Etiquette of Alternative Lifestyles
led by Terry Brussel-Gibbons, PhD., CCHt
Saturday, August 18, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

What do you do when your wife brings her lover home for dinner? Who sleeps where if he offers (or she invites him) to stay overnight? If your wife is sick on a night you've got a date, should you cancel and stay home with her? Should your girl friend keep you company if you do stay home? Emily Post did not cover this stuff, but we will.

1:00 pm – Potluck lunch: Bring something healthy and delicious to share + sandals & towel for clothing optional hot tubbing. Around 4pm, SF fans among us will caravan to Conchord, the annual Science Fiction Folk Song (Filk) convention TAKES PLACE FROM August 17 – 19, 2007 at the Warner Center Marriott. (for more information, visit their website at: www.conchord.org).

Everything from the hilarious Star Trek parody Banned From Argo to the Ballad of Apollo 13 will be sung this weekend. You are welcome to join in the fun whether you’ve got a great voice and play the guitar or just love to sing / listen.

Saturday at the Beach
RSVP (818) 886-0069, ex. 3
Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu

Please let us know at least a couple of days ahead of time if we are to expect and meet up with you. Cell phone # to reach us at this event only is (818) 388-5612.

Forest and sea meet beautifully at this enchanting location. We’ll spend Saturday enjoying the beach at Leo Carrillo and swimming in the ocean. We will do dinner at sunset at Paradise Cove, a delightful restaurant with a great salad bar, fresh seafood, an ocean view and its own unusual beach! There will be a marshmallow roast and a moonlit walk by the water.

Cost is park fees and dinner at Paradise Cove - prices are reasonable. Bring Pot Luck picnic lunch – your own sandwiches and drinks with something to share — chips, cheeses, fruits—whatever delights you.

FAMILY SYNERGY CONFERENCE IN BIG BEAR
by Terry Brussel-Gibbons, PhD., CCHt
September 7-9, 2007

Oberon Zell, founder of Church of All Worlds, a real life organization based on Heinlein’s fictional one in Stranger In A Strange Land, is keynote speaker.

Oberon Zell’s keynote speech will be on Group Marriage: How to Put One Together and Make It Last. He and Terry Brussel-Gibbons will also offer a workshop on Stranger in a Strange Land and how Heinlein’s writings have been of inspirational and practical value in truly living a polyamorous life style. Speaking of polyamory, Oberon and his lady Morning Glory coined the word itself!

CAW was the first neopagan religion to be legally recognized in the US. While Robert Heinlein did not endorse the church, he was in communication with Oberon regarding it through letters back and forth. He received his copy of its magazine The Green Egg regularly. Most of its members originally believed in the relationship concepts presented in that book: multiply committed deeply loving relationships, group marriage and group living. Oberon has been in an open committed relationship with Morning Glory since 1974. They have been in group marriages for much of that time, with as many as eight of them living together as mates. Oberon has been in a triad lasting ten years and a five person group marriage lasting nearly that long (Ravenheart). He and Morning Glory continue to be close to many of those who were involved as friends, lovers and water brethren. Oberon says “Poly means never having to say goodbye.” One reason those relationships lasted as long as they did is that the people were involved in building Church of All Worlds, raising unicorns (real ones!) producing the Green Egg magazine, and Oberon’s spiritual sculpture business (Gaia and other gods/goddesses beautifully rendered.) Groups doing meaningful things together tend to last longer.

Its Green Egg magazine (now -2007- an on-line magazine rather than a printed one) is fascinating and frequently contains lifestyles related material. Find out more about Oberon, CAW and the Green Egg at www.caw.org and www.greeneggzine.com.

HYPNOFANTASY/HYPNOCARESS LEAD BY TERRY BRUSSEL-GIBBONS PH.D.,
CERTIFIED CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPIST

Hypnosis demonstration shows you how to slay the green eyed monster and release sexual inhibitions which no longer serve you. Learn ways to experience the delights of full body multiple orgasms combined with intense spiritual connection. Then: Bring your senses alive through guided fantasy... Orchestrated Hypnocaress (caring gentle touch) --for dyads, triads and loving groups. Romantic music heightens the intimacy. Mmmm...

We'll climax this workshop with a LOVE MAGNET guided meditation which will help you attract the new partners you desire while enhancing your love relationship with the partner(s) already in your life!

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND – A WORKSHOP

Oberon Zell joins with Terry and Paul Brussel Gibbons to present a workshop based on the concepts of Stranger in a Strange Land and how real life people act on them. We will be focusing on what it means to Share Water,,acquire Chosen Family and how one maintains these relationships over time–from non residential intimate networks to fully residential group marriages. We’ll also discuss the commitments involved when a water brother is a secondary romantic partner for many years spanning (in some cases) more than one marriage.

