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Old 11-22-2014, 12:50 AM
 
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Originally Posted by tijlover View Post
Largely forgotten, there was also the Mother Earth News lifestyle that emerged from that period. But I couldn't afford it at the time! No land! But the richer hippie types could well afford to do that back then! Live off the land! I knew a richer hippie type that bought a farm near Winona, MN, where I visited, and there were 10 hippies living there!...
Interesting comment. My acquaintance and friend-of-a-friend, John Shuttleworth, founded the Mother Earth News in a rural community east of Cleveland around 1970. A rural lifestyle is not my bag but he founded a great business and inspired a medium-sized social movement.
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Old 11-22-2014, 02:31 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
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Originally Posted by doc1 View Post
Born in '53 so I was only 15 in '68. Anyway I picked and chose what suited me during the late 60s to mid 70s.

Had the long hair, clothing styles alternated between preppish and somewhat hippyish, bell bottom jeans with denim shirts, tie dyed shirts etc.

Also enjoyed smoking quality weed, partying and partook of the abundant, commitment-free sex that was so readily available.

Into Tull, The Doors, Hendrix, Creedence.......

Other than that, I was a capitalist; always worked, liked making money and drove a cool car. Bathed regularly too. None of that "earth mother", "natural is the way to go" crap for me.

I thought all that anti-materialism was more for people who didn't like to work, didn't like being in a competitive environment or were just hypocrites.

Went to the big Earth Day thing in '70. Had fun AND we cleaned up after ourselves.

My draft number was 329.
I was born in 52, and was an only child with cousins who were practically siblings, three years apart. Family was intensely important. I looked at the hippies and really admired them, and agreed with the politics, but couldn't possibly imagine leaving family and mom and home. I did have my own opinions and feelings about things. I remember when Nixon blockaded Hiphong harbor and there were soviet ships in the game, that we were going to Disneyland. There was this wierd sense of two realities existing together. I always loved Disneyland and had fun, but there was this sense that if things go wrong it would be the last real time. I remember lots of anger and the careful way my uncle and dad never spoke about politics like it was a rule. There were wonderful asperations, and great anger and fear, all at the same time. Dad was former carrear navy, my uncle built houses at home during the big war. My uncle liked to go on about the commies. Dad just didn't want more wars. Family gatherings excluded politics.

When I was about to turn 18 I got a letter from the Draft board. I called them and told them I was female and they said to disregard it.

I got really sick after high school and was sick for some seven/eight years. I tried college but couldn't manage a full semester. I don't know what I'd have done, but still wish I could have a do over and see.

I'm pretty sure my age had a lot to do with it, but even with the rather dark way I tend to see things now, the asperations of that time still stick. Even if it probably won't happen, its still good to know how to dream.
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Old 11-22-2014, 02:44 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 601halfdozen0theother View Post
Like Luzianne, I was a kid in the 60s. I grew up in a University town. What a vivid, colorful period! Hippies setting up camps in the park, the stores smelling of patchouli and leather, wild clothing, musicians playing and hippies dancing in the streets. Such fun!

I also remember the conflict between young and old - there was SUCH a big deal about whether a boy's hair was long or short, and about women wearing pants in public. And I had such fear and worry about what my brother's draft number would be. My father, a WWII veteran, was so very angry at my cousin's boyfriend who publicly burned his draft card. And the scariness of watching the TV news about Vietnam and Civil Rights conflicts.

In fact, for me the 60s was exactly that - the vivid colors and sounds and smells of what was happening down the street juxtaposed against the scary, serious events we viewed in black and white on TV.

For me the 60's really were a "show" rather than a "party".

Many of us who hit our 20s in the 70s felt like we were too late to the party, that all the exotic times had just ended and that we really had just "missed out".

BTW, I have a neighbor now who lived in Haight Ashbury in the 1960s and knew Janis Joplin. She's still a very cool person.
This is the essense of the sixties, the dicotomy between the war and death on the six oclock news, and the anger over the war making a second war in families and between people, and the vivid new ideas and the blossoming of alternate ideas which changed but has never gone.

