LIVE THE DREAM
8515 Penfield Ave
Winnetka, CA 91306
Founded in 1987 by Terry Brussel and Brian Gitt
Based on the philosophy of Family Synergy,
Founded 1971 by Hy Levy and Pat LaFollette
LIVE THE DREAM FOUNDED 1987
UPCOMING EVENTS
Saturday October 17 2020
INTERSECTION OF SWINGING AND POLYAMORY:
BLACK AND WHITE OR SHADES OF GRAY?
11 AM TO 12:30 PM
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/84816101343?pwd=cll1MUxLVDdEQXEvY3Q5RklMR01CZz09 Meeting ID: 848 1610 1343Passcode: heinlein1
Saturday November 21, 2020
BUILDING A TRIAD IN AN INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY
presented by Eileen and David Maxfield + Zarifa Spain
11 AM TO 12:30 PM
Songaia near Seattle WA –on Zoom
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89317790915?pwd=WU01YU5vYUY3anRuZnBvYitZTUNaZz09
Meeting ID: 893 1779 0915
Passcode: heinlein1
| Live the Dream October and November of 2020 |
Please visit the Live the Dream website at www.livethedream.org to view current events, past articles, etc.
Terry Brussel-Rogers is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, Life Coach, & a 4th generation Matchmaker.
We provide poly relationship counseling, hypnotic jealousy release, success coaching and other services.
See www.acesuccess.com or call (800) LIFE MATES (543-3628)
EVENTS
All Live the Dream events are 11AM – 12:30PM on 3rd Saturdays on Zoom
For all events: RSVP/more info call the LTD Hotline (818) 886-0069
The silver lining of Safer at Home experience: From now on, all our meetings will be available on Zoom for those who can’t get to us in person. Some will be hosted by speakers in other areas, too. As soon as safety permits, in person meetings will return, probably outside to start with…meanwhile… Come Zoom with Us
Saturday October 17 2020
INTERSECTION OF SWINGING AND POLYAMORY:
BLACK AND WHITE OR SHADES OF GRAY?
11 AM TO 12:30 PM by Zoom and in person
Led by Terry and Craig Brussel Rogers with possible interviews of Freedom Acres residents Jeff James and Aubrie Paton
Terry has attended Poly and Lifestyles convention since the 70s, presenting at many of them. Craig is newer to all this, though he has certainly lived poly since becoming involved with Terry at Los Con SF convention in 2016…from being in a residential triad to a non-residential quad which takes vacations and celebrates birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc. together. They bring their different backgrounds and points of view to this meeting. The difference between swinging and polyamory is supposed to be that while both allow for multiple partners, polyamory is more about love and commitment than about recreational sex. However, where do you put the lifestyle practiced by, say, the Hospitality Group at Lifestyle Convention put on by Wide World of Swingers for many decades? They took care of everything needed to make the convention work from making sure the food was right at the Lunch with Keynote speaker to things involved with the Parties and Masquerade. They met frequently between annual conventions for business and pleasure. They had been to each other’s weddings, their kids Bat mitzvah s, etc. Many of them were THERE for each other when they were needed in an emergency or someone to talk to a 3 am. When they shared sexual delights at a swing party it did not negate all that. Were they poly or swingers? At Sandstone, the well-known sexual freedom nudist resort which existed in the 70s and 80s, some people lived there for years while others came only to the Swing parties on Saturday nights. Those who lived there might be in anything from core marriages to triads to residential or semi residential group marriages. When they attended one of the swing parties and bedded someone new, what did the sex mean to them? Might that be only the start of something which could last for years? We will discuss all this along with our own experiences and help YOU figure what shade would bring you the most joy.
