Category: American Affairs

LEGACY FROM THE ’60S AND ’70S

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

One of the lingering questions asks, “Just what happened to the hippies in the end? Where did they all go?”

It’s a complex question, of course, which in turn leads to a range of possible answers.

One of them, though, would say that hippies never actually went away, not entirely.

Yes, many donned business suits or the like and were submerged into the broader economy. I’m hoping that as retirement hits, many of them will return to their idealistic and communal roots, especially in the face of the financial realities of living on Social Security, shrinking pensions, and meager investments.

Many others, though, despite their more conventional attire these days, have focused on a particular strand of the hippie legacy.

Among them:

  • Peace and nonviolence witness.
  • Racial and sexual equality.
  • Environmental and “green” concerns.
  • Back-to-the-earth living, including organic farming, natural foods, and vegan.
  • Alternative economics, including sustainability, co-ops, and nonprofits.
  • Music and the arts, often including folk traditions.
  • Healthy exercise, from hiking and camping to bicycling and cross-country skiing to contradancing and yoga.
  • Educational reform, including charter schools and homeschooling.
  • Spirituality, including meditation and chanting or Spirit-infused Christianity.
  • Boho fashion.

You can add to the list. While I touch on many of these as they were unfolding in my Hippie Trails novels, there’s no way I could capture everything, much less discuss the current incarnations.  For example, every time we see a Prius, just think: it’s what the Bug was back then.

I’m curious, though, about which ways you find the hippie experience echoing in your own life. What issues and themes are you continuing? And which ones do you miss? I bet you’re still wearing those blue jeans, too … most likely without the bib.

Me? It starts with being Quaker. And stretches through much of my work as a poet and author. Or even my focus when I was still in the newsroon.

BRAKE FOR MOOSE, TOO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

On a May night five years ago, while driving home from the office, I did something I’d never before done: braked to keep from hitting an owl. Actually, I began braking because of a gray flutter in the foliage on the right side of the road – a deer, perhaps, or moose, because of the shoulder-height of the movement and color. Instead, the owl flew out over the road and continued for a hundred feet or more up Route 155 as I followed, before turning to perch in a tree, where I caught a glimpse of its shape.

Several weeks earlier, in the same stretch of roadway, I saw a smaller owl (or so I’d say) dart across the road, above the pavement by a dozen feet.

Earlier that week, I had two glorious commutes via the Mountain Route. The first, clear sky – brilliant green pointillism set off by sunlight and blue. Two days later, drizzle and fog – quite moody, especially with a matching live broadcast performance of Ravel by the Formosa Quartet, one that looked mostly, as it were, into the soft shadows rather than the usual sunlight. (Renoir, more than Monet or Serrat.)

How easily such glories can be lost in the memory. How wonderful, to revisit them.

WHEN LEADERSHIP GOES WRONG

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Leadership is a fascinating subject, not just the source of many intriguing biographies but also corporate case studies and political histories and military campaigns and religious movements and … well, feel free to add to the list. We’ve all been in places where we’ve worked with admirable leaders, as well as places where we’ve suffered – perhaps even leaving in despair.

Outstanding leadership is, of course, a rare and wonderful occurrence. Mediocre is, by definition, the norm. And then there’s the kind that worms itself into position and sets about doing destruction.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting (again) on the last one. Not just inept, but destructive. I can work around one, but the other one makes for an impossible situation. Think Moby Dick.

It doesn’t always start off as badly as I’ve portrayed. Sometimes the individual begins gangbusters, doing everything right, before something goes seriously wrong. The person may simply burn out or lose interest. Conditions may change, so that the fit no longer works to the organization’s advantage. (Corporate organizational consultants have elaborate charts of the qualities needed for a startup versus a maturing company, or one shifting from private ownership to a public stock offering or the reverse.) Sometimes the person is fine for when everything’s going smoothly but has no ability to adjust for necessary – and often painful – restructuring, especially when layoffs and shutdowns are involved. Or there may be a buried demon that is let loose somewhere along the way, perhaps triggered by a divorce or death or temptations such as greed or power-hunger or sheer arrogance or flawed leadership techniques such as bullying and abuse or deep-seated insecurity or an untamed ego or, well, again the list goes on. Feel free to add or amplify. This, too, is a source for many great works of literature, operas, plays, and movies. The dark side comes forth.

My big question is whether an organization reacts in time to save itself, and what steps can be taken before it’s too late.

