but that doesn't mean the suit isn't doable.

[lonespark]

I was just thinking, I have a friend who would be an awesome cosplay model. Unfortunately he is in NM for the forseeable future. But he is very tall and thin with black hair. I totally want to take him to places and dress him up as Tahno from Legend of Korra (he almost has the hair for it) or crossdressing as Asami Sato, or, indeed, Marvel Loki, although that would require a wig.

I guess I would be stuck cosplaying hobbits and dwarves, mostly. Not that they are not awesome. With The Hobbit coming out Dwarves may finally get their due.

[Caretaker of Cats]

*returns after a minute in happy thought land*

Not on this summer's budget. Besides, I'd rather do a costume for myself, and I do not have the proportions to pull that off with confidence. Lady Loki would be pushing it. And now to complete the tangent: Cosplay ideas for shorter stockier folks. Corsetry is within my skill set but I haven't come up with an inspiring subject matter yet. Any ideas?

(On a more on topic note, this is why you can pry my internet out of my cold fingers. I'm building a local social group slowly, but I can keep up with what my old groups do as well and not be quite as lonely in the process.)

[Caretaker of Cats]

Another social activity I just thought of is contra dancing. I have no idea how widespread a hobby it is, but there's a group who meets fairly regularly in my city. I've attended a few of the dances and found it very fun. You dance with a partner and the whole group over the course of the dance. Everyone is arranged in two lines, with your partner across or next to you depending on the dance. Usually there are a series of moves that you'll do with your partner and another couple in a group of four that are read by the caller, and at some point you'll do something that will trade the couple you were with for the next couple down the line. By the end, each group of partners will have danced with everyone else at least once. It was an all ages activity with teenagers, adults, and seniors all together. It's a fairly vigorous activity, but there was a range of mobility among the participants (including a guy in a walking cast at one point) and everyone adjusted their movements as needed. I need to start going to that again.

[Froborr]

On the DVD, one of the easter eggs is the hairbrush song in Japanese.

I know! That was the DVD my nephew had. My sister stumbled on the Easter Egg; we were very amused.

On the subject of cosplay for which there is insufficient budget, I have a year-old ambition to go to... pretty much any geek con, really, wearing a Star Trek admiral's uniform (TNG era) with Discord's claws and horns/antlers...

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Mike, it was more along the lines of, I definitely have crash space for a 9 yo girl, as my 9 yo girl has a bunk bed for sleepovers, but a 9 yo boy would take more creative rearranging.

[Mike Timonin]

We have friends who do contra dancing. We've tried it, and it was fun - but, you know, children require baby sitters, and baby sitting has become hugely lucrative since I did it as a teen; $20 and $30 an hour. So that limits the sort of out of the home socializing we do.

[Brin]

Lonespark: There's a pirate museum in Salem. It's quite fun. There used to be a World of Witches Museum, but unfortunately the economy got them.

Oh, they closed the witch museum? I liked that one! (I liked the pirate one, too. Went to both of them in the same day back in 2008.)

Mike Timonin: baby sitting has become hugely lucrative since I did it as a teen; $20 and $30 an hour.

Huh. I always thought babysitting was the kind of job where you were lucky to get minimum wage. (Mind you, I have no idea what's going on in the world of babysitting. I've never done it, my friends never do it or use it that I know about, and my parents never used babysitters back when they had kids young enough to need them.)

[Lonespark]

No, there's still a witch museum (or two?) The Pagan-run World of Witches Museum had to close, though. One of many places I regret never making it to (but it wasn't tiny-kid friendly.)

[sarah]

My middle brother's moving (back) to Salem soon. He's in Dover, NH, right now.

I would love to meet up when I'm back in Mass, but it probably won't be until Thanksgiving or Christmas. Thanksgiving's hard, because I only have a couple of days, but winter break is two full weeks (!), so if any NE slacktivites would like to meet up then, I'd be up for it.

[Mike Timonin]

Huh. I always thought babysitting was the kind of job where you were lucky to get minimum wage.

I used to get $15 an hour, sometimes $20 if there were extenuating circumstances (last minute, or on a notable holiday). But, because I'm a guy, I used to get called for problem kids*, or large numbers of kids; I gather that girl babysitters used to get somewhere between $10 and $15. (gender wage imbalance - it goes all the way down) But, it's still not a highly lucrative job, because you're probably only working a couple of hours here and a couple there. It's just a prohibitive cost on socializing because it means adding $60 or $90 to the evening before you've even gotten out the door.

*My best job was sitting a couple of hyper-active boys several days a week after school, while their mom took classes - that was a lot of fun, because it was basically just being a warm body for them to come home to; they more or less entertained themselves.

[lonespark]

Well, I am all for meeting up in the general solstice/winter vacation time frame. And dragging anyone game along to see The Hobbit.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Either August or Solstice would work for us.

[Mike Timonin]

Solstice is probably more likely for us, actually, assuming that cjmr's kind offer stands. Potentially, solstice-wise, we might be able to swing a hotel, even. But, I think that we should totally do a Slactiverse Google + hang out or a Skype conference call - not quite face time, but pretty close. Board games could feature.