Saturday November 21, 2020
BUILDING A TRIAD IN AN INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY
presented by Eileen and David Maxfield + Zarifa Spain
11 AM TO 12:30 PM – on Zoom
Songaia near Seattle WA
Dave and Eileen Maxfield have been actively involved in polyamory since the 80s. They were in a semi residential triad for many years, Poly leaders in in the Willamette Valley community since 1992, founding members of Network for a New Culture and were my (Terry’s) own first experience with dating a couple. They introduced me to the 3-way kiss in 1987. Their latest adventure is joining David’s secondary partner Zarifa Spain in the intentional community she lives in – Songaia. They will tell us about the community itself and how that is working out for them as a couple and for the three of them as a now more residential triad in this new situation. Part of that is doing poly during these Covid times. The response of the Songaia community to the open polyamory practiced by David, Eileen and Zarifa was heartening: the poly residents came out of their collective closet! Eileen says there are several of them…
Introducing Freedom Acres as Family Synergy turns Fifty
Craig and I “discovered” Freedom Acres in September of 2020. It is a naturist resort similar to such places as Glen Eden and Olive Del Ranch except that it is more sensually and sexually permissive. Perhaps Sandstone is a more similar historical parallel as it, too, featured a residential community (smaller than the one at Freedom Acres). They prided themselves on open sensuality and sexuality. Freedom acres has a few more rules about where sexuality is allowed. Freedom Acres has many residents who live there year-round in single and double wide trailers or manufactured homes. Others may be snow birds who spend summers there or just week end visitors as we were in our trailer. Having begun to get to know some of its residents, it looks to me like the connections they are making are at least as poly as those made by the “Lifestyles” hospitality team mentioned in our event description.
Actually, Freedom Acres is its current incarnation—some of you may remember it as Deer Park and more recently Treehouse. The large Deer statue still graces its front entrance. I first went there in the early 90s when Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Devore was being held in a park across the street from it. The management permitted us hot costumed players to get naked and use the pool. A lot of people suddenly discovered they were nudists that way…In 2011 Family Synergy (Live the Dream’s parent organization) had its 40th anniversary at Tree House. As board member and events coordinator for Family Synergy at that time, I had a lot to do with promoting that reunion event.
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Interview with Jeff James and Aubrie Patin (soon to be Aubrie James) residents of Freedom Acres.
Freedom Acres is a very open, comfortable community which is accepting of all body shapes, all walks of life, all Sexualities, in an Adult Only environment. It is not a Family Nudist Environment. It is not an AANR sanctioned environment where even hugging is frowned on.
Freedom Acers is a couples nudist resort. Some are nudists, not swingers. You can be in the pool and not play unless you feel like it. People tend to run in the same circles when they visit. Management treats visitors with higher priority because they have to fight for them. Residents treat each other with a neighborhood feel. It is a close-knit community. Because we live close together, we depend upon each other. We grow the friendships. Air conditioner breaks, every one brought fans. Event for resident not tourists: Social event at pool during the week. Poker games and Barbeques Midweek. We are growing closer to each other especially when you are nude and can have social/sensual interaction. Most vanillas or tourists (what SF community calls “mundanes”) do not even know who their neighbors are. Don’t associate with them on any regular basis.
Jeff says that while Poly does not seem to be very common in Freedom Acres, quiet polyamory between neighbors may not be obvious. Playing together is not the same as emotionally connected—being in love. It is being in love when a woman has a love connection including sex with her girl friend from next door. They are happy together, miss each other when they are apart. They are not in love with each other’s significant others.
Terry’s comment: One difference between poly and swinging is that swinging tends to be a trade while polyamory does not require what used to be called “wife swapping”. Also, those not in love people who are having sex together are the same ones who bring the fans when the air conditioner breaks down, take that person to the doctor if needed, comfort them on a sleepless night and do other things which dear friends do for one another—particularly those who live together in a closely knit community. This is at least one of those shades of gray we talked about. Sex with a dear friend is not casual even if it is not characterized by those involved as being in love.
Back to the Interview:
There is a triad which visits Freedom Acres pretty regularly. Poly relationships are accepted in the swing life Style. When a triad visits in a swing environment the single may be targeted by couples who are swingers unless they know the triad and understand their boundaries. Unicorns (single women in the poly or swing community.) may be willingly shared by visitors bringing them or may be trophies who are not shared. It is different at the Club. Couples go to socialize or play with the couples they have played with in the past. The Club is a clothed environment. Only in the Playroom are people naked.
