LAST SHAKERS LEFT
Their numbers have dwindled, but the remaining members are imagining what
comes next. They still have Utopia in their sights.
By Jordan Kisner in the New York Times
It’s a triumph, as utopian experiments aren’t known
for their durability, though the impulse — to start afresh apart from the mess of mainstream society, to reinvent society with like-minded people — has always been strong here. Out of the many that America has fostered, this is one of the most abiding. Out of the tens of thousands of Shakers who have lived out their faith in the last quarter-millennium, these two remain.
Brother Arnold Hadd and Sister June Carpenter live in an active village that is also a museum — they are inhabitants and custodians and exhibit all at once. Sabbathday Lake is a tidy, elegant configuration of buildings anchored by the brick dwelling house, constructed when the brethren numbered around 200.
The Shakers maintain a small farm, with a herd of 70 sheep and four cows, and they sell herbs and teas harvested from their garden as well as furniture, beeswax candles and other “fancy goods.” Curious members of the public drive through even when Sabbathday Lake is closed to visitors, and pop out of their cars to wander up and down the dirt driveway, squinting at the Meeting House. Brother Arnold — Shakers go by their
title and first name only — frequently comes out to greet people who show up, though he no longer offers tours.
One weekend, two teenagers knocked on the kitchen door to ask if they could hunt turkey in the Shakers’ woods. He told them to go ahead...READ MORE
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