European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 02, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A their hearts Are i another decade mate Benlon the artist s daughter who has been with the Community since its Early Days said the Magazine was started to give the group definition after years of isolation. It was scary to open ourselves up to the  adds eve Lyman. Mel Lyman a Man who seemed to rattle everyone he met was caught up in hallucinogenic was a notorious figure at 60s meeting Bounds from san Francisco s Haught Ashbury to Harvard Square in Cambridge. He started avatar an underground newspaper that once won a court Battle in defense of its persistent use of obscenity. I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble. And then i am going to Burn the rubble. And then i am going to scatter the ashes. And then maybe someone will be Able to see something As it really is Lyman wrote in one Issue. He occasionally portrayed himself As a Humble blues Harp player but More often claimed to be god or the Messiah. He was a life Force. He Drew people to him Peper said. He said he was god so people would question him and their own  in 1969, Lyman and his most devoted followers moved to Roxbury. There were reports that they sold Iber 2, 1985 drugs to get by out members say they survived by working As carpenters and playing their music in the Streels. When they weren t working the group experimented with drugs made movies about themselves and recorded their music in a sound studio in one House. Two years later. Rolling Stone Magazine profiled the Hill people in a critical two part Stoy. The piece depicted Lyman As a deranged cult Leader and reported that a photograph of Charles Manson decorated the children s playroom. It claimed that Lyman filmed and recorded his followers on Ltd trips forbade members from leaving the family and confined errant followers in the vault a windowless basement room. The group denies the Story in its entirety. Ii was a  Peper said. There were no pictures of  group members say Lyman died in 1978. But refuse to discuss the cause of death. They deny rumours that Lyman quit the group and is now living in Europe. Alter the rolling Stone article appeared members say. The group s children were taunted at school and the adults were denied jobs. So the family stopped talking about themselves except at Home. Changes in their lives followed. We buckled Down. You learn that your kids a going to starve if you Don t get Money for food on tha  recalls Peper. We had to think How Are we going to do it How Are we going to make it work in the 60s, people were taking too much Ltd sleeping around too much basically abusing themselves and others Peper adds. We Learned pretty last that if you Are going to live together certain things Are  the group focused its energies on United illuminating a Home renovation firm that now operates in California and new York. In us Early Days work was done by members of the commune who were builders carpenters and electricians. Today it employs 30 outside workers and contractors. Some members of the group took jobs in the City As secretaries waitresses and artists. The Money was pooled and members took turns buying groceries at Boston s outdoor Market cooking cleaning and patrolling the Hill at night to Ward off burglars. After dinner the men and women at fort Avenue would take up guitars violins blues harps and play the music of the 60s for hours. They struggled with raising their children. Says one essay in u and a. We sit Here pulling our hair out Over How to talk to the boys and How to talk to the girls and talking to each other and trying to keep ourselves from being too extreme and too Liberal and too digit lied or too hip and frying to Deal with a situation we really Don t know How to Deal with. Bui in t that life anyway the group started a state accredited school in one of their Homes for the children and designed curriculum based on the lives and thoughts of ther heroes Abraham Lincoln Ralph Waldo Emerson. Franklin d. Roosevelt Martin Luther King and Robert f. Kennedy. The family gave up big political causes in favor of smaller Battles ones like the plight of the striped Bass which was being listed to extinction off the Eastern Seaboard. For three years the family travelled to town meetings from Maine to Cape cod seeking support for a ban on Bass fishing and in 1984, longtime commune member Dick Russell testified before Congress twice. He also met with Rhode Island rep. Claudine Schneider whose Call for a moratorium on Bass fishing led to a Bill reducing the Bass Harvest by 55 percent. Ours was a Victory for a whole lot of Little people who overpowered a machine for the Sake of a feeling that s bigger than All of us Russell wrote in and i. The Glossy 80-Page Magazine contains several conversations captured on the tape recorder that the family likes to keep running All the time. In one dialogue they talk about a sense of ennui afflicting the group but end on a note of Hope. Have we lost touch with the immediate sitting in velvet covered chairs staring into the Long Low fire. All that really is Felt is perhaps the acceptance that we Are bound together that Between us All there is really Only one  the Magazine also includes diary excerpts letters Between old friends an electric history of America and a Short Exchange Between a Mother and her 3-year-old daughter about new shoes. Family members sell the $5 Magazine on Street Corners where they play their music. So far Peper said the commune has sold 3,000 copies. Their children Are growing up and some of them Are going away to College. Will they come Back will the Community near the Peak of fort Avenue survive another 15 years i think they la carry it  says Peper. These kids love their life. I think they will live it through the next generation. But it will be totally different. They will change it. That s  he said after some thought. That s what we did. To changed the Way we lived from the Way our parents lived. And we Are  to i Man and George up of took on their Magazine which they a pea Crefo lock Brol their 75 vim Liv ing in a Hippo com Mun in Boilon Matt. The 3tars and stripes Page 15