[lonespark]

Neat idea, Mike T. Then location wouldn't matter...

[Izzy]

Hell yeah!

Could also see running a G+ RPG at some point, for that matter.

Although not right now, because ZOMGWTFMANUSCRIPTS. And also the unpacking. ALL OF IT.

[Mike Timonin]

lonespark - exactly. Although G+ only allows for 5000 people in a hangout... :)

Izzy - ack. Manuscripts. Bleh. But, I'd give a G+ RPG a shot. Also, heads up - review of Lessons After Dark, probably tomorrow.

[gleomstapa]

Mike T.: We have friends who do contra dancing. We've tried it, and it was fun - but, you know, children require baby sitters

I know a few couples who bring their kids to contra dances - some even dance with their babies in snuglies and noise-blocking headphones. I guess that whether this is a good idea depends on the kids and adults involved, but as far as I've experienced, the dance community doesn't look askance at children at dances at all, and the kids I've seen there seem to be enjoying themselves.

---
The example of contra dancing makes me think about communities you live in versus communities you don't. Contra dancing is a communal experience - both by necessity (you need a certain number of people cooperating for a dance to happen) and by social norms (as Caretaker of Cats discussed above). Regular local community dances are the heart of it all - most people start dancing, most bands start out playing, most callers start calling, and most organizers start organizing locally. There's a lot of room for amateurs developing their skills. They also build local community in non-dance related ways: I've really enjoyed having a chance to get to socialize casually with people who aren't in the University bubble and a rather narrow age range. I've learned a lot from these people.

So on the one hand, you have dances building local community. On the other hand, there's the nationwide contra dance community which, though geographically distributed, shares significant cultural values, taste in music, and whatnot. Some of that, these days, is driven by the internet ... but a lot of it is driven by travelling musicians and callers, dancers who move from one city to another, and festivals. The net result is that, as far as I can tell, there are about two degrees of separation between contra dancers nationwide. Except for the itinerant musicians and callers, hardly anyone can claim to live in this distributed community. I certainly wouldn't rely on them to bring me soup, except maybe at festivals when the national community suddenly becomes local for a weekend or so. That doesn't mean this community is weak, though - I know someone who danced her way from Florida to Maine on the hospitality of the distributed community.

There's a certain tension between the local community and the distributed one - some people get tired of "pokey" local dances and favor the better dancing technique and high-profile bands found at festivals. Yet without local dances, there's no low-investment way to start contra dancing, and fewer musicians can be supported. It goes the other way, too: people come back from festivals with new dances and new music, and this helps keep the local communities vibrant.

I think that online communities are just another type of distributed community, and they don't feed back into local community engagement in some way, it's probably because the local community is just not sufficiently interested in whatever activity it is - in which case, it's a good thing for people to have access to the distributed community so they don't have to be alone in their interests.

---
The best example of in-person, live-in community I've experienced is the place I lived for my first few years of college. Though we were part of the the university residence hall system, we had (I think) an uncommon degree of self-governance, purpose and continuity. Dinners spontaneously grew to thirty people (about a third of the building) on occasion - the children of Brahmins, people from the worst school districts in the nation, atheists, evangelicals, QUILTBAG people, Republicans, socialists, vegans and carnivores all eating together. People went on long hiking trips, carpooled, started businesses, converted each other from one field of study to another or one religion to another, got married, and generally shared things enthusiastically - both intellectual and material. No one locked their doors, and nothing ever got stolen. We planned projects that lasted longer than the tenure of any student or staff member (faculty fellows excepted) and expect them to be completed. If you were sick, or needed a ride to the grocery store, or were stuck on Calculus, or just wanted to go birding, someone would always help. People who moved out after two or three years would often stay involved, so the community was larger than its walls.

There are a couple of things, I think, that made this place work. I'm not saying they're essential for all communities (nor should they be), but they definitely built the character of this one in particular.

1. Common purpose. We all had very different backgrounds, but the house had a mission outlined in its constitution and so we started out with something in common. Some of us chose to be there based on that purpose, so to some extent we were self-selecting, but some were assigned. Plenty of people who were assigned became very active community members and plenty of people who'd originally chosen to be there faded away. Common purpose meant we didn't have to start from ground zero in building community.

2. Geography and space layout. Inside the building, it was tricky to enter or exit without passing through central common areas. You could do it if you really wanted to, by taking some fairly roundabout paths through the building, but the default was that you had to see what was going on in the common areas before you got to your private room. It was easy to get swept into events both planned and impromptu. The building itself wasn't remote, but it was far enough from other things that doing much outside of the community required a conscious decision.

3. Common spaces. These were centrally located, multipurpose, large enough for a substantial portion of the house, and nice spaces to spend time in. So there was space for events and if no events were taking place, people would just hang out there. Stuff happened in the common spaces - regular ice cream nights, spontaneous music jams, lectures, board games. Whether things were planned or unplanned, if you wanted to spend time with people in general, you knew where to find them - and it was quite clear that anything happening in common areas was open for anyone to join.