Go to www.familysynergy.com.

The Avatar by Paul Anderson
Saturday, September 15th 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

We’ll discuss the story of a man in two very loving relationships. One is with his wife, business partner, and mother of his young children. The other is an intensely romantic bonding with a lovely singer, poet and paramedic. His secondary partner accompanies him on a space mission to reveal to human kind that contact has been secretly made with our first alien species. They can teach us about travel to more inhabitable worlds. We can teach them about love…

CONSIDER GROUP LIVING

Many times over the years we’ve done an exercise at a Live the Dream meeting in which we have everyone write down what they could afford to pay down for a home and what they could pay monthly. Invariably, we discover that many people living together can live cheaper and a whole lot nicer than that same number could live separately.

Imagine coming home to a beautiful house, a well kept yard filled with flowers and young trees, fire places, and a hot tub (clothing optional of course.) You come home to the smell of something delicious being cooked by one of your housemates. You share a good dinner with whoever is home tonight. Afterwards, you can go to the privacy of your room, soak in the hot tub with good friends, join a lively discussion in the living room or cuddle by the fire. Sound good?

MAKE YOUR FANTASY A REALITY...

Private ROOM and BATH, with plenty of closet space AVAILABLE IN A GROUP HOUSE WEST SAN FERNANDO VALLEY.

If you are interested in living in a lovely home with warm, caring, like minded people call (818) 886-0069, EX. 3 FOR MORE INFORMATION.

REPORT ON Heinlein Centennial celebrated July 5th – July 8th, 2007

This was the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Robert A Heinlein, Grand Master of Science Fiction. See www.HeinleinCentennial.com for more info.

It has really disturbed me over the years when people would scoff at my chosen lifestyle saying that the books which had so affected my life were “only fiction” rather than something meant to be taken seriously. Now I’ve got an answer for that: Heinlein wrote his first novel, For Us the Living, in 1938 (discovered in someone’s attic and finally published 2004) with open marriage and freedom from jealousy as one of its major themes. Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and (of course) Stranger in a Strange Land has these as themes as well. So did all of his Lazarus Long novels from Time Enough For Love through To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Group marriages are shown in detail from who sleeps with whom and how they relate to each other to how property is handled and children are raised. With the discovery of this first novel and Bill Patterson’s work on Heinlein’s biography showing he actually lived this life style for some of his life and believed in it throughout, the idea that he was “just writing stories” about this life style were truly put to rest. He believed in what he was writing and we salute him as teacher and inspiration for so many of us who believe you can love and be deeply committed to more than one significant other. Terry and Paul Brussel-Gibbons moderated three Families themed panels with an emphasis on polyamory at this convention.

They were:

• Chosen Family: How Heinlein has affected family structure in Real Life families
• Families in Heinlein: From the Rolling Stones to the Long clan to line marriages: families were heavily featured in Heinlein.
• I Now Pronounce You: A look at the different models for relationships (such as line marriages) and the ceremonies with which those commitments were made in the stories and in reality.

We had great turn outs for all of these panels—40 to 50 for each of them. It was a mix of people who were just curious from reading Heinlein’s books to the people who had been living in a 5 person group marriage since 1985 and were now promoting a weekly pod cast on poly living. That quint had actually gone to the trouble doing the legal work to have their arrangements made into a contract which recognizes their joint ownership of the home in which they live and gave them spousal rights in cases of illness or death. I Now Pronounce You had a well known Science Fiction writer on it who had been in a monogamous marriage for 40 years. She said she wasn’t sure why she had been put on the panel, to which I answered that Heinlein’s books did have many monogamous marriages represented there, particularly in the juveniles. The Line Marriage ceremony in Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the group marriage one in Time Enough for Love were discussed, as was the real life ceremonies some of us had used for our own marriages. Heinlein’s group marriages are about the adults promising to take care of children, protect the women while they have those children, preserve assets and have fun together while accomplishing all this. Ritual and public commitment are the keys according to most who have done group marriage successfully.

