Hey Everybody,

Some time ago I posted a message entitled "What to call this lifestyle" to this and other groups. My intent was twofold. First, the better label I can put on this lifestyle, the easier it might be to explain it and to find others who wish to share it. The second purpose was to feel the waters to see if there was enough interest to form an online group dedicated to the "into the woods to live deliberately" simple, self-sufficient lifestyle I talked about.

"Direct Living" is in some ways the best fitting term I could come up with, but it lacked any prior meaning. I've decided to borrow from Henry David Thoreau and call it "Deliberate Living."

I did get the impression that there are enough people out there who share my desire for a place on the net dedicated to such a lifestyle. I've created a new group on egroups.com called "Deliberate-Living" it's page is at: http://www.egroups.com/group/Deliberate-Living

This list is for and about people who are seeking the simplest, most deliberate and direct way to meet life's needs. It is for people who are interested in determining just what is sufficient for a meaningful and rewarding life.

I would like to say a few things about my previous post. Some of the responses I received to my "What to call this lifestyle" post claimed I was arrogant and/or elitist for wishing to form a new group. I do not feel this is true. I only seek a group more focused on the lifestyle I'm aiming for than any of the homesteading' groups I know of. This is not in any way to discredit, or try to change any of these groups. They simply do not fit my current needs and I suspect the needs of some others. Had I expected these groups to change to meet my needs, I would have indeed been arrogant. Had I made any claim that "Deliberate Living" was better than "Homesteading" I would have been elitist and arrogant. I have made no such demands or claims and do not feel that way at all.

==>paul

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), September 13, 2000

Answers

Paul, I understand your need to put a label on this and hopefully you have been able to fufil that need, but when you label, you are "putting a cover on the book". If you really look at it, part of the appeal of this site, is the smorgasbord mix you find here. The participants here have already achieved a way of facilitating the "likeness" that you pursue through use of the catagory key in their threads. If you see something you like you can open it or bypass one that doesn't interest you, no hard feelings. I myself keep a little note pad handy and note which participants here are more pertinent to paticular subjects so that I have a better idea which direction to look to for help while at the same time, I am open to other non polarized opinion. If I were to only communicate with people "just like me with all the same interests, I would have a high approval rating , but would I have correct input? Also in my case, I probally wouldn't be married, Lynn and I are always looking at life from the left and the right side by side. I'll check out your site, hope you continue to participate here also

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 13, 2000.

Jay, Let me try it this way: One of the first interactive web sites was a forum called something like "Life in America," and it was open to any and every subject. Mainly because it was one of the rare interactive sites it was quickly swamped. It had 100's of new threads each day. Since homesteading is part of "life in America" you could have gone there and asked about raising rabbits or butchering chickens. You then could go back and search through all of the listed a threads to find your's each day to check for replies. You might have even have gotten a meaningful answer. You probably would have gotten replies for animal rights people and other irrelevant replies. After you got tired of that though, you might have asked about creating an forum just for homesteaders. I'm sure you would have gotten at least one reply that sounded much like your reply to me.

This forum is pretty nice. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have spent this much time here. I'm not real wild about the layout--it would be nice to see how many new replies there are in each thread for example--but over-all it's pretty high quality. It is somewhat time consuming checking what's been replied to, what threads have drifted off-topic and what vague titles really mean at times.

I'm not looking for people will all of the same interests as I have, but people who share a similar goal. I'm sure there are people here who do share that goal, but I feel they are in the minority. It's certainly not the case that I only want to ever talk to people who share that goal, only that I want a place I can reach people who do.

When time and inclination combine properly, I will be back here to talk about general homesteading, but I also see the need for a more focused group too.

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), September 13, 2000.

Paul, you sound very much like me---30-some years ago, when I started Countryside. (And maybe like I still am, when Im in the garden, or goat barn, or lying awake at 2 am.)

And I will certainly agree that some of the stuff on this forum gets WAY off the track having nothing to do with Countryside, or homesteading, or deliberate living.

But no matter how idealistic we are, we live in the real world, with people who dont see things quite the same as we do. And if we IGNORE them, or try to tune them out, we can end up being pretty paranoid. And worse.

I applaud your efforts and goal, and I wish you well. But as one who has been boxed in, or cornered, by trying to create a tight little community of like thinkers, I advise you to consider the bigger picture.

You might be very happy and satisfied by creating your own little world. Or, like me, you might just become frustrated and disillusioned (until you, like me, see how everything fits together).

In my case, I used countless pages in Countryside to get a consensus on what homesteading means, pretty much akin to what youre doing with deliberate living. Not many readers cared.

BUT! In the process, and even with all the garbage, many people DID get the idea, even though it didnt have a name or it, or even a common base.

