Chapter 2 of The Finders - L

Short Biographies of other Counterculture Influencers The Finders Associated With: Mildred Jensen Loomis

If Finders leader Marion Pettie was the grandfather of the counterculture movement, who was its grandmother? Mildred Jensen Loomis was an American writer, editor, speaker, scientist, New Ager, Scientologist, and Unitarian Universalist. Loomis was called the “grandmother of the counterculture movement” by John Shuttleworth, the co-founder of the New Age natural living magazine Mother Earth News. Loomis was born in Blair, Nebraska, in 1900 to Nels Martin and Anna Truhlsen Jensen and was raised Lutheran. Loomis earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Nebraska and a Master of Science in education and religion from Columbia University and Union Seminary. Ralph Borsodi founded the School of the Living in Rockland County, New York, in 1934, where Loomis would shortly later join the School of the Living and become a co-founder in 1936. Loomis worked for the School of the Living for more than fifty years. The School of Living Statement of Purpose (September 3, 1934) is as follows “to associate a selected group of artists, craftsmen, and teachers in a demonstration of the contribution which decentralized, self-sufficient living in the country may make to redress the economic and psychological insecurities of our industrialized age; to study and develop the possibilities of the home and homestead as a productive and creative institution; to offer those who may be able to come only for short visits a place to study homesteading, and their part in making life more meaningful here and now.” I am not against teaching homesteading; I believe the more we can separate ourselves from the ills of our modern world to some degree, the better. However, Loomis, Borsodi, and the School of Living taught more than just self-sufficiency, organic gardening, living “off the grid,” and homesteading. The School of Living also introduced and pushed New Age beliefs to those who attended or read their publications.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]