Tag: Hippie

NOT EXACTLY A BOOM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

I’ve never really liked the “baby boomer” description. Besides, I think there’s a major barrier between the early experiences of those born before ’47 or ’48, and those after. Around ’48, my wave, was when TV sets were present from the very beginning of our exposure to the world. We can’t remember ever not having one at least somewhere in the neighborhood. (Suddenly, I remember being three or four and having the Sullivan brothers show up to watch “Howdy Doody” with me. They didn’t yet have a tube of their own.)

Every year as our class advanced, our new round of teachers was baffled. All they knew was we were “different” from the previous ones. So to some extent, the TV influence feeds into the hippie outbreak. We were, in effect, wired differently from our seniors. Still are, for that matter.

But the other big shortcoming in the boomer classification is the way it ignores the huge fissure within our generation between those who supported the Vietnam Conflict and those of us who opposed it. That’s something that’s never fully healed, and it’s certainly crippled our ability to come together to advance the ideals some of us, at least, so passionately embraced. I suspect there are many politicians and corporate executives – the dreaded Establishment, that is – who actively worked to keep the wound festering.

So here I am, calling for a renewed vision of our legacy. That’s been one of the promptings of the novels in my series Hippie Trails. You’re welcome to come along on the trip.

 

 

WHICH SIDE OF THE REVOLUTION?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

In drawing on the hippie era, I realize how many different strands there were to the movement. Mine happened to lead into a yoga ashram, and though we were drug-free and celibate, we were also at the crossroads of a lot of the hippie action.

All of that’s reflected in my Hippie Trails novels.

As I ponder the era, I also realize DL’s journey in those pages could just as easily turned toward underground violence, had he joined one of the cells of bombers targeting military research operations in frustration, and that version of the story probably would have had commercial publishing cachet. But to me, it would have been dishonest.

More meaningful to my vision is the comment by Mari (River Mama 5) to an earlier posting here:

Amazing how many different views there are. … Hippies to me were quite different. To me, it gave birth to great changes in our society. … I am quite thankful for … the back to the land movement and the Calvary Chapels churches that came to exist during this time. I came to know Jesus Christ in one of them.

They also pioneered living a simpler life … showing compassion to others. Taking care of this gift that is our planet. The “hippies” in America, were great artisans. As a weaver, quilter, and knitter, I look back at this time and find myself inspired by the way creativity roamed free among this way of living.

This is the side I wish to nourish and celebrate. And thank you, Mari and all the others, for sharing.

LIGHTING THE FUSE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s tune in, turn on, and take action in this tale of campus intrigue. Little does a small band in a remote college town realize its opposition to small-ante bureaucracy goes straight to the state capital. And then Washington and the Mekong Delta are another matter as the hippie movement hits tranquil Daffodil. Nothing will remain quite the same.

As the headline said:

BOTCHED DRUG BUST BACKFIRES.

When narcotics agents made an early morning knock-down-the-doors raid on the twelfth-floor of one of the high-rise dormitory towers, they turned up nothing – and were surrounded by irate residents before they could frame anyone, either.

“If you think the slaying of innocent students at Jackson State University was merely a racial atrocity,” Lakasha proclaimed, “you’re not seeing the big picture. It’s about an attack on civil rights – freedoms that belong to all of us. You don’t have to live in a big city to live in ghetto housing. Every student in Daffodil lives in a ghetto. Where I come from, we have a word for high-rise housing like these big dorms – the Projects. And the pigs who come charging into the Projects act just like those who busted in on the twelfth floor the other night. Never mind whether they find anything or not. Look, the university’s demanding that the students pay for the busted doors and busted furniture and busted walls. That’s why they call it a bust in the first place. Wake up, America! Demand the names of the ‘unnamed informants,’ the ones who were so wrong about the presence of illicit substances in those rooms. Wake up, I say! Mississippi’s closer to Daffodil than you think!”

~*~

To learn more about my novel, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

Daffodil-jnana

A LITERARY CREDO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I read – and write – not to escape the world but rather to more fully engage it. So literature for me hardly falls into the Entertainment category, even when it’s entertaining.

Likewise, my goal in the written word is to perceive some basic or essential connection with new clarity, understanding, and compassion.

This makes a world of difference, page by page. Maybe I’m just looking for holy scripture, even of a secular sort. Or at least the Holy One along with the mundane.

Often, my approach to writing and other fine arts resembles the essence of a dream – one foot in the present, the other in the past. Or, in another way, one foot in concrete reality, the other in fantasy of some sort, such as surrealism, as a way to engage more than I’d otherwise apprehend.

ONE LIBRARIAN’S TAKE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Perhaps you’ve heard someone tell another, “You should write a book about that,” relating to some personal experience they think would become a bestseller.

Neither of them, however, actually reads books, even if they expect others to do so.

