Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm, dies at 79

[teach1st]

Source: The Tennsessean

Stephen Gaskin — an often tie-dye-clad hippie philosopher, a proud "freethinker" and iconic founder of The Farm — died Tuesday morning at his home. He was 79.

More than four decades ago, Mr. Gaskin — an ex-combat marine with crystalline blue eyes — led a caravan of nonconformists across the country, taking his band of beatnik brethren deep into the Tennessee woods and establishing what would become The Farm, one of the country's oldest surviving communes.

It was the vision of a man who spoke with pride about the lineage of freethinkers from which he came.

...

In 1967, Mr. Gaskin initiated an informal philosophy seminar that would become known as Monday Night Class. The "hippie guru," discussed religion, politics, sex and drugs. He believed in Tantric thought, telepathy and togetherness — and in an era when youth was disillusioned by the Vietnam War, disturbed by increasing injustice and encouraged by the successes of civil rights, he helped young people feel empowered.

Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/story/life/2014/07/01/stephen-gaskin-founder-farm-dies/11934969/

[Anansi1171]

1. The sixties had such a tremendous spirit of social experimentation and freedom!

We have Big Brother on CBS-yuck!

[antiquie]

2. RIP

[2naSalit]

3. RIP, St. Stephen

"St. Stephen"

Saint Stephen with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes,
Country garden in the wind and the rain,
Wherever he goes the people all complain.

Stephen prospered in his time, well he may and he may decline.
Did it matter, does it now? Stephen would answer if he only knew how.
Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell,
Hell halfway twixt now and then,
Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again.

Lady finger, dipped in moonlight, writing "What for?" across the morning sky.
Sunlight splatters, dawn with answer, darkness shrugs and bids the day goodbye.

Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow,
What a lot of fleeting matters you have spurned.
Several seasons with their treasons,
Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own.
Did he doubt or did he try? Answers aplenty in the bye and bye,
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills,
One man gathers what another man spills.

Saint Stephen will remain, all he's lost he shall regain,
Seashore washed by the suds and foam,
Been here so long, he's got to calling it home.

Fortune comes a crawlin', calliope woman, spinnin' that curious sense of your own.
Can you answer? Yes I can. But what would be the answer to the answer man?

[grahamhgreen]

4. RIP! Here's some of Stephen's Farm Band music that will take you there:

[teach1st]

5. Thanks

He wasn't St. Stephen, but he was a very cool dude.

I have friends from the Farm. Gaskin's teachings have illuminated my life. I knew this was coming, but it hits me hard. The music and the teachings will live on.

From the article:

"I'm a teacher, not a leader. If you lose your leader, you're leaderless and lost, but if you lose your teacher there's a chance that he taught you something and you can navigate on your own."

[greyl]

6. Brilliant quote. nt

[Warpy]

8. I remember buying some of their products from the trunk of a car

sold by members of the commune who were passing through Boston on the way to family, the sales funding the trip. They were good people with good kids.

[lunasun]

7. One of his comments

"I think the importance of the United States lies in the sincere attempt to live without royalty and with respect for other people's religions. When I hear someone say that the separation of church and state is a myth, or that the Constitution is only man's law, it makes my blood run cold.

"I consider any attempt to take this country over in the name of any religion to be as repugnant and unconstitutional as a takeover by international communism or fascism."

[jtuck004]

9. Communes could help a lot of people today. n/t

[navarth]

10. Sounds like a great guy. RIP. nt

[laundry_queen]

11. RIP Mr. Gaskin

Even though I knew little about you and much more about your wife I know a lot about the type of life you tried to live...it sounds like I have a lot to go look up.

Peace to a great hippie.

[hopemountain]

12. you trailblazed free thought and free community

and impacted my life from afar in many ways.

rest in peace - peaceful warrior

[DeSwiss]

13. RIP Stephen.

[center][/center]

[Lunabell]

14. He and his ilk are not that great.

His followers are anti abortion and Mr. Gaskins was their spiritual leader in what some might call a cult. RIP Though, I guess nobody's perfect.

