Twin Oaks Community
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Twin Oaks Community is an ecovillage and intentional community in Louisa County, Virginia [1]. It is a member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. [2] Founded in 1967, it is one of the longest-enduring and largest secular intentional communities in North America. Its core values include nonviolence, egalitarianism, feminism, and ecology.
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[edit] History
Twin Oaks was founded on a 123 acre tobacco farm in 1967 by a group of eight individuals that included Kat Kinkade, who has since written two books about the community. The community's initial inspiration was B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two, which describes a fictional behaviorist utopia; however, Skinner's vision quickly faded from prominence at Twin Oaks. [3] The community's stated basic values are cooperation, egalitarianism, income-sharing, and non-violence. [4]
The community struggled greatly during its first few years, as member turnover was high and the community members didn't earn much income. According to Kinkade, the community avoided the problems stereotypically associated with communes (particularly laziness, freeloading, and excessive lack of structure) by adopting a structured, but flexible, labor system. [1]
[edit] Membership
People interested in joining Twin Oaks write a letter of introduction to the community and are then invited to attend a scheduled three-week visitor period. During the visitor period, visitors work alongside members, take tours, and attend workshops on Twin Oaks. The visitor period costs between $50 and $250 on a sliding scale. Twin Oaks has one visitor period per month. Membership application involves a three-hour interview; then, ten days after the visitor leaves, the community makes a decision about the visitor's membership. Twin Oaks strives for diversity in its membership, and about two-thirds of people who apply for membership are accepted. People accepted as members have up to 6 months to join the community. There is no cost to join the community, nor any rent or ongoing costs associated with living there.
It is possible to participate in the visitor program with no intention of joining Twin Oaks. In addition, there are three-hour walking tours offered once a week, on most Saturdays. Unannounced visitors are asked to leave: all visitors must arrange their visits in advance.
[edit] Life as a Member
A member of Twin Oaks works around 42 hours a week. Of all Twin Oaks labor, about 35% is directed toward generating income and the bulk of the rest consists of domestic work like child care, cleaning, shopping, maintaining buildings, gardening, and preparing food. Some members do part-time work outside of Twin Oaks, which ranges from selling art to computer programming to construction work. The income from this labor goes to the community, although some portion of this money may go into a member's "vacation earnings." (Members are not allowed to spend this money while at Twin Oaks - not that they could, since Twin Oaks operates as a cashless society within its membership.) Excess labor done in a week accumultes as vacation time, and members take an average of eight weeks of vacation a year. Additionally members may take a Personal Affairs Leave (PAL) for up to a year after having been a member for three years.
Twin Oaks members engage in numerous recreational activities. Twin Oaks has a klezmer band called The Vulgar Bulgars and a street circus troupe called Circus Ruckus that performs in the Charlottesville downtown mall. Twin Oaks periodically puts on plays, usually in the winter when less labor is needed for growing food. Some plays have been written by Twin Oaks members, and other recent productions have been Cabaret, Hair, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), as well as adaptations of Little Shop of Horrors and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Additional social gatherings at Twin Oaks include large dance parties, movie screenings, coffeehouses, talent shows, and board game nights. Twin Oakers also enjoy theme parties, a recent one being a "Feed Your Friends" party. These recreational activities flourish, in part, because all live television viewing is prohibited at Twin Oaks. The lack of television at Twin Oaks derives from a near-universal community distaste for the commercialism promoted through the medium; however, many Twin Oaks members do watch videos and use the Internet regularly.
Theoretically, every need of every member is paid for by the community. Additionally, every member, including children, receives discretionary money of about $70 a month. Items can be ordered from local towns where the "town tripper" goes regularly. Typical items requested by members are library books, candy, tobacco products, alcohol, soda,and DVD rentals.
About 20% of the population is non-white. About 15% of the population hails from outside the United States. There are 13 children living at Twin Oaks. Half of the children are home-schooled and the other half attend the local public schools.
Residents live in 8 very large houses spread out across the community. Each member has a private bedroom, but shares bathroom and kitchen space with fellow house residents. Residences are named Harmony, Oneida, Ta Chai, Kaweah, Morningstar, Degania, Nashoba, and Tupelo. Twin Oaks residences are named after historical utopian communities, most which are no longer in existence, except Degania in Israel and Ta Chai in China. Visitors to Twin Oaks stay in Aurora. Llano, which members lived in when Twin Oaks was founded, now houses dairy processing, a business office, the hub of the computer and telephone networks and a communal kitchen for the courtyard. Zhankoye (better known as ZK) is the main dining hall of the community.
Within each house is one or two small living groups. (SLGs). There is a three week visitor period for each SLG. Twin Oaks SLGs include the Women's SLG in Oneida and the Sunrise SLG in Kaweah. Sunrise is off the electricity grid and uses solar power for electricity and to heat water. Sunrise has a Clivus Multrum composting toilet. All Twin Oaks buildings are wood heated.
Of current members, the average length of stay is 7 years. Many Twin Oaks ex-members live in the nearby towns of Charlottesville and Louisa and maintain ties to the community.
Twin Oaks members are religiously diverse, and the membership includes Christians, Atheists, Pagans, Buddhists, and more. The community hosts Pagan handfastings, Equinox parties, Christmas and Thanksgiving feasts, and an annual Easter Egg hunt. Twin Oaks also celebrates June 16th, the anniversary of its founding, as a holiday.