For someone born today, the idea that women were still not considered properly dressed in pants is such an odd idea they don't get it. But if it hadn't been contested then, we'd still be moping around in skirts and answering the phone.

The best thing which came out of the sixties is the idea that its OKAY to be different.
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Old 11-22-2014, 03:58 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
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Originally Posted by Girl View Post
I'm only 45, so I was born in 1969 and didn't experience any of the lives you guys are talking about.

But in high school I became OBSESSED with the 1960s and read books (Ken Kesey, Aldous Huxley, etc.), listened to the music and basically became a bit of a hippie in 1985-87. Then I went to college and was introduced to industrial music and became a goth for 3 years. Then I graduated and was introduced to techno music and became a raver for 7 years before I got married and stopped all of that.

Anyway, in college I was still enamored with the hippie culture and ended up writing my 100-page thesis on the youth culture of the 1960s as part of my Liberal Arts major.

I consider my "show" days to be my years in the rave culture. It was AMAZING. I spent seven years going to clubs 3x a week in the DC/Baltimore area and then traveling the east coast on the weekends to go to raves anywhere from Rhode Island to North Carolina. The early rave days were very reminiscent of what I believe the hippie days to be. Unfortunately, raves now are a far cry from what they were in the early 1990s...
I was a teen during the 60's but a very shy one and pretty much a loner. And very close to my parents. I didn't participate openly, but I didn't like the 'establishment' either. Then I got really sick and lost a chunk of years. When I finally got better it was the late seventies and I did some college and had to get a job. Then the recession in the 80's hit and lost it. Things changed after that and I realized that world of offices and bosses wasn't where I was meant to be.

I ended up married and with kid, but before that happened I rediscovered what I loved of the sixties. Fandom. Science Fiction fandom. Wearing costumes in the hallway, and enjoying the unique room parties. A hotel full of people who look at ideas and things differently. I'd pack for a con with a backpack full of clothes, later a suitcase so it held he costumes, and a sleeping bag since I paid floor prices. I'd skip the panels and stuff over the filk (our version of folk music) and the room parties and keeping a close eye on the hucksters room. I'd check out the art show a couple of times and bid on a few paintings. I loved that world. Going home was a huge letdown. I don't go to them often now but even when I don't know a single person have a blast.

If there was any 'place' I could live it would be there. And one reason is it is anti big society, and has so many similarities to the society out there I was so fascinated with and which remained physically distant.

And yes, there is a Nightbird hall costume. She's supposed to have a sword but that's against con rules since it makes the other hotel guests uncomfortable. But when I go to a con now I have a bed. No more floors....
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Old 11-22-2014, 04:40 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
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Originally Posted by newenglandgirl View Post
Yes, experimenting with religions of different cultures was yet another segment of youth in that era. Yoga and meditation, Buddhism and Eastern thought, grew and actually got a foothold in our culture to this day. Back then it was, in the eyes of the mainstream, really crazy.
The Eastern practices have never dissapeared, and now its not odd to do yoga. (or wear yoga wear when you go shopping...) But it had a great effect on those alternative religions which hid marginally where they would not be branded as 'evil'. This includes the revival of native religions and the push back. But it also has revived the Old religion of paganism. It's got a lot of formats, from 'traditional' norse and other ceremony, to the recreation of basic nature based faith like Wicca, and a far greater acceptance of these as an althernate faith to christianity.

If it wasn't for the sixties, this would be very different.
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Old 11-22-2014, 04:50 AM
 
Location: Southwest France
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Originally Posted by Gandalara View Post
No, they had to disguise themselves to get published.
James Tiptree Jr.
CL Moore
Andre Norton
George Sands.
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Old 11-22-2014, 06:28 AM
 
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Originally Posted by PAhippo View Post
A show is for watching.
Life isn't.
Good distinction. For me the Flower Power/etc. scene was a show.

I was a bit old to wait for that train to arrive in any case. I graduated college in '60 and went to NYC with $50 in my pocket. First few years were rough and stupid (reverse that order), so I was able to enjoy the experience of "life among the lowly" - first a rough Hispanic neighbourhood, then being the only "respectable" guest in a hotel where ageing streetwalkers took their tricks and finally a year and a half in an SRO...mattress almost on the floor, swarming with roaches, toilet in the hall, knew the guy across the hall was dead and not being reclusive when the place started to stink. Thus, Hippie simplicity and earthiness seemed a bit contrived when it finally arrived.