Jeff and Aubrie regularly speak to Human Sexuality Classes handling questions about the Life Style honestly and without taboo in front of 50 or 60 students, just as Family Synergy and Live the Dream members have done over the years since the early 70s. It all comes round again!
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As Craig and I enjoyed the Olympic sized pool (all to ourselves under the stars late the Saturday night we arrived with music playing still) we were suddenly inspired with the idea of a 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of Family Synergy. Even though Family Synergy itself is no longer providing meetings or even a Newsletter except for the one put out by Boston based Family Tree long ago a chapter of Family Synergy, Live the Dream carries on its traditions here in southern California where the organization started and had most of its meetings. I was a board member of Family Synergy for some years before Live the Dream became a separate organization in 1987. Therein lies a tale to be continued…perhaps.
Back to this 50th anniversary celebration. We thought the 3rd week end in July 2021 would be far enough in the future to put Covid 19 and its restrictions largely behind us as well as having time to prepare for it. To my delight, it is all coming together pretty quickly. Next day after we hatched this idea, I called Family Synergy’s co-founder, Pat LaFollette to run it past him and see if he could participate. He agreed to be our Key Note speaker! Oberon Zell, Founder of Church of All Worlds, was my next call-he, too, agreed to speak. Church of All Worlds is the first legally recognized neo pagan religion in the United States. It is based on Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Live the Dream is its Los Angeles Nest. Oberon’s late wife Morning Glory actually coined the word Polyamory in her Bouquet of Lover’s article in the 90s. Finally, my best friend Glen Olson and I have written a book together using our own experiences as well as interviews of some of the people who created the poly community titled Fifty Years of Polyamory in America Through Our Eyes. It will be ready in bound copy by July 2021. We will speak at this conference as well. There will be panels of others who have actually experienced group living, group marriage and multiply committed relationships. More on all this in upcoming Newsletters.
Pat Lafollette will present some of the history of Family Synergy and his own experience of being in triad which raised two sons, one by each husband, at our December Live the Dream meeting.
How Robert Rimmer Joined Us for our August Meeting by Terry Brussel-Rogers
“Harrad Experiment and Proposition 31 by Robert Rimmer:
Couple Meets Couple, They Fall in Love and Get Married”
This was the August 2020 meeting description.
It did NOT say that Robert Rimmer
(who had passed on August 1, 2001) would be joining us…
Live the Dream, founded by Terry Brussel and Brian Gitt in 1987, carries on the philosophy and traditions of Family Synergy, founded by Hy Levy and Pat Lafollette in 1971. Robert Rimmer was one of their inspirations.
Before our August meeting, I had been thinking for weeks about how lucky we had been to have Robert Rimmer connect with us by speaker phone for a similar meeting about 25 years ago. I had been wishing I could interview him and ask such questions as how his own life had given him the ideas for some of his stories, how polyamory and politics fit together and how he saw the future of this lifestyle. To my great surprise, Paul Gibbons asked after about 10 minutes into the meeting, “How would you like Robert Rimmer to join us right now?” As I wondered if he was about to conduct a séance, I suddenly remembered he had recorded that meeting! To my great delight, Paul played the whole thing for those who attended our August Zoom meeting. Bob Rimmer discussed his Dreamer of Dreams which featured a poly-based Church with some similarity to Church of All Worlds in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. He talked about Thursday My Love which has wives changing places for 2-week vacations in other states—what starts as very upscale swinging becomes (of course—this is Rimmer) Couple Meets Couple, They Fall in Love and Get Married. Could something like this actually work in today’s world? Would it lead to something more than sexual connection alone? I believe it could. Probably post Covid -19, but that will come. Thursday My Love also features a commitment ceremony between secondary partners both married to someone else. I have actually done this both with that secondary partner alone (in a relationship which lasted 30+ years) and with my own legal husband at the time in a triad ceremony. Marcus Jenkins, Paul and I did it very formally at Renaissance Pleasure Faire June 2, 2001 in the presence of friends and loved ones with my father giving me away and making Marcus a member of the Brussel Clan. Rimmer’s Love Me Tomorrow winds up with a man in a triad nearly moving into the Oval Office in a definitely Science Fiction themed story. All those years ago, I had asked and gotten answers to so many questions I had wished Rimmer could answer now…
The recording is available to those of you who would like to have it. Just pay your annual $25 membership fee to Live the Dream by the 10-17-20 meeting and get membership for the rest of this year, all of 2021 and get this amazing recording as a bonus.
