Too bad that one of the Goddard grads. who went on to great financial success didn't choose to step up and buy the place. Ken Burns seems to have saved Hampshire, but the Goddard superstars- Phish, Mamet and Macy are seemingly AWOL. Obla di obla da.
So well said! Imagine this: A Goddard Trust — where alumni, community members, and radical, Pitkinesque progressive, innovative thinkers etc have a safe seat at the table. Where ownership is not about extraction, but about collective investment. Where we model how the best efficiency comes from sharing and caring. Where we don’t just rebuild Goddard — we reimagine what is possible. Let’s show the world what it looks like to be possibilitarians and defend our safe harbor, while those blinded by their greed glasses burn down the world as we know it. Let’s build the new resilient shared model and leave the old one obsolete.
Ken Burns was an important supporter of Hampshire before, during, and after the 2019 crisis, but it was a grassroots collective movement that overthrew the administration trying to close Hampshire in 2019. The efforts of many students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, administrators, and donors have kept it going since then.
Ken Burns is a gold-standard catalyst. He is not just a visionary storyteller — he is a bridge-builder who understands how to mobilize both grassroots energy and major funding. His rare ability to connect big donors and community-driven efforts is exactly what we need right now.
And here’s the kicker: He’s already connected. He is friends with Patrick — the new ED of the Collective Well, who is really trying to help and generously offering to bring his personal wealth to help us — he could help reset the course and bring real inclusive collective visionary leadership back to Goddard.
Goddard cannot be about egos — Goddard is not a toy. Right now it is about whether we seize the moment to build something transformative or let small-minded leadership strangle the future. Ken, Patrick and the growing Collective of regenerative "Co-Creators" — they represent the kind of courageous, generous, radically collaborative, post-capitalist, forward thinking evolved humans that can turn this into a model for resilient, progressive, positive impact. The question is: Will we make room for it?
I don't think that Jonathan got the point. All of sort the people he lists were involved in the early efforts to save Goddard,. but regrettably it takes wealthy and well-known people to lead the charge and to publicize the issue to a broad public. Sadly, I see no evidence that Goddard's most famous alumni have been active in the struggle.
Oh are you hitting a nerve! This is exactly where we have lost our way. There was a time when great wealth meant great responsibility — a time when success was not just measured in accumulation but in contribution. The more you made, the more you were encouraged to give back, reinvest, build something bigger than yourself.
We have lost that in the age of MAGA.
Collective Well had a plan. A Goddard + Greatwood Trust — a model where wealthy donors and deeply invested individuals could contribute, not just financially, but with their time, expertise, and labor. Big funders would seed it, but then we would create a system where stakeholders — whether they were weeding gardens, writing grants, clearing trails — could earn a real stake in the future of Goddard.
The trust would also own community power infrastructure, generating a sustainable revenue stream to fund the institution. And we were not stopping there. Every home bought or sold in the community? My real estate brokerage would feed 1% back into the trust, a self-replenishing model that would support a thriving, regenerative ecosystem.
The old real estate development model? Obsolete. We had a better way — a blueprint for shared prosperity, for lifting more boats. I laid this out for Mike, showed him the path forward, showed him how we could build a next-generation ownership model, one rooted in Bucky Fuller’s thinking, not outdated extraction.
And yet, here we are — excluding big bold creative visions — stuck in the extractive past. The question is, do we have the courage to build the future? Do we all have the courage to bring our best selves to the table and co-create a new model together on this tri-town bioregional high-ground, beacon of a property together?
I know nothing about Mike. I'm a musician, and I've certainly met a number of successful, wealthy people who are skilled at pretending to listen to others, but who are simply building their own knowledge base as a means of making more money and ignoring any sort of egalitarian notions. From everything you've said, Mike fits the recipe.
And just to be clear: we spend most of our lives believing we are locked into one path, one identity. But we can choose a new narrative. A new future. Right now, the world is burning, and we have handed power to some of the most dangerous, reckless sociopaths imaginable. It is clear to an increasing number of us that business as usual will kill us. As one great professor and mentor said: "the most important economic equation you can solve is species survival". And Goddard is an incredible place to prototype a new model to lead us forward.