By the mid-Sixties I was adequately salaried, had a job where I travelled and stayed and taught a brief course on college campuses in the East, South and Midwest. I gave myself crash courses in Zen/etc. and Existentialism, so would not be too out of the zeitgeist, taught my classes - "impressively" throwing Alan Watts and Sartre/Camus/Genet around, had bull session with the students in the cafeteria and quite enjoyed it as a show.

Late Sixties were a peace march or two, taking up grass and experimenting with angel dust and psilocybin...but totally apart from the Hippie scene in the East Village, which had come to look like a vaudeville routine, only a cut or two below the neighboring Sammy's Bowery Follies. And living by choice in a great old apartment in one of the worst blocks on the then very shabby and dangerous West 80's, a rundown racially and ethnically mixed neighbourhood in these years.

My own musical preferences since rhythm and blues had emerged from the black subculture and been introduced to white adolescents continue to be for black music...and then some Latino music (LaLupe anyone?) when I moved into the old UWS. As the Flower Power/Hippie scene was overwhelmingly white in population and musical taste, it had little appeal to me even though I was white. Simply too far removed from my personal out-of-the-white-mainstream tastes and my recent gritty life to hold much attraction.

Thus, I seemed to have lived many of the hallmark experiences, but was never part of the tribe....so, for me they were a show.
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Old 11-22-2014, 07:59 AM
 
Location: Anchored in Phoenix
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Originally Posted by nightbird47 View Post
The best thing which came out of the sixties is the idea that its OKAY to be different.
Yup. I feel very different from normal. I'm the oldest employee where I work and everyone but me has kids and is married - I don't want to be married. At my old work place in 2013 I had lots of friends and ate out a lot with them. Because it was cool to be different and no one shunned me for being single. But when I want reassurance that it's okay to be me I return to an old dog-eared copy of Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World."
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Old 11-22-2014, 10:30 AM
 
Location: Tennessee
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I had jobs after high school and through college including summers. I was a card carrying Young Republican when I was 18, belonged to something called the International Club also at college, and did not live at home (or even in the same state) and everyone else was a hippie but since I also worked (not paid) at a campus radio station I didn't feel I missed out on anything. Between 18 and 21 I lived in the place where everything was happening (Washington DC) at the time and got to do exciting things, go to concerts and meet lots of well-known people and diverse people in informal settings. After I quit college (I eventually went back to school after marriage and with a full time job and put myself through college for a degree), I did not return home for 3 years. I had a roommate from India who worked at their embassy and another roommate from England. I think it was the most exciting time of my life but I did not do drugs. I was pretty responsible and self-sufficient but not conscious of it at the time.
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Old 11-22-2014, 10:48 AM
 
Location: SW Florida
14,866 posts, read 12,009,085 times
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Originally Posted by newenglandgirl View Post
I know we're looking here to recall the fun times of the 60s and 70s, but in all fairness to those who served, it wasn't the greatest party of the century for them. They were stuck in h*ll holes while back home the free love movement went on.

As part of the larger picture though, the "fun" times were mixed in with a lot of anti-Vietnam war events and a lot of the music of that time* was against the war and in support of soldiers. Sometimes the greatest parties are in response to atrocities, repression, and fear...a counterbalance to what is seen as a world spinning out of control. Even the flower children stuff can be seen also as a backlash, a revolution against repressive rule and the horrors of war and social injustice...and the angst about the draft (people who feel doomed can take to partying). I think a lot in our generation were stunned and in fear, and turned to drugs and zoning out because we couldn't make sense of our world. We had no real power to really change the world, just our protests, style statements, and music.

*ETA: although a few crazies might have put down returning soldiers, there was a LOT of music sympathetic to soldiers and bringing them home. Peter Paul & Mary, Pete Seeger, and many other notables felt deeply for those in service.

Message in the movement: peace.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbrn9eXEKWk
And they were drafted, so it wasn't even their choice to be there.
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