[Enthusiast]

16. Many of us that wish to keep abortion legal are anti-abortion.

We feel that all birth control methods should be widely and easily available, which would reduce the need for abortion.

If religious fundamentalists truly want to reduce abortions they should come down on the side against the Hobby Lobby decision.

Unfortunately some want to keep the abortion issue alive for ulterior motives usually politically motivated.

Abortion must remain widely available, safe and legal.

[Ino]

17. Are you pro abortion?? (nt)

[Enthusiast]

18. Read my post.

[Ino]

19. Ack, that question was meant for Luna Bell

I misposted, sorry

[Enthusiast]

20. No problemo, Ino.

[Lunabell]

38. Yes,

As a matter of fact, I am. Problem? Get over it!

[Ino]

41. You're the only person I've ever known to be pro-abortion.

Most are pro-choice, wanting to keep abortion available, but rare.

But you're really out there, eh? You're exactly how the so-called pro-life crowd want to think of Democrats, as being all for abortion.

"YAY ABORTION! Let's all have one!" That's really you? Or are you just trolling here trying to sucker others into applauding you?

Yes, I do have a problem with it. I also have a problem with the words "Get over it!" as that's what my abusive ex-husband would say to me when exerting his dominance.

You're a trip.

[Lunabell]

43. We shouldn't hide abortion under the rug.

It is a necessary women's health issue. I have worked in many so called "abortion clinics" and by far, most women are relieved after their abortion. And furthermore, I really don't give a damn what you or especially any damned rethuglican thinks of me.

So, sorry about your past with your husband, but don't lump me in with abusers just because
I use a common turn of a phrase, "get over it". Been there myself and had the mother fucker arrested.

Abortion is very positive for many women. It isn't fucking murder. It is an embryo/ lump of tissue for christ's sake, not a full grown baby.

And moreover, no one in their right mind says "Yay" to any invasive surgical procedure. That is just ridiculous. HHMM, you sound like some of those "prolifers" to me. You sure you're on the right forum?

[Ino]

44. You are scary.

Welcome to my ignore list.

[Lunabell]

45. I am sure it is a lengthy list of those with whom you disagree.

Some people can't take dissent.

[Dragonfli]

26. Inna May Gaskin is a midwife for christsakes, I have met them both on more than one occassion

He was not a spiritual leader he was just an agnostically neo-pagan minded hippy, and they are not (and he was not) anti-abortion!

They were both on the neo-pagan festival speaking tours in the nineties along with Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Terrance Mckenna, Robert Shea and others (right alongside the witches, the druids, the Discordians, the Thelemic, the didge players, the drummers, the Native American Shaman, oh and the church of the SubGenious (funny group of characters like the Discordians) as well as many others.

I attended a few informal seminars from both of them at Starwood over the course of about 7 years - Stephen talked about being a hippy, his brushes with cointelpro and loved to tell stories about their experiences as free wandering hippies on a bus (where a few births happened) and how they sort of just ended up where they did and formed a commune (The Farm), the most successful one I might add. It started out with complete group consensus before Occupy was even a sperm and even in it's Social Democratic mixed economy later stages there was still majority consensus required for large decisions.

Inna May gave talks on midwivery, contraception options for women, and Once even brought awareness in a talk about female mutilation/butchery that was happening in places we never heard of.

You are so full of crap and so misinformed the effluence just oozes from every pore of your post, how dare you lie about a kind gentle man that just wanted to be free to live the counter culture in peace.

More info for ya, they snuck/bullshited aid buses into NO when it flooded when no one else was getting in, and the farm has sent several aid buses to central and south America without fanfare of anykind.

I am personally going to miss his being in this world, it is a shame you never met him or knew anything true about him but rather prefer to associate commune with cult for some unfathomable reason and decide to try to tarnish a good man right after his death.

[Lunabell]

39. You don't know what you are talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm_%28Tennessee%29

"Birth control was frowned upon, and abortions were prohibited in the community. Childbearing was natural, and births were attended by midwives. Premarital sex was greatly discouraged, and most couples on the Farm were married."