Goddard is the opportunity we need to build a new model. A chance to build something different — something bigger than any one of us. If we are going to lean into this opportunity, the next owner of Goddard can’t just be one person treating it as his toy -- another exclusionary gatekeeper. Someone who understands that the future isn’t about controlling people — it’s about empowering them. It’s about redistributing power and resources to support the larger community so that we don’t just survive — we thrive.
This is about more than preserving Goddard’s legacy. It’s about amplifying it. Reimagining it. Making it a living, breathing model of radical inclusion, shared ownership, and collective power. The institutions of the past were designed to hoard resources for the few. The institutions of the future? They will be built by us, for all of us.
And let’s be clear — this isn’t just about Mike. This is about all of us. We have the chance to create something groundbreaking. Something that gives what is being built at Goddard to a Community Real Estate Investment Trust, a replenishing fund that supports our community, that feeds and nourishes people, that provides safe harbor in a world blinded by the golden idol and the narcissistic nouveau riche are more interested in extraction than regeneration.
So the question is: Will we take this chance? Or will we let Goddard become just another playground for the wealthy — another trophy for the elite to extract and take credit for the goodness of our community in an attempt to brand it as their own and sell it off, and pat themselves on the back as they refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and deplete the resources of the community to service their own greed.
Given how stark the MAGA model is in comparison. We know what is right. The only thing left is to do it.
Courage my friends. Together we can do hard things.
Mike, you are incredibly smart. And I think you are reading this. So I’m going public with a simple ask: Please, Mike — embrace your love of Bucky Fuller.
You have said this is your legacy project. You have called it a big tent. So let us in. You don’t have to carry this alone. As we have said, we have the money too to help build this new model -- please don't push us out, let us help bring our best selves to help our community thrive. Let's show what humans can do when we work together because we care so deeply about the community. Co-create. Open the door. Let's build something bigger than any one of us.
We are running out of time. The only truly crazy thing to do is to keep doing what we have always done — because we already know where that leads.
Think bigger. Think more inclusively. Channel your inner Tim Pitkin. The world needs Goddard now more than ever. Make space for bold, inclusive visionaries to build new models — models that we can show, not just tell.
You have said this is not about the money. So let’s prove it. Let’s build a shared value platform. Let’s demonstrate how sharing, caring, and kindness can drive innovation. Let’s create a future where Goddard’s progressive, evolved community doesn’t just survive — but leads. Please accept the challenge — as you said to me once — we each get up in the morning to do the basics — well we each get up in the morning and make new choices every day — inclusive radical collaboration works — please give it a try.
Sorry to have my cynicism confirmed. For me, Goddard was long ago and now far away (I live in Colorado.). My memories of Goddard are, to be honest mixed. I went there for two years, spent my junior year at the New School and the University of New Mexico. Then back for my senior year. By that time the faculty had discovered that undergrads. actually were quite interested in sex, and they instituted some really ugly rules,and enforced them. I spent my senior year living in the Garden House,mostly but not entirely, alone. I used kerosene and sawdust to start nightly fires, and almost burned it and myself down! I don' t know how I can be helpful, but me know if there' something I could do. While I was at Goddard, we had 60-70 students, and there was no non-residency program. I appreciate your comments.
This brochure is the starting point for my research project but most of my information is from various news articles about the college and its architecture.
Bravo Tom! Hearing from the next generation is so poignant. Indeed there was so much hope in turning Goddard into a beacon for the future. A community we all had hopes and dreams to be a part of! This behavior - pushing out the creatives behind the vision - and then taking credit for “creating” a “creative campus” is simply bogus. Takes the meaning of creativity right out of the name. (Honestly when you call something “a creative campus” 😝 don’t you kind of immediately loose any real creatives?!)
Saying that, humans can sniff out authenticity and there is no doubt an ornamental play like this will be felt - especially in a community like ours.