4. Civic engagement and leadership. Getting involved in house governing committees was easy, committees did meaningful work with visible results, and university-paid staff, elected leaders, and informal leaders (active but non-elected community members) all had valuable and valued roles and usually managed not to work at cross-purposes. Committee meetings took place in open common spaces.

5. Balance between old and new members. People stuck around long enough to pass on traditions, to mentor, to share the house culture and make friends with new members, but they also moved out after a few years and new members would replace them. So there was never an entrenched ruling class, so to speak, and people could make the community their own while also retaining continuity with the past. The many murals and art projects all over the place also provided a sense of continuity, as did the house journals - left in the lobby during the year for anyone to write in, shelved in the library when full, at least thirty of them all told.

6. Population size. We were small enough to all knew each other to some extent, and often quite well; we could remember each other's preferences and occupations. At the same time, we were large enough to avoid claustrophobia and provide enough people and diversity to support many different activities - you didn't have to always spend your time with the same people doing the same thing.

And yes, we were maybe a little insular, in that we spent a lot of time with each other, and more than a little weird - but if you wanted to be a part of the community, you could be. (There were people I didn't like there. They were part of the community, just not my friends.) Oddly enough, it was an excellent place for introverts, because social engagement happened without a lot of investment and it was easy to retreat to one's room. The closest non-dorm analogue, I suppose, would be cohousing, and I hope that I can live in a situation like that some day - but a lot of these factors would work on town-wide level too, I think.

And now I should stop writing this comment, because it's gotten kind of absurdly long. Sorry ...

[MercuryBlue]

I know a few couples who bring their kids to contra dances - some even dance with their babies in snuglies and noise-blocking headphones. I guess that whether this is a good idea depends on the kids and adults involved, but as far as I've experienced, the dance community doesn't look askance at children at dances at all, and the kids I've seen there seem to be enjoying themselves.

My family does square dancing, not contra dancing, so the culture is probably different, and I don't know if this was confined to the clubs in Ohio when I was little or if it's a more widespread problem. But Mom and Dad would go square dancing and take me along, and they didn't know anyone there well enough to ask them to keep an eye on me while they danced, so Dad would put me in the baby sling and he and Mom would join a forming square, and a couple or three already in the square would walk out. Leaving a square for anything short of a twisted ankle is horribly rude, doubly so if one doesn't signal somebody sitting out to come take one's place, which none of them ever did. This happened often enough that my parents finally said screw this and didn't go to another square dance until I was old enough for lessons.

[gleomstapa]

so Dad would put me in the baby sling and he and Mom would join a forming square, and a couple or three already in the square would walk out

Wow, that's ... sad. And awful. I don't know what to say, really, except that I wish things like that didn't happen.

My understanding is that contra dancing is somewhat more immediately inclusive than square dancing - more predictable, a bit slower, more accepting of variations, never requiring lessons, frequent partner-swapping. I didn't grow up dancing, but I've been to quite a lot of contra dances, and I've seen canes, broken arms, dramatic height differences, inability to tell right from left, poor eyesight, age, and lack of balance accommodated - children, dancing or carried, are just other members of the community. Though even in contra, it's probably still a bit easier if you know people, if my friends' stories of getting tired at dance festivals and falling asleep near the stage while their parents kept dancing are any indication.

Not the contra dance community doesn't have its occasional problems ... but as far as I know, excluding parents and kids isn't one of them.

(Caveat: I've only danced in two cities so far, and most of what I know of square dancing comes from contra dancers.)

[Mike Timonin]

When we danced, the one time we did*, there were some kids there - somewhere between 5 and 10, I'd say (older than 10, and they were dancing with the adults) - off in a nursery type room, but no babies. By the time Kid 1 was old enough to attend dances, we had moved**, and then Kid 2 came along...

*It was fun. There was a period of teaching, then we did some contra dancing***, then we did some square dancing (because, rural Virginia - you've got a caller, you've got a fiddle band? square dancing breaks out). I'm not particularly fond of "dancing" per se, but I enjoyed the ritual nature of contra dancing, which didn't seem to require a whole lot of acrobatic coordination or remembering steps or leading or dips or anything.

**Which entailed creating a whole new network of community. I suppose if we had been more plugged into contra, we could have searched for a contra dance group here - that's the advantage of that sort of portable communal activity. Instead, we sought out the local UU congregation, which served the same function.

***It occurs to me that no one has actually defined what we mean by contra dancing. No one has asked, but if you've been sitting on your hands wondering, here you go (and, perhaps I'm not the best person to explain it, so if I've missed something or screwed something up, please please correct me). If you've seen a BBC production of any of Jane Austen's novels (or something set in period), it's the sort of dancing presented in those films - two lines of dancers, relatively sedate pace, periodic changes of partners, set steps. It's a little like square dancing (hence above comparisons), but slower, and in lines, not squares.