Plant That Bell & Let It Ring

One of countless redwood trunks that wash up onto the beach during the winter months. The shot of the kids on top reveals it's massiveness. Now imagine it floating downriver, to the sea. One of the local ragamuffins personalized it this summer.

Sex in the Sixties

Mt.Tam in the 60's

A few things... we are scheduled to drive to the city again this weekend, for the Summer of Love concert in Golden Gate Park. It coincides with the three-day closure of the Bay Bridge. In both directions. Not since the Loma Prieta earthquake has this occurred. The reason for the closure has to do with the massive bridge overhaul, which was brought on by the aforementioned quake.( Which was now almost 20 years ago.) The project is over-budget by millions, and years behind schedule. No matter what, this will NOT be pretty. Why am I so certain and cynical? Because the bay area already deals with never-ending gridlock on the freeways. This will only add to the insanity that is a part of living there. Or any metropolis, really. It's just that people keep flocking here, to this state. In droves. No matter the cost-of-living. Why? They want their California dream, dammit! It's going to be ugly, I just know it. So... I am thinking about this trip south in a more logistical manner than usual. The time that we travel is key. I am thinking early morning on Sunday. Coming home to the coast that night, later. Three hours of drive-time each way, at least. The fact is, it will be a magical weekend in the park. Older daughter and I are scheduled to work backstage for a bit, helping to prepare food that will be served to the performers. The people-watching will be splendid! AikoJim and his son will be there. Good times are just around the bend.

Posting the above photo got me thinking. (Get your minds out of the gutter!) That picture was taken in the sixties. So those "kids" are about sixty now, right? Why is it so hard to comprehend that "seniors" (57 years and up) enjoy healthy sex lives? Look at how some of those old timers used to live---like in this photo, for example. Of course they enjoy sex. Why-the-hell- not? I guess the recent study about these findings doesn't gross me out. In fact, I find it heartening, to know that people continue to feel passionate as they age. Nothing wrong with love-forty years ago or present-day. (Except in our screwy, hung-up western culture, of course!)

We Were Right. Imagine That!

If you've been here before, you know I love Mark Morford in ways I have trouble describing. It's clear to me that I am drawn to shit disturbers. Those brave souls that put it out there, whether it makes folks laugh, or think, or gasp in horror, he always has his say.

This particular column touches on a topic that has floated around in my head for years. Now that the mainstream has been coddled and coerced by our media to be more conscious of their impact on Mother Earth, or eating in healthful and sustainable ways, or the long list of things that lots of us lived decades ago. We were paying attention, and wanted to try living in more positive ways. Because we thought it mattered. Turns out that it did matter. But not to everyone. The majority of mainstream folks thought we were nuts... for wanting to eat organic foods, and have organic gardens, and recycle, and heal ourselves in homeopathic and alternative ways. Oh, and do yoga, meditate, and have our babies at home, and a million other things that the fine column below brings up. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that many have finally realized that we are destroying our planet and ourselves. I just worry that it's a little late. Too bad you didn't trust the hippies.



The Hippies Were Right!

Green homes? Organic food? Nature is good? Time to give the ol' tie-dyers some respect

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and pro-environment and eco-friendly that's happening right now in the newly "greening" America and don't say more guns in Texas or fewer reproductive choices for women or endless vile unwinnable BushCo wars in the Middle East lasting until roughly 2075 because that would defeat the whole point of this perky little column and destroy its naive tone of happy rose-colored sardonic optimism. OK?

I'm talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I'm looking at organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at Target and I'm talking saving the whales and protecting the dolphins and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and non-phthalates dildos at Good Vibes and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation's oddest status symbol. You know, good things.

Look around: we have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a new generation of cheap solar-power technology and an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" and even the soulless corporate monsters over at famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart are now claiming that they really, really care about saving the environment because, well, "it's the right thing to do" (read: It's purely economic and all about their bottom line because if they don't start caring they'll soon be totally screwed on manufacturing and shipping costs at/from all their brutal Chinese sweatshops).

There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet) pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along. Oh yes they did.

You know it's true. All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMO seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it's about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.