Too bad that one of the Goddard grads. who went on to great financial success didn't choose to step up and buy the place. Ken Burns seems to have saved Hampshire, but the Goddard superstars- Phish, Mamet and Macy are seemingly AWOL. Obla di obla da.
So well said! Imagine this: A Goddard Trust — where alumni, community members, and radical, Pitkinesque progressive, innovative thinkers etc have a safe seat at the table. Where ownership is not about extraction, but about collective investment. Where we model how the best efficiency comes from sharing and caring. Where we don’t just rebuild Goddard — we reimagine what is possible. Let’s show the world what it looks like to be possibilitarians and defend our safe harbor, while those blinded by their greed glasses burn down the world as we know it. Let’s build the new resilient shared model and leave the old one obsolete.
Ken Burns was an important supporter of Hampshire before, during, and after the 2019 crisis, but it was a grassroots collective movement that overthrew the administration trying to close Hampshire in 2019. The efforts of many students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, administrators, and donors have kept it going since then.
Ken Burns is a gold-standard catalyst. He is not just a visionary storyteller — he is a bridge-builder who understands how to mobilize both grassroots energy and major funding. His rare ability to connect big donors and community-driven efforts is exactly what we need right now.
And here’s the kicker: He’s already connected. He is friends with Patrick — the new ED of the Collective Well, who is really trying to help and generously offering to bring his personal wealth to help us — he could help reset the course and bring real inclusive collective visionary leadership back to Goddard.
Goddard cannot be about egos — Goddard is not a toy. Right now it is about whether we seize the moment to build something transformative or let small-minded leadership strangle the future. Ken, Patrick and the growing Collective of regenerative "Co-Creators" — they represent the kind of courageous, generous, radically collaborative, post-capitalist, forward thinking evolved humans that can turn this into a model for resilient, progressive, positive impact. The question is: Will we make room for it?
I don't think that Jonathan got the point. All of sort the people he lists were involved in the early efforts to save Goddard,. but regrettably it takes wealthy and well-known people to lead the charge and to publicize the issue to a broad public. Sadly, I see no evidence that Goddard's most famous alumni have been active in the struggle.
Oh are you hitting a nerve! This is exactly where we have lost our way. There was a time when great wealth meant great responsibility — a time when success was not just measured in accumulation but in contribution. The more you made, the more you were encouraged to give back, reinvest, build something bigger than yourself.
We have lost that in the age of MAGA.
Collective Well had a plan. A Goddard + Greatwood Trust — a model where wealthy donors and deeply invested individuals could contribute, not just financially, but with their time, expertise, and labor. Big funders would seed it, but then we would create a system where stakeholders — whether they were weeding gardens, writing grants, clearing trails — could earn a real stake in the future of Goddard.
The trust would also own community power infrastructure, generating a sustainable revenue stream to fund the institution. And we were not stopping there. Every home bought or sold in the community? My real estate brokerage would feed 1% back into the trust, a self-replenishing model that would support a thriving, regenerative ecosystem.
The old real estate development model? Obsolete. We had a better way — a blueprint for shared prosperity, for lifting more boats. I laid this out for Mike, showed him the path forward, showed him how we could build a next-generation ownership model, one rooted in Bucky Fuller’s thinking, not outdated extraction.
And yet, here we are — excluding big bold creative visions — stuck in the extractive past. The question is, do we have the courage to build the future? Do we all have the courage to bring our best selves to the table and co-create a new model together on this tri-town bioregional high-ground, beacon of a property together?
I know nothing about Mike. I'm a musician, and I've certainly met a number of successful, wealthy people who are skilled at pretending to listen to others, but who are simply building their own knowledge base as a means of making more money and ignoring any sort of egalitarian notions. From everything you've said, Mike fits the recipe.
And just to be clear: we spend most of our lives believing we are locked into one path, one identity. But we can choose a new narrative. A new future. Right now, the world is burning, and we have handed power to some of the most dangerous, reckless sociopaths imaginable. It is clear to an increasing number of us that business as usual will kill us. As one great professor and mentor said: "the most important economic equation you can solve is species survival". And Goddard is an incredible place to prototype a new model to lead us forward.
