Leaving New Buffalo Commune (Counterculture Series)

New Buffalo was Arthur Kopecky's first look back to the heyday of one of the most successful of the communes that dotted the country in the 1960s and 1970s. Kopecky described the magic and wisdom, the mix of people, the planting and the hard winters. Leaving New Buffalo Commune completes the story of Kopecky's eight years at that "hippie commune."Kopecky was a young man from New York City relocated to California. He dropped out of graduate school at UC Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War. "My travels with the Pride family in our Wonder bread truck, 'the mind machine,' eventually brought us to the New Buffalo commune in the fall of 1971 where a group of 'back to the land' idealists had bought a 140 acre ranch in the mountains of New Mexico," Kopecky explains.Leaving New Buffalo Commune continues the story after the group had been at New Buffalo for five years. They were focusing on dairy farming and raising alfalfa. In the intervening years many people had come and gone, but a spirituality and a closeness with nature remained.These journals--slightly edited--record events as they were happening thirty years ago. Then, as now, AnSwei Livingproof (Kopecky) is promoting the goodwill aspects of human nature, the non-war solutions. He warns, "It takes more than fine words and heartfelt songs; you need a plan of action. It can't be violent action; there is already too much anger."Kopecky offers a description of an ethical and economic revolution that is the new paradigm, the next great progressive movement.