[edit] Community Businesses
Twin Oaks operates several community-owned businesses, including hammock-making, book indexing and a tofu factory. [5] Members work in these community-owned businesses, with the community providing for all basic needs (housing, food, health care, etc.). All income from the businesses is shared among members, as are vehicles and houses. [6] As of early 2007, about 95 people live at Twin Oaks - 13 of them children under 18, the rest adult members. The longest-staying members have been there over 30 years, while about half of the community members have been there 5 years or less.
The community also has a pond, sauna, sawmill, and dairy. A different person bakes fresh bread and makes cheese every morning.
Twin Oaks has helped establish two daughter communities, Acorn Community about 7 miles away, and East Wind Community in south central Missouri. Throughout its existence, Twin Oaks has maintained an active visitors program through which outsiders can come live in the community for 3 weeks, and then may choose to apply for membership at the end of this visitor program.
Twin Oaks also hosts annual intentional community gatherings which are cosponsored by the Fellowship for Intentional Community. The Communities Conference and the Women's Gathering both take place in August or September every year.
[edit] Twin Oaks in the media
The history of Twin Oaks Community is detailed extensively in two books by Kathleen (Kat) Kinkade, one of the co-founders of the community. The first, A Walden Two Experiment, covers the first 5 years of the community. The second, Is it Utopia Yet?, covers the next 20 years. Another book from the 1990s, Living the Dream, by Ingrid Komar (the mother of a member at the time the book was written), also discusses Twin Oaks' history. Many newspapers and magazine articles have been written about Twin Oaks. About half a dozen dissertations and a dozen master's theses have been written about Twin Oaks. Many of these publications are available at the community's website. In 1998, the Washington Post Magazine did a cover story on Twin Oaks.
[edit] Cultural Significance of Twin Oaks
Many Twin Oaks members and others associated with the intentional communities movement see Twin Oaks' existence as culturally and politically significant. This assessment contrasts with the popular stereotypical idea that communes are escapist, unstable, and/or insignificant.
Some of the common stereotypes of communes are factually incorrect when applied to Twin Oaks. For example, in contrast to the idea that communes are filled solely with young people, Twin Oaks members currently range in age from 18 to 83, with an average age of about 40 (and substantial variance, with many members in their 20's and many in their 50's). The community has existed 40 years, and its highly organized labor system (in which each member works about 40 hours a week) seems to contradict the popular image of communes as disorganized and transient. Though the community is located in a relatively rural area, its members associate freely and frequently with outsiders. The community has no charismatic leader, and individual members' religious practices are extremely diverse. Wealth generated by a member's assets during membership (i.e. interest earned) belongs to the community, but upon leaving, a member keeps all the money he or she entered with.
Proponents of the view that Twin Oaks is significant point to its successful endurance as an island of near-absolute egalitarianism, feminism, environmentalism, and non-violence. They maintain that Twin Oaks is extremely engaged politically in building a model of a better world, and that while it is imperfect in terms of class and race diversity, it is far more diverse than most neighborhoods. Additionally, they argue that Twin Oaks has been successful in creating a mini-society in which economic rewards are not tied to race or prior class background, and that the community boasts an extremely low crime rate, including no violent crime in the past decade. Advocates also point out that it costs nothing to join the community and that the community takes care of its sick and elder members as a priority. They reference Twin Oaks' staying power and the impact it has had on its members' and ex-members' lives as evidence for its significance.
The basic idea of egalitarianism has been castigated by many on the political right, certainly not solely in relation to Twin Oaks. Ayn Rand briefly mentioned Twin Oaks in one of her essays, in a disparaging context. Critics of Twin Oaks may characterize the community as escapist, non-serious, and/or full of hippies. Twin Oaks' commitments to absolute nonviolence and near-absolute equality are obviously not appealing to people of all political persuasions. Those who are sympathetic to egalitarianism may criticize Twin Oaks on several grounds. Some have suggested that the fact that it is less racially diverse than the US population indicates it is not serious about equality. Others point out that only modestly well-off people have the freedom to join a community where they cannot make money to care for their elderly parents. Finally, some have stated that they believe Twin Oaks is too withdrawn from the world. Additionally, Twin Oaks' self-identification as an "ecovillage" comes up against its dependence on selling hammocks made from polypropylene rope.
[edit] References
- ^ Kinkade K., Is it Utopia Yet ?, page 29, Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994
- Kinkade, Kat 1994. Is It Utopia Yet?: An Insider's View of Twin Oaks Community in Its Twenty-Sixth Year . Twin Oaks Publishing. 2nd Edition. ISBN 0-9640445-0-1
- Komar, Ingram 1983. Living the dream: A documentary study of the Twin Oaks community . Norwood Editions. ISBN 0-8482-4774-4
- Kinkade, Kat 1974.. A Walden Two Experiment; The First Five Years of Twin Oaks Community.William Morrow & Co . ISBN 0-688-05020-4
[edit] External links
- Twin Oaks Community online
- Federation of Egalitarian Communities
- The Vulgar Bulgars, the Twin Oaks klezmer band
- TOAST Twin Oaks Academic Speaking Tour
- Twin Oaks Communities Conference August 17-19, 2007
- Twin Oaks Women's Gathering August 24-26, 2007