Goddard is the opportunity we need to build a new model. A chance to build something different — something bigger than any one of us. If we are going to lean into this opportunity, the next owner of Goddard can’t just be one person treating it as his toy -- another exclusionary gatekeeper. Someone who understands that the future isn’t about controlling people — it’s about empowering them. It’s about redistributing power and resources to support the larger community so that we don’t just survive — we thrive.
This is about more than preserving Goddard’s legacy. It’s about amplifying it. Reimagining it. Making it a living, breathing model of radical inclusion, shared ownership, and collective power. The institutions of the past were designed to hoard resources for the few. The institutions of the future? They will be built by us, for all of us.
And let’s be clear — this isn’t just about Mike. This is about all of us. We have the chance to create something groundbreaking. Something that gives what is being built at Goddard to a Community Real Estate Investment Trust, a replenishing fund that supports our community, that feeds and nourishes people, that provides safe harbor in a world blinded by the golden idol and the narcissistic nouveau riche are more interested in extraction than regeneration.
So the question is: Will we take this chance? Or will we let Goddard become just another playground for the wealthy — another trophy for the elite to extract and take credit for the goodness of our community in an attempt to brand it as their own and sell it off, and pat themselves on the back as they refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and deplete the resources of the community to service their own greed.
Given how stark the MAGA model is in comparison. We know what is right. The only thing left is to do it.
Courage my friends. Together we can do hard things.
Mike, you are incredibly smart. And I think you are reading this. So I’m going public with a simple ask: Please, Mike — embrace your love of Bucky Fuller.
You have said this is your legacy project. You have called it a big tent. So let us in. You don’t have to carry this alone. As we have said, we have the money too to help build this new model -- please don't push us out, let us help bring our best selves to help our community thrive. Let's show what humans can do when we work together because we care so deeply about the community. Co-create. Open the door. Let's build something bigger than any one of us.
We are running out of time. The only truly crazy thing to do is to keep doing what we have always done — because we already know where that leads.
Think bigger. Think more inclusively. Channel your inner Tim Pitkin. The world needs Goddard now more than ever. Make space for bold, inclusive visionaries to build new models — models that we can show, not just tell.
You have said this is not about the money. So let’s prove it. Let’s build a shared value platform. Let’s demonstrate how sharing, caring, and kindness can drive innovation. Let’s create a future where Goddard’s progressive, evolved community doesn’t just survive — but leads. Please accept the challenge — as you said to me once — we each get up in the morning to do the basics — well we each get up in the morning and make new choices every day — inclusive radical collaboration works — please give it a try.
Sorry to have my cynicism confirmed. For me, Goddard was long ago and now far away (I live in Colorado.). My memories of Goddard are, to be honest mixed. I went there for two years, spent my junior year at the New School and the University of New Mexico. Then back for my senior year. By that time the faculty had discovered that undergrads. actually were quite interested in sex, and they instituted some really ugly rules,and enforced them. I spent my senior year living in the Garden House,mostly but not entirely, alone. I used kerosene and sawdust to start nightly fires, and almost burned it and myself down! I don' t know how I can be helpful, but me know if there' something I could do. While I was at Goddard, we had 60-70 students, and there was no non-residency program. I appreciate your comments.
Tommy, is there a document you are responding to that could provide more context for your thoughts about Goddard’s history and future? Thank you!
https://www.aiavt.org/uploads/media/Eco_Design_Build_final.pdf
This brochure is the starting point for my research project but most of my information is from various news articles about the college and its architecture.
Bravo Tom! Hearing from the next generation is so poignant. Indeed there was so much hope in turning Goddard into a beacon for the future. A community we all had hopes and dreams to be a part of! This behavior - pushing out the creatives behind the vision - and then taking credit for “creating” a “creative campus” is simply bogus. Takes the meaning of creativity right out of the name. (Honestly when you call something “a creative campus” 😝 don’t you kind of immediately loose any real creatives?!)
Saying that, humans can sniff out authenticity and there is no doubt an ornamental play like this will be felt - especially in a community like ours.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/arts/design/david-sellers-dead.html