The Long and Short of It: Transcendental Wild Alcotts, or, The Story of Fruitlands

[@Cawendaw]

I thought I'd watch just ten minutes of this and go make dinner, but here I am an hour later! This was, in some ways, as much of a horror story as your Molasses Flood video. The idea of turning the soil for a *wheat field* using shovels... I think my joints twinged in sympathy. Yikes, the thought of so much physical debt sunk into that place, in addition to the psychological, social, and financial cost. No wonder the children were sick all the time! In a less horrifying vein, there's so many interesting parallels that this video brought to mind: the other 19thC intentional communities, as you mentioned, but also the various waves of monasticism in earlier periods, and even the homesteading movement today. And that quote about how women lead lives of sacrifice and die saying "I die a woman" while men dabble in it for a month and die saying "behold a god" encapsulates so much painful truth, both for intentional communities and worldly ones. Thank you for this video! I can see why you wanted to dive so deeply into the subject, and I expect I'll be turning bits of it over in my head for a while to come.

[@HumanCatfoodDispenser]

did you get a chance to tour Fruitlands for this? it's pretty neat.