Re: Re: Re: the 60's

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Todd Howell wrote:
> Rick,
>
> I respect your take on things and all of your experiences. They must've 
>been magic at the time. Wonder years indeed.
Thanks for saying it, Todd!
> 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.
Oh,  I completely agree with you.  It wasn't perfect.  In fact the 
amount of naivete and self entitlement
(and you pegged it: much of it upper middle class) was really 
dysfunctional and annoying......like the young
hippy chick who walked into Union Grove Music today at closing and was 
put out that she couldn't just come
in and jam on a guitar that she had no intention of ever 
buy.......ouch!!!).

It was a very complex time (as all times are for all people) so I was 
just reminiscing about some of the
sweet things about that time.    I certainly don't have rose colored 
spectacles on when thinking about it.
It was an enormously painful time, emotionally,  for me in my life at 
the time to be really honest.
> 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.

No man,  what I love about this list is that everyone pipes in (or is at 
least encouraged to do so).
Your perspective is no more or less valid than mine or anyone's on this 
list.

To me, the key word in all you wrote was 'respectful'.   I think if we 
all appreciate diversity
and not expect other human beings to share our experiences or our 
conclusions and if we honestly
hold respect in our hearts that the world has a chance of improving.

Glad you un-lurked and look forward to more of your thoughts in the future.

rick
> 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
>>