News of Twin Oaks
We celebrated St Patrick's Day with an Irish music concert, but one of the performers (Ezra) was able to attend for only one song; his partner (Mala) had given birth only one hour before! We welcomed Samir Ghoshal Freeman into the world on March 17, at 7:30 pm. [Posted 26-Mar-2009.]
Twin Oaks has its own all-women a capella group, sometimes known as FEC Sharp (FEC #). Here is a video of their performance on Validation Day (our version of Valentines Day) of Billy Joel's For the Longest Time. Typical of music groups this one has been renamed at least once. A recent (2011) name for the group was the Jessica Marie Quintet. [Posted 11-March-2009.]
At 7:17 pm, on Thursday November 20, we welcomed the newest Twin Oaker, a daughter for Summer and Purl. She was born at home, with a full head of dark hair and her grandmother's nose, according to dad Purl. [Posted 27-November-2008.]
An assortment of the Misfortunes that were found inside the misfortune cookies:
"Life has no meaning, at least not for you."
"It won't get better."
"You'll be assigned 14 K-shifts next week." (reader note: normally we each get 1 K-shift--kitchen cleaning--a week)
"You will have a failed polyamorous relationship and lose your partner to your best friend."
"You will never find matching socks again." [Posted 4-November-2008.]
We celebrated the Autumn Equinox with our new friends, the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra. Their music features instruments made from gourds they grow themselves--as they say, they put the "culture" back in "agriculture"! Photos here. [Posted 27-September-2008.]
One of Twin Oaks' primary founding members, Kat Kinkade, died on July 3rd, peacefully at home at Twin Oaks. Kat was a visionary and a mover-shaker, and her life's work touched thousands of people. She was buried on our land: burial photos here. [Posted 5-July, updated 7-August & 3-September-2008.
On the evening of June 14, during our 41st Anniversary dinner party, just as a huge thunderstorm was hitting us, the news came that our varnishing building was on fire. Several Oakers biked or ran to the scene, and many local volunteer fire company trucks arrived. The building was insured. It will be some time before we can rebuild and our chair varnishing business recover. Photo shows ruined Oz with untouched Em. City Stretcher Shop behind.[Posted 16-June-2008.]
Each week at Twin Oaks these days, if we make our hammock production goals, then our work quota stays the same for the following week. If we don't make our goals, then our work quota goes up the following week. Last week we had mucho musical encouragement while working on the last night of the labor week--we were serenaded by Summer on the musical saw, Edmund on euphonium, and Catfish on accordion. Their lyrics included: "Oh we are weavers, of leisure products..." We also had the whole hammock shop sing a not-quite-on-key version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" which took about ten minutes altogether. We made our production goal by 9 pm. [Posted 11-May-2008.]
In it's April 10 online story about Utopias, forbes.com included Twin Oaks as one of "eight modern utopias". [Posted 15-Apr-2008.]