I nearly pissed my knickers today when I read this article in the Times:http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/travel/escapes/03Oneida.html
I had no idea that you could stay at the Oneida colony as a tourist!
For those of you who don't know, I LOVE the Oneidas. The 1870s were something of an age of enlightenment in the US. Post-Civil War radical ideas about sex, gender, race, and education allowed a few wonderfully bizarre institutions to exist and endure. In western Massachusetts, a deaf lady with a lot of money was banging her minister and thus was born Smith College. Outside of Syracuse, NY, a charismatic named John Noyes attracted hundreds to his community of religious and sexual deviation that sustained itself financially on the dish and silver business that still exists to this day. Everyone had sex wtih everyone else (except for Charles Guiteau, who went on to assassinate President Garfield--no one wanted any action with him, according to S. Vowell's book Assassination Vacation) out of this idea of "complex marriage." To eliminate feelings of jealousy and possessiveness, everyone was married to everyone else and was encouraged to have sex with many partners in order to feel closer to God. Their community rejected traditional gender roles, children were raised communally, a high value was placed on education, and the family itself was redefined.
Visiting the Oneida Colony has been on my list of things to do for years now. It's not too far off from the Robert Ingersoll house, which is regrettably only open in the summer, so no combo leafing/Ingersoll appreciating/heavily discounted tableware for me.
Oh man...I'm going to get my 1870s on in a HUGE WAY sometime soon. I won't practice complex marriage with the descendants that still live there but damn! I LOVE THE ONEIDAS!
Posted by Zerd at August 3, 2007 02:22 PMSooo.....
Have you read many of Heinlein's later works? He's partly why the polyamorists show up at science fiction conventions.
I lived a few miles away from there for all 4 years I put in at a local snotty liberal arts college. But I never visited. No car.
I should, when passing through. Upstate NY started many of this country's wackier religions. Shakers, for instance. And Mormons.
Posted by: L.B. at August 3, 2007 08:09 PMI find it annoying that the hippies claim to have invented the idea of "free love." too bad most peeps don't know the original free love movement started in the 1860s, not the 1960s.
Posted by: margaret at August 3, 2007 11:24 PM