As a matter of fact I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, worked briefly at a restaurant called the Grateful Breadbox where the Farm supplied all of the organic produce. I personally met Ina Mae Gaskins. So don't speak to me in such a disrespectful tone because I know what I am talking about. They are antiabortion and anti birth control. Get a grip, they aren't perfect!

[Octafish]

46. Thank you, Dragonfli.

While I heard of "The Farm," I never knew of Mr. Gaskin. Reading your post makes me feel like I did.

As for the critic: nice sideshow, emblematic really.

[Dragonfli]

47. You'd of liked him, hard guy not to like. /nt

[Dragonfli]

48. I know who you are by the way, and yes we have met, fooled me as well, not again.

[Bonhomme Richard]

15. RIP. I remember a lecture he gave at my college in 1971. n/t

[Zorro]

23. I also heard him speak at Vanderbilt in 1971

Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 12:49 PM - Edit history (1)

He and the caravan were still looking for a place to settle down at that time.

His message was interrupted several times by a couple of non-student Bible thumpers who paraded down the auditorium aisle yelling about how he was an agent of Satan and other stupid shit. He wasn't taking any of it, and blistered them for their arrogant attempts to shout him down in front of an audience who came to hear what he had to say, and not what they had to say.

RIP. He was a decent human being with a fundamentally positive vision.

[Bluenorthwest]

21. Sad news, the passing of time

nt

[Uncle Joe]

22. Semper Fi and rest in peace, Stephen.

Thanks for the thread, teach1st.

[ReRe]

24. RIP...

... fellow hippie. You did good.

[toby jo]

25. Steve was a great guy.

I was at The Farm a few time, Summertown, TN…

The place has an incredibly high energy, you feel it when you walk on in. They had their own carpentry work crews, laundromat, bakery, gardens, were pretty much solar, kids everywhere, and they were beautiful….

On Sunday morning Steve and everybody would meet out in this beautiful field and get the ommm going. I remember being there one morning and I just started crying my eyes out. I never have felt such love and positive emotion coming out of people. Raised catholic, go figure. Steve was a great speaker .

I went back a few years later and had my son there with the midwives. They had midwives there from around the world, some were there from Holland at that time, as I recall. They had a pretty nice little clinic.

He came to a little church in Hudson, OH, too, one time, and gave a little talk. Again, it was good. He could relate. He wrote a few good little books, too.

They were some good people, there, the best I've met anywhere. Peace, Steve ~

[Dragonfli]

28. I always wanted to visit there, if I'd had children, I would have lived there

[font size="3", color="blue"]How I taught my nephews about civics from a liberal perspective[/font] (you don't get classes like that at most schools).

They told me they had no actual civics classes at school so I found them something that would help but without the corporate interpretations.

[hollowdweller]

29. I loved his books

"Mind At Play" and "This Season's People"

A friend loaned me Mind at Play years ago and it really wasn't that much hippy dippy stuff. More sort of Christian and Buddhist ideas with some hippy dippy coating, but where a lot of religion gets lost in the dogma his philosophy more focused on getting things done, and being considerate of each other so we really don't hurt each others feelings and foster a spirit of love together.

Actually the chapters in "Mind At Play" called "Into the Juice" and "A Visible Spark" over the years have been some of the most valuable things I have read right up there with the Beatitudes.

[Dragonfli]

27. A truly wonderful and Beautiful person, with a great many fun and informative

Stories to tell.

I really miss speaking informally with him after his talks, later around a small camp fire with people like Leary and Raw around.

He did not feel or act special at all, but he will be very specially missed by me.

I consider him one of my elders and a teacher of mine whether he claimed that title or not.

[craigiri]

30. We lived there, got married there and had a child with the midwives...

I've recently been working on a new site which explores many of the new ideas brought to our modern world by the counterculture and The Farm. It's at:
http://www.thankahippie.com
( Thank a Hippie! )

I also prepared a presentation which I am giving locally in W. Mass next week about how The Farm and counterculture created social media and virtual community. That link is here:
http://www.craigsfire.com/communes-communications-and-community/

Lots of history - lots of lessons and teachings. I hope some of you can pass around those links as I will be curating that site (thankahippie) for the foreseeable future.

Here is a pic of my wife - and one of me in the soy dairy!

