Cohousing-L Mailing List: Correction-Open Letter to Chuck and Katie

[allenbutcher (allenbutcher]

Katie, Chuck and the CoHousing List:
Please excuse me, I must correct a misstatement in my recent message. 
(Sorry that this is off topic for the cohousing list, yet I would be
seriously remiss in letting this go.)  

In my "Open Letter to Katie and Chuck" I stated that, "I ... consider
Henry (Hammer) to be the second most influential person in the
development of Twin Oaks."  I meant the second most influential MEMBER,
after a co-founder, Kathleen Kinkade.  

The implication of my statement in the context of my letter is that B. F.
Skinner would be the most influential person, but that was certainly not
my meaning.  As the person who inspired Twin Oaks, I  consider Skinner to
be in another class.  Even though Skinner visited Twin Oaks, he never
joined.  When asked "why not" he stated that it was because his wife
dissented.  I suspect that the truth, however, was that B. F. Skinner was
an academic communitarian, concerned about jeopardizing his credentials
were he to join a counter-cultural community inspired by his work,
especially since it had already by that time diverged from his original
ideas.  His wife's concerns, we may postulate, may have had to do more
with lifestyle and standard of living.  Surely, however, Twin Oaks is the
better for his non-participation anyway, since his ideas would have
likely been much harder to transcend had he been a member.

According to my values structure, it is certainly commendable that the
founders of the cohousing community movement should choose to live in a
community inspired by their work.  It would be interesting to speculate
how the cohousing movement would be different today had you, Chuck and
Katie, chosen to be merely academic communitarians!
Allen