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September 18, 2003
• Match-making with a conscience Match-making with a conscience 55 Yr. Old Male seeks earthy woman for romance, adventure, easy times, compassionate sharing of lives. I am bohemian, fit, left and literate. 1960s radical type, teach courses on '60s politics, culture, Socialism. Versed in humanistic psychology as well. Partial to bike riding, ocean, film, urban living. Greens. Vegan. This is not the typical self-description of most online dating services: "Looks like Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, built like Arnold, seeks blonde 20-25." But then, you won't find much of that on Rodelinde Albrecht’s site ConcernedSingles.com. You will find close to 1,200 members from the Berkshires to Japan with similar liberal, progressive and politically active lifestyles looking for friendship and romantic relationships. "Concerned Singles is not a dating service. Dating services are looking for a hot body for Friday night. Concerned Singles is people looking for a warm relationship for the rest of their lives," said Albrecht of Lee, paraphrasing her late husband, Jack Handler. "Pre-selection" is the term that Albrecht says most accurately describes what Concerned Singles does. By advertising the service for people concerned with deeper political and philosophical issues, she provides her members with an already weeded-out pool of potential mates in which, she said, one is more likely to meet their match. Albrecht knows her service works. Since she began the business that sustains her financially in 1984, she has attended weddings of couples who met through Concerned Singles. Because she is its sole proprietor and operator, Albrecht communicates often with many of her members and asks them to share success stories on the site. Letters to Albrecht tell her that Concerned Singles not only works in bringing people together, but that it also produces matches that stand the test of time and are based on deeply felt and reasoned interests, she said. Carolyn Toll Oppenheim of Holyoke met her husband, Ward Morehouse, through Concerned Singles. She liked that the site seemed to be full of people that were connected to her circle of friends and therefore shared similar philosophies. Meeting Morehouse through Concerned Singles "felt much more comforting than meeting someone on a normal match site," said Oppenheim. When she read Morehouse's ad, she asked friends if they knew of the man she described. "I emailed a bunch of people. They said, 'Oh, we know who he is, he's a great guy.’ I felt like he wasn’t a stranger anymore." The "six degrees of separation" that Oppenheim feels exists among Concerned Singles members and their friends makes what might have been close encounters real ones. "We could have easily been introduced by mutual friends," said Oppenheim. Solar-powered love A friend from Stockbridge told Jennifer Stein Barker, 52, "Your life sounds perfect except for one thing: you don't have a partner to share it with." Many more women than men surrounded Barker, who was living in Washington running a backcountry ski lodge. She had tried placing personal ads in the "Seattle Weekly" and disliked the outcome: a “supermarket mentality,” where so many people answered her ads and she was forced to meet one person after another who wasn’t right for her. Her Stockbridge friend sent her the Concerned Singles newsletter. Barker wrote to two men, one of whom turned out not to be a good match and the other who never wrote back. Then Barker received a letter in the mail from a man named Lance Barker. He had seen the Concerned Singles ad in "The Nation" and decided to try it, living in an area of Oregon where there are more men than women, and no one seemed to click with his values. "He wrote to me, and it took a lot of courage because he's dyslexic. I got his letter and was very impressed by what he said," said Barker. Barker showed Lance's letter to a previous roommate who was a reading specialist. "She told me, 'Lack of intelligence is not the problem.'" Lance had spelled every word correctly in the letter except for the word "partner,” which he had spelled with an Old West twist: "pardner.” "One of the things that really excited me about Lance's letter was that he lived with solar power and I had one solar panel. It was a match made in solar heaven," said Barker. It turned out that both she and Lance believed strongly in sustainable living, renewable energy and forestry. "He also mentioned health and wellness in his letter, and I liked that," said Barker. Lance, a solar installer, homesteader and gardener, encouraged Barker to get into whole foods and solar cooking. Barker has published two whole-foods vegetarian cookbooks, "The Morning Hill Cookbook" and "The Morning Hill Solar Cookery Book." She is also one of the founding mothers and executive director of SolWest, a non-profit educational organization in Oregon dedicated to informing the public about renewable energy and energy conservation. The two married in 1992 when they were both 40, after meeting each other in person a year and half earlier. They live in the mountains of Oregon on a 40-acre piece of pine-forest land called Morning Hill. "We have a synergistic relationship. We have strengths that complement each other's weaknesses. Having a relationship between two very passionate people isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it," said Barker. "An awful lot of people are just out there looking for fun. But Concerned Singles people are willing to look across the country because they are ready to make a commitment." How it began Albrecht developed the idea for Concerned Singles in 1984 with her then husband, Allan Black, who died in 1988. It was Black's notion that there was a real need for a humanist, liberal, progressive version of the introduction services that were popping up at the time, said Albrecht, who moved to the Berkshires from Berkeley, Calif., in 1986. "If there was more than a mutual interest in golfing and Chinese food, there would be a deeper connection. Concerned Singles would be its own filter," said Albrecht. Black and Albrecht began placing advertisements for Concerned Singles in magazines that attract readers they knew would be interested in their service: Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, The Nation, Vegetarian Times. Albrecht still runs ads in some of these magazines. After Black passed away, Albrecht met her second husband through Concerned Singles, a first-hand testament to the success of her and Black's creation in bringing two people together who would stay together. Her second husband, Jack Handler, would also be integral in helping her run the business of Concerned Singles, and was equally passionate about the ideals behind it, she said. "I'm just not the type of person who likes to be alone. I really like men. I’m not a loner and I’m kind of domestic. It really worked to have a marriage partnership and a business partnership going on at the same time," said Albrecht. Handler, who died at 67 in February of 2002, was a visible and prominent Berkshire resident for the 13 years he resided here. A lawyer and living in California when he met Albrecht, Handler moved to the Berkshires to be with her. In 2002, he was included in a list of 17 "Berkshire Heroes," chosen by The Berkshire Eagle. Handler did pro bono work for the National Writers Union, assisting writers in their contractual relationships with publishers. He was also an officer of the Berkshire Writers Room. He was a professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams and Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield. Handler called himself a "recovering lawyer," said Albrecht, and he wanted to write and teach. Assisting her with the business allowed him to so. "He brought us into the 20th century," said Albrecht, who credits Handler with getting Concerned Singles online. It was a move that had to be done or else it would have been fatal, she said. The Internet allowed Concerned Singles to answer the demand for listings for homosexual members, which was too costly when the business was strictly done through the postal service, said Albrecht. Albrecht and Handler's courtship was a trans-continental one, she living in the Berkshires and he in Los Angeles. Albrecht had been attracted to Handler’s self-description. "The phrase that hooked me was 'unafraid of intimacy,'" she said. Their courtship lasted for six months during which they only exchanged childhood pictures. Photographs can be misleading, and connections that last are based on characteristics beyond physical ones, said Albrecht. Albrecht said she and Handler were in love before they met in person. Six months after the start of their correspondence she went to L.A. to visit him. Friends questioned how she knew she loved someone she had never seen, to which Albrecht responded, " 'If I were blind, would that mean I couldn't know him?’" She had spent 80 hours on the phone with Handler and had stacks of letters "this thick" from him; she positioned her hands a foot apart. "We were pleasantly surprised when we met. I don't want to sound new age-y, but we connected on such a deeper level." 'Armchair activism’ From a sun-yellow house in Lee, surrounded by flowers, a dog, Missy, and two cats, Eddy Puss and Minerva, Albrecht runs the business of Concerned Singles by herself now, with some help from an assistant who comes once a week. It is a full-time job; answering constant phone calls and e-mails from members, processing memberships, keeping the listings updated every month. Albrecht wishes that there were a younger community of members on the site. The highest population of people are in their 40s and 50s. Perhaps it is easier for young people to find other ways of meeting peers, or perhaps their philosophical mindset has not crystallized, said Albrecht. "I would like to attract younger people. I'm just not quite sure how to do that," she said. She suspects that once a few younger people became members, it would attract many more, like the ripple affect she has witnessed in areas of the country where members appeared where there were previously none or one. "The best part of my job is losing a member. When a member says, 'Remove my name from the list, I've met the man or woman of my dreams,’" said Albrecht. She considers herself an "armchair activist." "I'm not a person who talks politics a lot. Concerned Singles is my political activity because I’m helping bring together the people who will do those things I’m not." Albrecht suggested a slogan for Concerned Singles, paraphrasing a quote by The Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in gazing in the same direction." |
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