Re: Re: the 60's

[Todd Howell <ransacker@earthlink.net>]

Rick,

I respect your take on things and all of your experiences. They must've 
been magic at the time. Wonder years indeed.

I remember very little of the era. I got a lot of memories second hand. I 
lived in fly-over country on a farm at the a** end of nowhere as a child. 
I remember watching my grandmother watching the casualty reports from 
Vietnam and fretting. Two neighbors on either side of us were there. One 
came back  in a bag and the other minus three out of four limbs. There 
were fourteen names on my own high schools Vietnam Memorial. 

As with all cultural movements, there were I am sure the true believers 
and the opportunist free love and drug bunch along for the ride. I don't 
see the sixties as anything else other than another failed moment in the 
cultural eons. I had friends who I met through music, including one 
brilliant solo, Piedmont Bluesman, who also served in Vietnam. He told me 
stories of hippy girls spitting on him and calling him baby-killer. There 
were alot of those stories from my veteran friends. Sorry if I can't get 
on board with a bunch of rich, free love college kids who were fortunate 
enough to have parents who could buy them deferments while the poor white 
under-class and minorities got the dirty end of the cultural and economic 
stick and got p*ssed on for it. The zeitgeist was lovely. The execution 
terrible.

As a child of the SST and Sub-Pop eighties punk movements, I became formed 
into the cynical mold that I am now. I trust no one. Not Fox News. Not 
MSNBC. Neither left nor right. Neither Wall Street or the Hippy after 
birth of an era. I admit to being an equal opportunity paranoid who 
believes that the twenty four hour cable news cycle is essentially the 
Special Olympics of bull-sh*t with a gigantic black hole of truth and fact 
at its' center.

I admire and somehow envy your golden time and wish that I was a true 
believer in that way. I appreciate you sharing that and apologize to the 
list for a rant from a lurker.

Lost But Respectful,

Ransacker


-----Original Message-----
>From: Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>
>Sent: Dec 22, 2010 4:12 PM
>To: richard sales <richard@glasswing.com>
>Cc: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
>Subject: Re: Re: the 60's
>
>On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, richard sales wrote:
>> Well... the hippies also used hard core civil disobedience to express 
>> our anger!  It was a thrilling time.
>> The free love and drugs was just a bonus for some of us.  For some it 
>> was the core of the experience.  They're the ones who went on to Wall 
>> Street and commerce. Truth is, they missed the most glorious boat of 
>> the time.
>LOL,  There is a common joke that goes,  "If you remember the 60's, then 
>you weren't there."
>Sadly,  sometimes I think that if you weren't there you just don't get it.
>
>It's like Dickens said,  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of 
>times".
>
>American children were probably the most dysfunctional in our National 
>history.  Many (and NOT the majority)
>were angry but they also wanted to buy out of the materialistic culture 
>that had emerged from all the wealth
>and conformity that characterized our culture at the end of World War 2.
>
>I always think it is dangerous to put too much emphasis on a time in 
>one's life when one is first learning about the world and trying to come 
>to terms with it's inequities (and it's delights) but there was some kind
>of magic in that time, at least for me.
>
>The one thing that I do miss about it was the ,  of course, 
>intrinsically naive, notion that we could
>somehow change the world........we could eschew the dominant 
>paradigm..........we could make a culture
>that was less racist, less sexist, less ageist, less sizeist, etc., etc.
>
>there was a feeling, artistically, that anything was possible and that, 
>I believe is what led to the explosion
>in creativity in music and fashion (as tacky as tie dye shirts are to me 
>personally.....lol).
>
>that part of it was wonderful where I lived (and at my tender age (I was 
>14 in '67 but had a sister 4 years older
>who was taking me to concerts and parties and be-ins all the time----she 
>took my brother and I to
>the Monterey Pop Festival and to the Filmore Auditorium on my 16th 
>birthday and turned me on, bless her heart)
>
>Youth seem far more cynical these days (and I teach them a lot so I have 
>some experience saying this).
>I suppose we can't blame them after they had to watch George Bush stay 
>in office for eight years and all it represents, psychically and 
>politically.
>
>I always wish I could give them a little tiny bit of that naive idealism 
>we had at that time........
>.....that sense that anything is possible.
>
>It was a good think even though some of my memory about that time is dim 
>(lol).
>
>rick walker
>