be-musings

"The Summer of Love was the peak of the Haight Ashbury experience," wrote founding editor Allen Cohen in his essay on the Summer of Love. "Over 100,000 youth came to the Haight. Hoards of reporters, movie makers, FBI agents, undercover police, drug addicts, provocateurs, Mafioso and about 100,000 more tourists to watch them all followed in their wake."

I've been to Haight Street, when I lived in LA. You might be too young to remember, but there was quite a hippie movement in Haight in the mid 1960's. I saw a documentary on it several years ago, probably a biased one. But I think some of the things that were highlighted were probably also accurate.
The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Free Love, "weekend marriages", psychedelic drug trips, tie dye, syphilis, dropping out of society, protesting the Vietnam War gone bad (whose beginning was never good), bumming around in the park.
What did the hippies stand for, besides anarchy and sefishness? Peace with each other. Nature - especially the kind you could smoke, ingest, or inhale. Communal living, including sharing women. Children by any male in the commune. We have a slanted picture of these movements. They spoke out too much and didn't bathe enough. They talked of degradation of the earth and it's resources and the need to stop big business from taking over the world and the land. Worthless, drugged illusions. Or........
Turns out some of the things the drop outs were complaining about are actually true. Recently a report on global warming was published, which states mankind is primarily responsible for the changes in the temperature of the earth, ice caps, ozone gas. We didn't think this made sense when big business was beginning to surge in the 1960's. But the hippies talked about it. Society just figured they were anti-success losers. Who could blame them, with the image of long hair and disease and welfare?

From 1964 to 1968, there swelled a gigantic wave of cultural and political change that swept first San Francisco, then the whole United States, and then the world. What was fermenting in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco was a powerful brew that would ultimately stop a war.

Saturday night Scott and I went to a Barenaked Ladies concert. During the pre-concert video footage, facts about global warming and alternate power sources kept flashing on the screen. They made statements about their part in reducing harmful emissions and being energy smart with their tour. I had no idea it was so cool to be so --- hippie. U2 speaks for the Red Campaign. I don't know what other bands are doing, but they're getting onto it. Great PR and a better planet must be the result, right?
Where are the Haight-Ashbury hippies today? They're in their 60's now, and probably telling their grandchildren a few stories about how they warned people things would go this way. Maybe they didn't have all the facts, but they sensed it. I also wonder if those same people became big-business in their 40's and helped contribute to the problem the earth has. Maybe they didn't heed their own advice during the money-making years.

Last week at church we had a fashion show highlighting horrible labour practises around the world. A friend of mine said that sweatshops exist here too, relative to our employment standards. That is probably true. I can't do something about everything, but I can do a few small things. I can't reverse the greenhouse effect, especially by myself. And I'm not a soapbox person. I just agree with a couple of my friends who say we can't tackle the world, but we can make choices with parts of our actions. I won't live in the bush, growing my own garden, using an alternative heat source that reduces emissions, weaving my own hemp clothes. But I can wash with hot water a little less, make fewer trips in the car, look at options for some "sweatshopless" clothes. Maybe that makes me a hippie.
Will you be a hippie too?