One of the first signs of trouble is the departure of key personnel, often lower-level individuals on the front line – or at least a failure to hear their complaints without retaliation. Sometimes it’s flight at some of the highest levels. After all, their jobs are at stake.

Usually, however, the awareness comes later.

The New York City Opera, for instance, appointed a new CEO whose brief tenure was disastrous. His flamboyant, extravagant vision for the company sent it straight for the cliffs, and the trustees’ decision to terminate his reign ultimately came too late to prevent the train wreck. This was a company, we should note, founded by visionary leadership that continued through several administrations. RIP.

I’m thinking, too, of situations where one of the top leaders engages in clandestine conflict – often backstage, one-on-one building alliances – that’s ego-based to the detriment of the organization. Commonly, the player lacks an appreciation for the culture and values of the organization and seek to turn it toward his or her own goals, including self-power enhancement, regardless of the trustees’ projections. Removing such a toxic manager, however necessary, produces ill feelings and misunderstanding all around, especially when the others are prevented by legal constraints from speaking openly of their underlying reasons.

Sometimes I think it’s a miracle organizations get anything done, top to bottom or, more accurately, bottom to top. There’s far more to leadership than barking orders, for sure, or undue frugality. I’d put mutual understanding high on my list of leadership qualities.

How about others?

~*~

I looked at something similar – good bosses and bad – back on June 28, 2013. To take a look, just click here.

HIPPIE, HIPSTER, OR WHAT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 12 Comments

An identity debate is raging in some corners over who is or isn’t a hippie versus a hipster. It goes back in part, I suppose, to the defining line between hippie and beatnik, even though I could point to many points where they blur together.

For me, the bigger question invokes the world of those individuals who don’t feel at home in the mainstream but rather gravitate in a bohemian direction. Yes, there have always been those who go out of their way to look the part of the movement … and those who just are. With hippies versus hipsters, I might draw a line in a person’s stance when it comes to non-violence and equality and the like, but there were always degrees when it came down to specific instances. These days, in my reexamination of the hippie movement, I keep arguing that hippies came – and still come – in many varieties.

That’s part of the reason I find myself smiling when I hear the theme for the local arts and technology charter school’s prom: Victorian Steampunk.

Sounds cool to me. And like a lot of fun. Besides, it really is a sweet group.

Sure beats ours back in the mid ’60s.

The hippie era, I might add, had a thing for Victorian style anyway. Even if we didn’t put clocks in our stovepipe hats.

 

SPIRITUAL ENCOUNTERS FROM THE HIPPIE ERA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Nowhere do we see a bigger before-and-after contrast of the hippie impact than when looking at mainstream religion in America.

The idealized smiling family of father and sons in suits and ties and mother and daughters in their hats, dresses, and heels – maybe even with gloves – was once a common image with the church and steeple in the background. But that has become a rarity, and even at funerals and weddings the dress is likely to be casual. Intact families are a minority – weekends are often custody matters – and going to church or temple is a low priority.

Before we blame it all on hippies, we need to look at other influences from recent decades, including the elimination of blue laws, and the expansion of weekend job demands and children’s soccer leagues and the like.

Still, I see a few glimmers where the hunger many hippies felt for a spiritual connection has taken hold.

First is the practice of meditation, which is no longer considered exotic. Even health providers are urging people to turn to it daily, maybe not as a religious pursuit but at least for letting go of some of the daily stress.

Second, yoga studios are everywhere. It may not be with the strong spiritual teaching I feel is essential, but it is another way of opening ourselves to inner awareness and peace.

Third is a recognition of the feminine side of the holy, including the Jewish and Christian traditions. For that matter, think of all the women pastors and rabbis now found across the continent. Others will point to Native American, Wiccan, and other teachings with feminine components that now proliferate.

Fourth is a sense that faith is not an obligation, to be performed as a social requirement, but rather a relationship that includes hands-on, sensory experience. As the axiom went, “If it feels good, do it,” extends to religion this way.

As a fifth facet, I’ll point to outdoors encounters with their Transcendentalist streak. God, as you’ll be reminded, can be felt keenly when you’re close to nature.

Look closely and you can see the hippie influence working. There’s a desire for community and caring, on one hand. And the mega-churches with their rock-concert emotions, on the other, as well as the praise songs with their repetitions function more like Hindu chanting (kirtan) than the motets and hymns of Christian tradition.

But there are also examples of shoots gone astray. I keep thinking of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple and its cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, especially.

