"We Can Do Whatever We Damn Well Please,
It's a Rainbow Gathering, Right?"

"You Know My Love Will Not Fade Away . . ."

Welcome Home to Georgia

You Can't Choose Your Relatives

Old Rainbows Never Fade Away . . .

The Great God Fun (And His Consort, Cool)

"Council in Print"

Other writings I published in Ho! were responses to letters from readers – attempts to answer their questions about Rainbow, shed light on their experiences at gatherings, or counterbalance an extreme opinion. Here are some selections from these informal "councils in print."

"I Am the Drum, You Are the Drum, We Are the Drum..."
And Interview with Babatunde Olatunji

Can the Wild Rainbow Be Captured on Film?

Group Decision-Making Is a Mystical Experience!

All Ways Free

In 1985, some Rainbow folks started a newspaper for the Gatherings called All Ways Free. In 1987 I volunteered to "focalize" the paper, a one-year commitment that morphed into two. Here is an article I wrote for the first issue I worked on, and another published a decade later by a different circle of focalizers.

"Take Us to Your Leader!"
Leadership & Responsibility at the Rainbow Gatherings
All Ways Free, Summer 1999

Rainbow & the Authorities

Much of my commentary in Ho! concerned the U.S. Forest Service's ongoing campaign to shut down the Gatherings by regulatory fiat – chipping away at the freedoms of assembly, association and religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. I also include here a letter of protest to the U.S.F.S., a letter I sent to the Asheville Times-Citizen after I was ticketed with five others for "Public Assembly without a Permit" at a Katuah regional gathering in 1996, and another I wrote to the Chattanooga Free Press after the 2001 regional was threatened with mass arrest.

The New World Order Is Alive and, Well . . .

An Open Letter to the U.S. Forest Service

Letter to the Editor, Asheville Times-Citizen

Letter to the Editor, Chattanooga Free Press

Book Review: People of the Rainbow

Dr. Michael I. Niman, then a professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, adapted his 1991 dissertation for a PhD in Anthropology into the book People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia (U. of Tennessee Press, 1997). It was not only the first scholarly consideration of the significance of the Gatherings, but also a highly informative and entertaining depiction of the Family. The lengthy review I published in three consecutive issues of Ho! (later reprinted in All Ways Free) paid tribute to Niman's detailed research and obvious love for the Gatherings, while respectfully disputing his thesis – that Rainbow represents an outcropping of the American tradition of utopian religious communities.

People of the Rainbow, Part 3

People of the Rainbow – author's website

No One Speaks for Rainbow, But . . .

Perhaps because I am the son of missionaries, I have focused more than most gatherers on "outreach" – inviting the world to Rainbow. This resulted in several feature articles for national magazines as well as a couple of regional Southeastern publications.

Annual Rainbow Gathering Under Fire
Communities, Winter 1997

Welcome Home! The Rainbow Diaspora
Communities, Fall 2000
(published in conjunction with a companion piece on the Sisbros Community by my father, Douglas Wingeier)