I Have a Dream

Dear Friend,

I hope you’ve been enjoying the summer. Here in the Berkshires, we’ve been having some really lovely days: lows in the 60s, highs in the high 70s/low 80s. This reminds me of why people travel great distances to spend as much of the summer here as possible. It’s a great gift after feeling worse for wear from this past winter, which seemed way harsher than usual.

Fourth of July parade, Spencertown, Ny. It was pretty hot that day, unlike the rest of the summer!

As the Modern Shaker Homes “visionary,” I’ve been spending time thinking about my dream for the company, as well as for our life. When I was growing up, I had incredibly ambitious dreams that really centered on my career and how I would impact the world through it. I wanted to be on the Supreme Court … until I took a Supreme Court class in law school and the world of politics became clearer (and much less attractive). And when 9/11 happened my very first week of law school, it revealed to me that even more than a career, my bigger dream was to have a family (and baby Jordan was born less than a year later!). Then in 2005, I felt that all my dreams for a life out in the wide world were crushed when God made it clear to me that He wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom to our two little girls. After going through that identity crisis and grief over what felt like the death of an important dream, a funny thing happened. In the hidden life I was living, a secret dream started emerging, one that had been suppressed and forgotten for many years by more sophisticated enticements. Without the pressures of producing income or climbing the corporate/governmental ladder, I felt a new freedom to listen to my heart in a way I hadn’t done since I was a child (and more specifically, when homeschooled for 3rd through 5th grades). What initially felt like a demotion (staying at home), I now saw as an incredible privilege. While life felt way harder and more exhausting than when I was in law school (because I was so new to the homemaking and constant child care thing), I discovered a new freedom of time and freedom to think.

Young Mother and Two Children (1908), Mary Cassatt.

Can I share my current dream with you? It’s grown a bit over 20 years. :) At first, it was just remembering how much I’ve always loved houses. Even after having that big, fancy, political dream at 9 years old, I spent most of my time drawing the big, fancy house I would live in (and coming up with the best names for all my children :). Then I realized that I loved old houses and became obsessed with how we live in houses, including the feeling of the landscaping, which led to my study of permaculture and the symbiotic relationship with plants. And because I love so many old-fashioned things, I also needed to know how to raise animals for food, which led to our homesteading adventure (sheep, pigs, and rabbits included!). If there was one big lesson I learned from that, it was this: I need other people! Self-sufficiency is not something that I think I can do or want to do. So now I’m dreaming of creating a village …

Hillside Cottage (1889), Helen Allingham.

My village is filled with beautiful, “just-right-sized,” wooden cottages (I thought I wanted a huge house until I got one - too much cleaning, not enough living!), with big windows overlooking a little garden and patio. The houses are sited close together to allow for many interactions with neighbors (I’m reading the book The Culture Code right now - love the chapter on how to design for belonging), who consist of young children and old people and everyone in between.* There is a central park with playground and several gathering spaces: dining hall, a library, coffee shop, a chapel, dance hall. There’s a workshop for tinkerers and a community garden and little farm that’s open for visiting and orchards. I’d even have a Modern Shaker school (probably a cross between a Waldorf school and a Charlotte Mason school - and Jordan wants to start a school one day - maybe this will be it!). In my dream, it would be located close to a city and the country (because I love both!). And now the hard part - the village would feel as if it had had always been there. (Mickey thinks the harder part would be finding the right people!)

School Is Out (1889), Elizabeth Forbes.

I’ve been accused of caring too much about “lifestyle” by more pragmatic types. Guilty. We only have one life to live. Why not make it as rich and enjoyable for me and as many others as possible?

Until next time,

xo Elisa

P.S. Does this sound like somewhere you’d like to live? Do you know of places already like this? Do share!

*How many people would live here, you ask? Well, A Pattern Language says that neighborhoods with more than 700 people start fragmenting into smaller groups. New Urbanist Leon Krier says that ideally, all daily needs would be within a 10-minute walk. On the smaller side, Amish church districts often have 30-40 families, which lines up with anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s proposition that humans can maintain about 150 meaningful relationships. But because it’s really important to me to be able to support the building of gathering spaces, that would probably mean having 100-150 homes, or 300-500 villagers, perhaps in 2-4 hamlets. The village center would be 8-10 acres, with all the homes sitting on 40-50 acres, with 150-300 acres of surrounding woods, farmland, meadows.