The highlight for me of this convention was the key note speech by Peter Diamandis, (for more information, visit: http://en.wikipediaorg/wiki/Peter_Diamandis) creator of the 10,000,000 Prize for the encouragement of privately funded space travel. Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon used this idea as a story line. Like many of his stories, it was a thinly veiled Message. Peter is treating such Heinlein stories as business plans. He’s really making it happen, starting with suborbital flights in zero gravity available to the public for reasonable prices. Unlike Harriman in the story, who was banned from going the moon in the space ships he himself caused to be built due to dangers from the infirmities of age, this is apparently available to all. Steven Hawking has been up and he loved it! Peter Diamandis is also offering prizes for research on Human Longevity programs which appeared in all the Lazarus Long stories from Methusalem’s Children (Lazarus was about 200 years old in this one) through to Sail Beyond the Sunset (where he was over 2000 years old and had members of his group marriage who were 400 years plus). Heinlein’s Howard Foundation for increasing the lengthening of human life may soon be a reality.

The Lazarus Llllooonnnggg Series by Robert Heinlein Review by Marcus Mulkins and Terry Brussel-Gibbons

The following books by Robert Heinlein are part of his future history series Methuselah's Children: Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. What do these books have in common? They all have Lazarus Long, the oldest living human. Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land did not have him. They were actually written before these others but were brought back into the mix later.

Lazarus manages to tie all these story lines together in a montage that starts one thinking of plates of spaghetti. Heinlein has created several distinctly different timelines in his stories. Yet, he managed to have a recurrent theme dominating many of them: love. How many ways can a person love? How many people can one person love? Is love fated to fade away? How many people can you love at one time?

After raising all these questions, Heinlein tries to teach us that:

1. We cannot love enough.
2. There is no limit to the number of people you can love—except the limit you place on yourself.
3. Love is what makes life worth living.

Heinlein makes each of these books entertaining on its own, but even more meaningful when read in order. Characterization is at least as important as plot. In Number of the Beast, he introduces a concept which enables his characters to travel not only to alternate timelines he himself has created in previous novels, but to alternate realities consisting of the universes created by other authors--from the Land of Oz to the Lensman series. The concept is that if sufficient numbers of people have read about it, their minds create it. This means that Lazarus can jump timelines to go recruiting for worthwhile members for his expanded family--who just happen to be the protagonists of Heinlein's previous stories. This is where Stranger in a Strange Land and Moon is a Harsh Mistress reintegrates with his unique future history.

Heinlein uses a lot of artistic freedom to provide everything his characters need in order to make their massive family work-- lives which last hundreds of years, plenty of money and ways to take a vacation from each other on other planets and in other histories. However, the ways the people actually relate to each other is real and human. Heinlein's trademark has always been to keep his characters believable. A saloon owner who is the subject of an Emperor of Nine Worlds is smuggling a runaway slave off planet. What is she concerned about as she returns home with mission completed? Keeping her customers satisfied and her business profitable. (Citizen of the Galaxy). If you want to see graphic descriptions of what an ideal group marriage/expanded family would operate like, from who watches the kids to who engenders them and how they keep track of it, from how the house is set up architecturally to the wording of marriage ceremonies for bringing in new members, read some of these stories. Those who really live these life styles have gleaned much practical advice that really works from this stuff.

Between the numerous scenes detailing familial bliss, you can learn scores of Heinlein's Life Lessons, disguised as Lazarus' words of wisdom as compiled by the historian of the Howard Families, Justin Foote. This is a kinship line bred for long life of which Lazarus is the Senior member. They discover monogamy doesn't work too well in a situation requiring it be honored over very lllooonnnggg lives and that the plural of spouse is definitely spice.

If you have a “What do you do when...?” for publication please E-Mail it to Live_The_Dream2000@yahoo.com or send it to 8515 Penfield Ave. Winnetka, Ca. 91306. We will take it with your solution or brain storm and give it one or more of our own. Let’s have fun with this and learn from each other.

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WHAT EXPERIENCES, BOOK REVIEWS, ETC, CAN YOU SHARE RELATING TO THE POLY LIFESTYLE?
KNOW OF ANY OTHER POLY RELATED EVENTS?
LET US KNOW ABOUT THEM!

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GIVE US YOUR STORIES

We need your stories for research purposes — your names will remain anonymous. If you have been hassled by the government for your lifestyle, particularly by any child services department, we want to hear from you by phone, in writing or by E-Mail.

FOR ALL EVENTS PLEASE RSVP THE LTD HOT LINE: 818-886-0069.

LOCATION OF ALL EVENTS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED:
8515 PENFIELD AVE. IN WINNETKA (ZIP 91306). NEAR CHASE AND WINNETKA.

FREEWAY OFF RAMPS: WINNETKA OFF 101, ROSCOE OFF 405, TAMPA OFF 118
THOMAS BROS. LOS ANGELES MAP PAGE 530 E1 (that's E ONE) Where jacuzzi is mentioned, bring towel and sandals. Jacuzzi is clothing optional.