Friday, November 25, 2011

This Is Also Cute....And Hilarious....And Embarrassing

I have a book, published by Reader's Digest, entitled Where were you when? It begins in 1939 and ends in 2005 and describes with pictures, timelines and short descriptive articles important and memorable events or themes from each year or from the era in general. Here's part of the entry from 1967, the year I graduated from high school.
"THE SUMMER OF LOVE

In 1967, the year after Time's "swinging" coinage [Ed: referring to the pop culture movement in London, England and the "British Invasion"] popular youth culture became steeped in the Haight-Ashbury hippie outook during what was dubbed "The Summer of Love." The year began with a "Be-In" (Ed: ROTFLMAO!!) in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, in January, billed as the "Gathering of the Tribes," and continued in June with the first major open-air pop festival, at Monterey, California. Some observers described the gatherings as a diluted, commercialized form of hippiedom for America's middle classes, but they set the tone for the Summer of Love, and in August were copied in Britain, with the "Love-In" in Hyde Park, London,and the three-day "Festival of the Flower Children" [Ed: BWHAHAHAHAHA!) on Lord Bedford's estate at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

The summer's anthems were provided by Scot MCKenzie, with "If You're Going to San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"; Procol Harum, with "Whiter Shade of Pale"; and, of course, the Beatles, with the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the singles "All You Need Is Love" and "Strawberry Fields" - and the hippie theme was then continued into the autumn with the premier in October of the musical Hair off Broadway.

October also saw the year's largest antiwar demonstration: a march on the Pentagon at which organizers and political activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman had promised they would levitate the Pentagon building 300 ft./90 m into the air. The march provided some of the 1960s' most iconic images - of young girls placing flowers in the barrels of soldiers'guns - but did not succeed in lifting the Pentagon or in stopping the war in Vietnam. Flower power, it seemed, had its limits."
I want to apologize to all you Occupy Wall Street nutters. There were nuttier people way back then, being just as stupid - or perhaps stupider - they were dieing of drug overdoses then, too. "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know."

Just remember though. There's a five-sided building in Arlington, Virginia that awaits its levitation. Perhaps you can accomplish something. Lord knows. We didn't. At least we didn't until we "sold out", got dressed in normal clothes, abandoned the communes,  got involved in mainstream culture, got real jobs and gave up childish things. Oh, and some of us "found God".

But the music was great! And if you're wondering "Where have all the flowers gone", now you know.

I was going to include The Bed In, but that didn't happen until 1969. It's all such a big blur.
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PS: I was just looking through sitemeter and discovered that someone from the Pentagon had visited my blog earlier this morning. I kid  you not.  They came from SDA where I'd been commenting on this SDA entry.

That's not the first time the Pentagon has visited either. Next time comment, will ya!

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2 Comments:

Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

A visit from the Pentagon... I would go into hiding. You have a lot of places to hide in in Canada, thank goodness.

November 26, 2011 2:32 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Yes. And who would ever think of looking in my own basement?

I have a secret desire to be a spy. Now if they want to make me an offer about that, hopefully they'll be reading this, too.

November 26, 2011 3:40 pm  

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