An analogy here might be catching more flies with honey than with vinegar. But maybe you dont want to save the world. In which case ignoring the web (and everything else) and living your own life as you see fit would be the answer. But if you want to mingle with other people, and certainly if you want to attract converts, you gotta play the game.

Just something to think about.

-- Jd (belanger@tds.net), September 14, 2000.

JD,

Thanks for writing, but it seems I'm having troubles explaining why I felt there is interest in and the need to create a new group.

When you started Countryside (and thank you for doing so) you must have seen a need that wasn't being filled. But many of the articles published over the years could have been published in other magazines dedicated to other subjects. You print recipes, but there are dedicated cooking magazines where they could have been published. You print construction articles, but again these could have gone elsewhere. There are farming and gardening magazines that publish articles on many of the same subjects you have. What makes Countryside unique is the mix that is tailored to one audience, even though most of the pieces in the mix are covered elsewhere. And I'll bet the postman had delivered many magazines catering to these other specialties to your box. I'd be willing to bet a fair mark that you didn't drop all of your other subscriptions when you started Countryside.

I'm not looking for "a community of like thinkers" if by that you mean people who agree with all of my ideals and goals, but for a community who's focus is tighter than the sum total of the groups I'm active in now. It's not a matter of ignoring people who disagree--I love a good debate and appreciate it when people prove me wrong.

One of the neat ways the Internet is different from the real world' is that communities need not be mutually exclusive. I'm active on a number of groups on the net, more than I have time for. There is some overlap in the subjects covered and attitudes, but much uniqueness as well. In order for me to stand a good chance of seeing posts that fit the lifestyle I've dubbed "Deliberate Living" I've had to track all of these lists and forums. In order to reach an audience likely to respond to some topics, I've had to repeat posts to different groups. I think I can focus my time better if I can form one community that is tailored to this idea a bit better. Yes, if I don't check back here and elsewhere I'll miss some good discussion, but if I just start dropping groups I don't have time for, I'll miss even more.

There are now 28 people subscribed to the list. I imagine most if not all saw my post here and on the other groups I sent it to, but it's listed on egroups.com and I'll add a page about it to my web site soon. I also have an Ozark-Homestead list on egroups.com for local issues. [In fact, somebody plagiarized one of my posts to the Ozark-Homestead list by reposting it here.] Most of the initial people on that list joined when I announced it, or saw me mention it while bragging about the homesteading possibilities in this area, but a few people who have introduced themselves that found it by searching the web. I imagine the Deliberate Living group will grow the same way.

BTW: You'll catch even more flies with ..., well you've been in enough barns for figure it out.

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), September 15, 2000.

Paul, Thank You for the better definition. I apologize for the interpetation that I fomulated. Following your 2nd post , I now understand that you are trying to further refine the topic direction,not isolate it. How is best to access your site on a "looksee"? I noticed that it has member sign in, guest list, subscribe , etc, unlike the direct access that is available here at this forum.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 17, 2000.

Jay, Evidently I wasn't as clear as I thought I was in why I created the new group or what it is meant to be. No apology necessary--it gave me a chance to try to clear it up for any others that might have likewise misunderstood.

Email lists predate web forums (and the web itself) by at least a decade. Email lists and forums each have their own set of pros and cons. Egroups.com is somewhat a mix of the two that lets you choose how it looks.

When you join an email list, you are given an address to send email you wish to post to the group. When you send email to that address, every member of the group gets a copy. The copy you get is set in such a way that replies, by default, go to the list and not just the original sender. Since the replies have to get to you, you must use a real email address to join. And since you wouldn't want anybody to be able to unsubscribe you or change what groups you are a member to you need to create a password. This password should not be the same one you use to log onto the rest of the net, but simply something that's easy to remember.

I said that Egroups.com was a mix between forums like this and email lists. Once you join you will have the option of choosing how to get messages. If you select to get them via email, it will act like a classic email list and you will do all of your communicating with the group via email, and not the web. You can all choose to get a daily digest of all of the mail sent to the list each day. Some people who read more than they post find this quicker to read, personally I don't. The next option is "no mail/web only" and with that you can read all of the messages on the web and reply to them that was as well. The layout isn't quite as nice as a forum like this, but you can see all of the messages in each thread and possibly spot when the topic of a thread drifts--assuming the subject line was updated. No matter how you get the messages thought, once you join you can go to the list's web page and read the archives of all past posts.

Egroups.com host 10's of thousands of lists on nearly as wide of range of topics as thought mankind is capable of producing. I just looked, I couldn't find the number of groups, but they say they have 18 million members. It's a free service paid for by adds they stick on each message. There are other such companies providing similar services too, but will all of the buy-outs and mergers I can't keep track of who is still in business.

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), September 17, 2000.