As we kept watch in the ashram, the warning was this: “You’re on a false trip.” No matter how exciting it might have felt at the moment, there was always the danger of ego-based excitement rather than a deepening surrender to the Holy One.

For me, then, the most crucial part of the legacy is in having a circle of others committed to the practice, to encourage one another and keep each of us on course, as best we can. This form of discipleship is rather communal, actually – and far from what I saw growing up in the pastor-and-sheep model.

So what are your spiritual encounters these days? And how’s the “inner hippie” responding?

CULTURE SHOCK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 12 Comments

It had been ages since I’d gone to the cinema multiplex – you know, the kind in the vast parking lot beside the mall. Usually, when we go out for a movie, it’s an art house in Concord or a volunteer-run series at the Music Hall in downtown Portsmouth.

But Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, was showing, and we figured we’d better make it there fast. No telling how quickly anything that quirky, formalistic, and savvy would be playing. (As we juggled our schedules, we realized it would have to be Monday night, overriding another activity on my itinerary – as we discovered, if you’re going to hit the big-box of showrooms, that’s the night to do it. We practically had the rectangular cavern to ourselves.)

I’ll leave it to others to lavish praise on the witty plotting that continually turned in unpredictable yet seemingly inevitable developments; the impressive casting and stylized acting; the precise cinematography; or the marvelous interweaving of actual sites in Germany (the hotel interior was actually the atrium of a defunct department store), miniature models of varied scales, and special effects to create a sense of fantastic and delightful artificiality. Anderson, as his fans know, is a moviemaking genius with a voice and vision all his own. (For one engaging detailed look at the roots of the story, click here.)

For me, though, the outing also invoked a series of culture shocks. Now that I’m “retired,” income’s tight, I’ll admit. I’m spending much less than I did before, and gasoline’s toward the top of my out-of-pocket budget. So the current ticket price (go ahead and laugh, you debonair rounders, when I tell you it was $11 apiece for three) made me gasp silently. (I know a good Greek restaurant where we could have dined out for that.) (I’m I really turning into this?)

From my end, it’s hard to take the very interior and decor of consumer society reflected in these big-chain outlets. It all feels plastic, cake-frosted, impermanent, unnatural. No one would want to linger in the vast lobby (what’s the point, anyway?), and no matter how plush, the showing rooms are – well, showing room sounds like something you’d find in a funeral home, which may be a good parallel, except that in much of the country, the mortuaries are usually in some amazing Victorian mansions. Nothing cookie-cutter about them, unlike these concealed warrens. None of this matches what I consider a theater or concert hall or even a house of worship, the kinds of places I prefer to assemble with others.

The third shock came in viewing the trailers and commercials. I’m still offended to be bombarded with big-screen ads after paying what I consider to be inflated ticket prices, after all, but to be hit twice with a promotion for a new computer game was especially egregious, especially with its pseudo-documentary interviews with its “creators,” a handful of pretentious nerds claiming social value for violent nihilism. I’m sorry, their world vision leads nowhere but destruction.

Actually, it was the amplified violence repeated in the trailers as well that most aggravates me. What in the American psyche so fosters terrorism of this scale? What justifies the reveling in gore for so many (and at such a price, even before we get to the price on our psyche)? Here’s the road that deserves a sermon of hellfire and brimstone, indeed. Wake up, folks, will you?

No wonder I prefer intimate, small-scale, gentle, playful, European or indie productions! They, in contrast, have soul and reality.

Anderson, I must confess, goes well beyond the small-scale criterion, but he earns the right to do so. And he’s generous to those who contribute to the effort, from the visual artists to the payroll accountants. One of the things that kept going through my mind as we were watching, actually, was an awareness of the lavish investment he was expending in the process and the question of whether he’d ever make it back. Well, maybe it wasn’t any greater than those of the futuristic trailers we’d watched beforehand, but still … Hollywood and Las Vegas have more in common than I’d like.

Maybe their biggest gamble is in making works that demand to be seen on the big screens rather than on our laptops or TVs via Netflix.

If you were a moviemaker or investor, what would you do? Or, as a film buff, what are you doing now?

SOUNDS FROM THE HIPPIE ERA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 16 Comments

For many, as we’ve already noted, the hippie experience revolved around its music. Just think of Woodstock and the many ways it was the explosion that spread the movement across America and the globe.

Each of us likely has a musician or band we most identify with the era. Maybe it’s tracing the Beatles in their evolution to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and beyond, including the individual paths after the breakup, or the Rolling Stones or, of course, the Grateful Dead.

