Kathleen Kinkade, Founder of Utopian Commune, Is Dead at 77
American soil has proved to be fertile ground for utopian communities. Since the days of Brook Farm, they have come and gone — most of them quickly. Twin Oaks, an experimental community near Charlottesville, Va., inspired by the behaviorist ideas of B. F. Skinner, still survives after more than 40 years. Kathleen Kinkade, one of its founders, died there on July 3 at the age of 77.
The cause was breast cancer, said her daughter, Josie Kinkade.
Inspired by the ideal society described in Skinner’s book “Walden Two,” Ms. Kinkade, who was known as Kat, joined with seven other fellow believers in 1967 and took over a former tobacco farm to realize her vision of a perfect egalitarian society.
It was not easy. The farm’s well ran dry, cows starved over the winter and rammed-earth bricks did not generate the kind of revenue that the founders had hoped for. Pot-smoking hippies who drifted into the commune found themselves at odds with work-ethic missionaries like Ms. Kinkade, whose blunt practicality and executive talent — rare qualities in the counterculture — helped the stumbling colony achieve not just self-sufficiency but something resembling prosperity.
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The cause was breast cancer, said her daughter, Josie Kinkade.
Inspired by the ideal society described in Skinner’s book “Walden Two,” Ms. Kinkade, who was known as Kat, joined with seven other fellow believers in 1967 and took over a former tobacco farm to realize her vision of a perfect egalitarian society.
It was not easy. The farm’s well ran dry, cows starved over the winter and rammed-earth bricks did not generate the kind of revenue that the founders had hoped for. Pot-smoking hippies who drifted into the commune found themselves at odds with work-ethic missionaries like Ms. Kinkade, whose blunt practicality and executive talent — rare qualities in the counterculture — helped the stumbling colony achieve not just self-sufficiency but something resembling prosperity.