[Rhiannon12866]

31. Thanks so much for sharing this with us, craigiri!

Fascinating! And welcome to DU!

[Kaleva]

32. Interesting! Thanks for posting that!

[teach1st]

33. Thanks!

It looks great, and welcome to DU!

[Uncle Joe]

34. Welcome to D.U. craigiri.

[Marrah_G]

36. Welcome to DU Nieghbor!

[Bonobo]

40. Is that Hadley? nt

[teach1st]

35. A few things

Yes, Farm philosophy included being against abortion (interruption of the life force). Most didn't use birth control, either, except for natural methods, and they frowned on sex outside of marriage (they didn't mind group marriage for a while, but those didn't work out). Gaskin once characterized Farm citizens as "technicolor Amish." But they acted on their principles. I remember that they used to advertise that for women who were considering abortion to come to The Farm instead, have the baby there, and The Farm would take care of the baby. If the birth mother ever wanted the baby back, she could have it. (I'm against abortion for the same reason, and I would never presume to force my views on anybody, nor to judge anybody for their choices. I don't support laws restricting abortion.)

Later in his life, Stephen mellowed out on the spiritual thing, becoming more interested in politics and social change. He was a great progressive voice, even running for president.

One of The Farm's great achievements, in my opinion, is Plenty International. From Wikipedia:

In 1974, Stephen Gaskin and The Farm, an intentional community, started an outreach program called Plenty. In its first ten years, Plenty established a clinic and orphanage in Bangladesh, an appropriate technology training center and reforestation program in Lesotho, and a wind-powered electric lighting system in a Carib Indian school in Dominica. It provided disaster relief in the "Developing" World and free ambulance service to the South Bronx which helped to train emergency personnel what then became New York City's EMS. It went to sea with Greenpeace and gave the Rainbow Warrior its ham radio, slo-scan TV, and radiation monitoring equipment. Plenty put Native American FM stations on the air, and pioneered amateur-band television and radio to keep its remote outposts of volunteers connected.

Plenty continues to work with Native American primary health care, midwifery, microeconomics, food and ecotourism cooperatives and alternative building programs, including the hemp house on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the assistance of The Farm School. Plenty is active in the Central American Food Security Initiative, including programs with ADIBE in Guatemala, Soynica in Nicaragua and the Huichol Center in Mexico. Plenty's "Soyarias" now operated by ADIBE in Sololá and San Bartolo, Guatemala, introduced soy dairy and soy ice cream microcredit enterprise in the 1980s.

In 1978, Plenty formed a scientific research team, Ethos Research Group, and a litigation project to work on environmental issues and human rights, the Natural Rights Center. Together these groups analyzed mortality and morbidity data to create a cancer-by-county study from 1940 to 1980 for the State of Tennessee and applied biostatistical science to litigate Superfund and other toxic waste sites and limits on point source industrial carcinogens. It later sponsored the Environmental Resource Center in Portland, Oregon, and was a partner in founding the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm.

Following the catastrophic landfall of Hurricane Katrina near New Orleans in August, 2005, Plenty volunteers were among the first on the scene, often working to circumvent the obstruction of federal emergency response, law enforcement and military authorities while organizing local emergency responders on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis to deliver essential supplies and re-establish civil order. Plenty worked with Veterans for Peace, Camp Casey, and others to place volunteers where they were most needed. Plenty stayed on scene for the following year and organized clean-up and repair of the damage along the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, including the cities of Mobile (Alabama), Biloxi and Gulfport (Mississippi), and Slidell (Louisiana). Plenty also brought displaced and disadvantaged children from the Gulf Coast back to The Farm to participate in its Kids To The Country summer nature school in 2006.

Stephen Gaskin talked, yes, but he also walked the walk.

[shanti]

37. RIP Stephen

I bought and read The Farm Cookbook and Spiritual Midwifery in the 70's as a young mom, and often fantasized about moving to their commune, but life intervened.

[Blue_In_AK]

42. Very sad.

I used to go to his talks at The Family Dog in San Francisco back in 1969. A very wise and good man. His wife was influential in my decision to give birth to my three daughters at home.