Robert Rimmer wrote many fictional books on multiple committed relationships from the dating stage to the group marriage stage. Harrad Experiment takes place at a supposedly fictional university (except that we had a housemate who went there) which features co-ed rooms, classes on sex and love and co-ed naked gym classes. There is a lot of excellent instruction in this on how to handle polyamory as the college students who deal with the usual jealousies involved in dating more than one person deal also with the complications of one of them being your assigned roommate to whom you are expected to make love. It eventually evolves into a six-way group marriage. Proposition 31 starts with what looks like a familiar relationship train wreck as a married man impregnates his married lover leading to the threat of divorce of both marriages. Except it winds up with the kids from both marriages getting a new sibling and extra parents instead of losing those they had. The wife who did not get pregnant attempts to get group marriage legalized as the story proceeds…not a bad idea when you look at the alternative.
Robert Rimmer himself was in a four-way group marriage which lasted 25+ years but was kept secret due to his co-husband’s work situation until the man passed on. Bob claimed throughout that his stories were fictional. He was an honorary member of Live the Dream and gave us a meeting by speaker phone after all this was no longer secret.
Tell your Poly curious friends to look us up! WHAT EXPERIENCES/Book reviews, etc. CAN YOU SHARE RELATING TO THE POLY LIFE STYLE? We’d like to run it here.
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If you have a
“What do you do when?” question for us,
or any Poly related article for publication:
Please E-Mail to: newsletter@mail.livethedream.org
Or mail 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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Meet Ups & Other Group Events
NONE OF THIS IS COVID 19 UPDATED. GO TO THEIR WEBSITES TO SEE HOW EACH GROUP IS HANDLING IT.
SoCal Poly meet up, which lists Deborah’s Covid supported first Saturday meet up
Go to www.meetup.com/SoCal-Polyamory for more info on this meeting
Also check outwww.meetup.com/Loveopen & www.meetup.com/loving-more
and other SoCal poly groups (40+ groups in the Greater LA Area!)
The Southern California Naturist Association Meetup http://www.meetup.com/nature-519
This is the largest non-landed clothing optional club in California
Other Poly info:
www.lovemore.com www.polyevents.blogspot.com
Other groups friendly to Polyamory
KARL HESS CLUB www.karlhessclub.org
meets on the 3rd Monday at Dinah’s Family Restaurant, 6521 Sepulveda Blvd. (at Centinela), Culver City. Phone: (310) 645-0456 West L.A.
Burning Man details www.burningman.com
LTD DUES ARE $25.00 PER YEAR FOR ONE PERSON, $40 FOR A COUPLE, $10 EACH FOR ADDITIONAL PERSON(S) IN THE SAME HOUSE. DOUBLE THAT FOR FREE ATTENDANCE AT ALL REGULAR DAY TIME 3RD SATURDAY MEETINGS. TO BECOME A MEMBER OR TO RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP, PLEASE COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING FORM AND EITHER E-MAIL OR SNAIL MAIL IT TO THE ADDRESS LISTED BELOW. An E-Mail NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION ONLY IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE. JUST BE SURE TO PROVIDE US WITH YOUR E-Mail ADDRESS. REGULAR MEETINGS ARE $5.00 WITH YOUR CURRENTLY PAID MEMBERSHIP CARD (FAMILY SYNERGY OR LIVE THE DREAM) WITHOUT MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS ARE $10.00.
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