Here's a suggestion, from one of my more astute ex-hippie readers: Instead of issuing carbon credits so industrial polluters can clear their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to help offset all the savage damage they've done to the soul of the planet all these years, these commercial cretins should instead buy some karma credits from the former hippies themselves. You know, from those who've been working for the health of the planet, quite thanklessly, for the past 50 years and who have, as a result, built up quite a storehouse of good karma. You think?

Of course, you can easily argue that much of the "authentic" hippie ethos -- the anti-corporate ideology, the sexual liberation, the anarchy, the push for civil rights, the experimentation -- has been totally leeched out of all these new movements, that corporations have forcibly co-opted and diluted every single technology and humble pro-environment idea and Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone and Odwalla smoothie to make them both palatable and profitable. But does this somehow make the organic oils in that body lotion any more harmful? Verily, it does not.

You might also just as easily claim that much of the nation's reluctant turn toward environmental health has little to do with the hippies per se, that it's taking the threat of global meltdown combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to slap the nation's incredibly obese ass into gear and force consumers to begin to wake up to the savage gluttony and wastefulness of American culture as everyone starts wondering, oh my God, what's going to happen to swimming pools and NASCAR and free shipping from Amazon? Of course, without the '60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we'd be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.

But if you're really bitter and shortsighted, you could say the entire hippie movement overall was just incredibly overrated, gets far too much cultural credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much a giant excuse to slack off and enjoy dirty lazy responsibility-free sex romps and do a ton of drugs and avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva Moon or Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what's called the reactionary simpleton's view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, the evolution of culture as a whole. You know, just like America.

But, you know, whatever. The proofs are easy enough to trace. The core values and environmental groundwork laid by the '60s counterculture are still so intact and potent even the stiffest neocon Republican has to acknowledge their extant power. It's all right there: Treehugger.com is the new '60s underground hippy zine. Ecstasy is the new LSD. Visible tattoos are the new longhairs. And bands as diverse as Pearl Jam to Bright Eyes to NIN to the Dixie Chicks are writing savage anti-Bush, anti-war songs for a new, ultra-jaded generation.

And oh yes, speaking of good ol' MDMA (Ecstasy), even drug culture is getting some new respect. Staid old Time mag just ran a rather snide little story about the new studies being conducted by Harvard and the National Institute of Mental Health into the astonishing psychospiritual benefits of goodly entheogens such as LSD, psilocybin and MDMA. Unfortunately, the piece basically backhands Timothy Leary and the entire "excessive," "naive" drug culture of yore in favor of much more "sane" and "careful" scientific analysis happening now, as if the only valid methods for attaining knowledge and an understanding of spirit were through control groups and clinical, mysticism-free examination. Please.

Still, the fact that serious scientific research into entheogens is being conducted even in the face of the most anti-science, pro-pharmaceutical, ultra-conservative presidential regime in recent history is proof enough that all the hoary old hippie mantras about expanding the mind and touching God through drugs were onto something after all (yes, duh). Tim Leary is probably smiling wildly right now -- though that might be due to all the mushrooms he's been sharing with Kerouac and Einstein and Mary Magdalene. Mmm, heaven.

Of course, true hippie values mean you're not really supposed to care about or attach to any of this, you don't give a damn for the hollow ego stroke of being right all along, for slapping the culture upside the head and saying, See? Do you see? It was never about the long hair and the folk music and Woodstock and taking so much acid you see Jesus and Shiva and Buddha tongue kissing in a hammock on the Dog Star, nimrods.

It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in anymore. Right?

Back To The Garden

Remember how people made fun of you for recycling, back in the seventies? I do. (No curb service, back then.) Being a vegetarian was not considered nouveau. But we lived it, nonetheless. Hey, it only took about thirty years for the mainstream to catch on. It would appear that they should have listened to us silly hippies after all. Maybe we wouldn't be teetering on the brink of disaster right now. Here is a quick post about just that, from Roseanne. ( I'm not so big on her religious hype, but I think she's a pretty cool broad.)

From Roseanne World

March 11, 2007

The Hippies Were Right

We must need less! That is the only hope we have against the huge machine that enslaves us to money and war..need less, simplify your life. walk, don't drive, ride a bike, wear a sweater inside, stop eating meat, stop buying things, and stop throwing things away. The hippies were right about everything.

Shower with a friend.

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