There Are Only Two Shakers Left. They've Still Got Utopia in Their Sights.

(September 6, 2024)

The New York Times

One morning in the late spring, Graham walked me around the property and spoke about the community’s efforts to faithfully preserve Shaker history and make it available to anyone who came looking for it. Sabbathday Lake holds a large collection of Shaker materials, the only one that has always been curated entirely by Shakers. Graham’s long-term goals include building a research museum to safely preserve the materials in climate-controlled environments.

More immediately, the National Endowment for the Humanities had recently granted Sabbathday Lake $750,000 to help restore their historic herb house building for education and cultural programming. Whole staffs of young people work in the garden. There are teenagers working the gift shop on their summer holidays alongside retirees. In the warm months, Sabbathday Lake itself is full of children swimming. Each spring, a local high school class visits for a weekly “Shaker studies” elective, and early this summer a middle-school class came to help plant the garden. Every year, the Shakers partner with local organizations to bring kids with intellectual or developmental disabilities to work in the herb garden.