06/15/2017 This week's theme: The Summer of Love 50 years ago (1967) It's weird to think that that's halfway back to World War One. Okay, it's a break from the 78s, but it is a big anniversary. The Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California Summer of Love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love Haight-Ashbury From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haight-Ashbury Hippie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie Scott McKenzie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_McKenzie A while back, you might remember, I made a little app that runs on Android cell phones and tablets called the "Psychic Hippie Adviser". You "ask" him any yes/no question and press a button and he gives you a silly, "hippie based" answer, like "Far out, man, I can dig it" or "Groovy". Friends (and that means you :-) are welcome to have it for free: file:///E:/SwezeyWebPages/WWW/app/pha.htm Anyway, I showed it to a friend of mine, who's a little younger than me, and he said, it's cute, but why doesn't the hippie answer every question as if he's "stoned" (high on drugs). I was a little thrown by that because drugs aren't the main thing I think of when when I think of the hippies, but, now that I think about, it maybe most people do think that nowadays, but there was a lot more to the hippies than just drugs. Instead, I think of their phrase "the counter culture". They were a much broader social movement that was anti-war, pro free-love and in general unconventional and anti-establishment. They rejected the staid society they grew up in during the 1950s. They thought there must be more to life than just being a consumer in a dead-end consumer society. They were full of radical new ideas and anger. I think the war in Viet Nam was the fire under that teapot that kept it all stirred up. Even the drug usage fell into two parts, the hallucinogenics, like LSD, which represented an admittedly misguided and dangerous attempt at a new form of spiritual enlightenment and weed, which was as much a statement against the more established alcohol their up-tight, nazi parents were using. (I think it's not until the mid-1970s when users deteriorated into being just decadent "stoners". Those weren't really hippies.) Oddly perhaps, I put the hippies in the same general category as the American cowboy. Sure there are differences, but they both represent that American ideal of individual freedom and liberty, of raw independence and defiance to convention. I have to admit I've always been a little bit of a hippie "wannabe" - on the freedom and liberty part anyway. I guess you always look up a little to what the older kids are getting away with and I was in high school at the time, but quite staid. Okay, I admit I have a little bit of a romanticized image of the hippies, but you have to thank the hippies for creating the utopia we are all living in today. Well, ... okay, the only people who live in "Utopia" live in Queens, New York, but I can dream can't I? The "hell no, we won't go" anti-war attitude, the free-love sexual revolution, the defiance to convention, the freedom of it all. What's not to like. Groovy :-) No, there was a lot more to the hippies than just being a bunch of unwashed stoners. **************************************************************** If you want to read some honest-to-goodness radical hippie literature from the time that's not sanitized, watered down and lamo revisionist stuff, try this - but don't say I didn't warn you! It's pretty intense! Right on, man! "Do It!", Jerry Rubin (1970) https://sabrinasoyer.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/jerry-rubin-do-it-scenarios-of-revolution.pdf I ran across a copy of "Do It!" in a used bookstore in the late 1970s and on reading it I thought, this is exactly how I remember the attitude of the 1960s being. If you like that one you probably will like this one too :-) "Steal This Book", Addie Hoffman (1971) https://ia802703.us.archive.org/13/items/pdfy-TNlDHryRIk4DXKAU/Steal%20This%20Book.pdf **************************************************************** So anyway, keep the faith baby - but stay away from the blue ice cubes.