I think, too, of Crosby, Stills, and Nash whenever I turn to the jam sessions depicted in my Hippie Drum novel.

Personally, it’s Sly and the Family Stone, Jethro Tull, and the Incredible String Band who most embody the hippie sound in my ear. Maybe with Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, and Leo Kotke or Leon Redbone thrown in. Whatever happened to those folks around me who introduced these musicians, anyway?

Whether you were there or came along much later, there are probably a few favorites of your own. Were they at Woodstock? Did anyone else even know of them? What memories do they stir up? Please fire away in the comments section here!

I’m hoping we got that list of top musicians started yesterday. But there’s more than a list to consider. Get busy. Fire away. And we’ll listen.

WHAT KIND OF HIPPIE WERE YOU? OR ARE YOU TODAY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 15 Comments

Maybe it was a New York Times Op-Ed piece at the time that pointed out six or more levels of maturity or psychological development in the adult population, and then saw hippies as falling into three of them. One may have been second from the bottom, that is, just going along for the ride, while the other two were closer to the top, probably reflecting the appeal the movement had for many college students and graduates and/or social activists (think antiwar/anti-draft, for starters). I found it interesting there was a gap in the middle.

I suspect this is one of the reasons it’s difficult to define “hippie” clearly – we covered a wide spectrum of individuals and motivations. Just listen to the argument today over “hip,” “hipster,” and “hippie” for something similar. These days, I’m leaning more toward something along the lines of the “boho” term that would embrace beatnik and hippie as continuations of a stream of counterculture, but that’s still in embryo as far as my thinking.

What I am curious about today is how we’ve grown and matured along the way. On one hand, Robert Bly’s Iron John took aim at the “soft male,” the sensitive hippie guy, who now needed to gain some inner strength and responsibility. 

On another, I recall reading the singles ads back when I was searching and coming across more than one self-proclaimed mid-40s “flower child” who was still clueless and passive, and my reacting, “It’s time to grow up,” even as I intuitively backed away. And that was two decades ago.

But it does seem to me there’s a wide stream of individuals continuing in that Bohemian mode. In my case, I’m still a poet and writer who’s moved into the radical Christian tradition called Quaker. And I have a beard, not that it’s necessary.

As for the rest of you, ‘fess up. The comments section is open!

GLIMPSED FROM THE FREEWAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

When I grew up in the heavily farmed Midwest, a beaver dam or lodge was a rarity, an awe-inspiring emblem of wilderness.

But if you pay attention while driving the freeways around here – including those near Boston – you’ll catch a glimpse of a beaver lodge and then recognize the surrounding pond, frequently soon followed by another.

The sight reminds me of a wonderful documentary I once watched on public television. The program followed the life of a beaver colony through an entire year, and then, at the very end of the hour, the camera pulled back from the dam and lodge to reveal a busy limited access highway at the edge of the pond.

It’s enough to make me appreciate both kinds of engineering.

This beaver lodge appears to sit securely in remote wilderness ...
This beaver lodge appears to sit securely in remote wilderness …
... until you turn around to see it's built right at the side of a busy freeway.
… until you turn around to see it’s built right at the side of a busy freeway.
Further back in the pond is the large lodge that first invited me to pull over to the side of the road.
Further back in the pond is the large lodge that first invited me to pull over to the side of the road.

 

WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO VIETNAM ENGAGEMENT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Oh, if John Lennon had only penned this one! Just imagine, what if there had been no Vietnam engagement?

What if John Kennedy had not been assassinated and had been free to curtail or even dismantle the CIA?

What if the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower had warned of just a few years earlier had not been called into high gear for yet another round of (highly profitable) business? Would it have been brought under control and reduced greatly, with all of the investment directed elsewhere?

What if the Red-baiting bluff had been called and we’d instead seen Vietnam as a civil war rather than a Communist intrusion into the “free world”?

There would have been no lingering black cloud over America like the one that continues to fester. Even without the antiwar movement, I suspect, the nation would have been bitterly divided by the fiasco that ensued in Southeast Asia.

Would our economy have been unencumbered to grow the way Japan’s did at the time we were saddled with the costs of fighting or the accompanying steep inflation? Or the costs we’re continuing to pay in debt interest and veterans’ benefits?

And, oh yes, maybe there would have been no Hippie Trails novels, either.

Just imagine. And then add a comment on your vision. Music optional.