I visited an old friend in Davis, California in 1981, but I never heard of this cooperative community on the UC campus there until I read about it in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week. There is a struggle between the student residents and the school over the future of the domes, which are showing their age. They were built in 1972.
Yes, a vintage hippie commune, still here in 2011! It seemed so sweet and pure to me, with it's vegetarian pot-lucks and government by consensus: a rarefied idealism that thrives best among care-free students or the highly committed.
Back in the '70's, when these domes were built, choosing an intentional community was a serious option for people who identified with what Theodore Roszak named the Counterculture. And I guess it still is. For myself, when the '70's came to an end and I married R., I no longer cared for such togetherness.
Still, reading about the domes brought back good memories of coming together with others, of sharing all in common, of the magic of a simple life, experiences that left their mark on me to this day. There are more pictures here.
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