Sometimes one of these individuals actually does crank out the manuscript and even self-publishes it (not that self-publishing is intrinsically wrong, mind you – just that one needs to be aware of the perils that route takes, whether it’s in the traditional bound paper editions or in the newer digital ebooks).

A neighbor came across one of these paper versions a few months back and decided to ask a librarian acquaintance for her reaction. After reading a page or two (often that’s all it takes), she sniffed: “This reads like somebody who doesn’t read books.”

How telling. How telling, indeed, even before we get to the swollen ego.

 

JUST A ROLLING STONE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Lately, thanks in part to a great yard-sale find, I’ve been revisiting a lot of Bob Dylan and realizing how many phrases that pass through my head originate in his lyrics. Or at least the ones that also have a musical line. I came to him in late ’62 or early ’63 and was a loyal fan until he went electrified and left the activist and folk scenes. Count me among the contingent that felt betrayed.

OK, I’ve come to recognize and even admire a lot of significant material he wrote in the years since. The man could turn a phrase, for certain, even when he was drawing heavily from others.

The line, “Like a Rolling Stone,” had me wondering about its relationship to the naming of the band and the rock magazine, all three products of the ’60s. Did the song prompt the other two?

Turns out the band was formed in ’62; the song, ’65; and the magazine, then a tabloid newspaper, November 9, ’67. But, in another twist, the band took its name from Muddy Waters’ 1950 “Rollin’ Stone.”

As for the popular phrase, “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” the line points to John Heywood’s 1546 translation of the Roman-era Pubilius Syrus. So it’s been rolling around for some time.

~*~

Also from the ’60s was my discovery of the common Pennsylvania road sign, “Beware of Rolling Rock,” along with the brew. I suppose looking at the connection between those two would be like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or even why the chicken crossed the road before or after.

 

NOTHING NOSTALGIC ABOUT IT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

One thing I strive to avoid in my Hippie Trails series of novels in a sense of nostalgia. Admittedly, the music, especially, can bring back groovy feelings. (The close reader will notice how little of it I touch on directly, but rather I try to look at other facets of the experience.) And, yes, it is easy to get wistful with some of the memories – Woodstock, for example, while conveniently overlooking all of the physical discomfort, or for some of the lost social life and friendships – but there are good reasons we can’t and don’t go back. Our youth, obviously, has turned to aging, and our freedom turned to responsibilities, many of them ones we’ve chosen.

We need to emphasize that much was not happy. There was desperation, in fact.

The period and the movement were far from perfect, but we also had glimpses – epiphanies, for some – and their influence is far from completed.

If we wholesale deny the dreams and prophetic directions we experienced in that youthful outburst, we cut ourselves off from our higher nature – and both we and our largely society are impoverished as a consequence.

As I look at the array of problems facing America and the world today, I sense that the more serious currents under the surface of the hippie outbreak may finally provide some much needed direction, if we can be honest with ourselves and our history.

That’s definitely not nostalgia, no matter the anthems and hymns in the music of the era.

~*~

To learn more about my novels, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

BREAKING THE STEREOTYPES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She never did drugs, and she married a soldier. She was a faithful mother and wife. She doesn’t even know the smell of marijuana, and she talks to her legislators rather than standing in a demonstration.

But in my book, she’s still a hippie. There’s no question where she falls on the granola-heads to fundamentalist spectrum.

I’d give you my reasons she’s a hippie, as far as I’m concerned. But I bet you know others who are something like her. So I’d like to hear some of the qualities you perceived that help us break the stereotypes, at least when thinking of hippie.

A WORLD QUITE ALIEN TO MY OWN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

As we watched the movie (let’s withhold the title as being irrelevant to my point), I was struck that these were not characters I would – or could – ever draft. Even if I’d managed to conjure up the range of members of the extremely dysfunctional family, they wouldn’t be believable, arising as they do from a world quite alien to mine. (Not that my family didn’t have its, uh, dysfunctions.)

It’s an awareness I’m having with increasing frequency – or at least maybe it’s just a heightened recognition. It involves not just family dynamics, either, but extends to a perception of romantic attractions or destructive people in the workplace or political office and beyond.

In the case of this particular movie, each character was appalling in a distinctive way and played to perfection by a top-line cast, which only added to my admiration of the scriptwriter’s achievement, one author to another.

Could it be I’m simply becoming more and more aware of how wide and varied our world really is?

 

CONTINUING SHADOWS OF THE HIPPIE EXPERIENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Look at a lot of the bikers or some of today’s teens and you can see they’re carrying some of the hippie legacy. The long hair, especially, and the desire to be as free as Gypsies. But something there doesn’t quite fit, either.

Too much military, for the bikers – the peace vibe ain’t there.

As for the teens, I don’t see the playful side that accompanied the late ’60s and early ’70s, along with all the desperation. Even the drug use seems different, maybe purely numbing rather than mind-expanding.

I’ve already mentioned some of the hippie streams I see continuing. But I haven’t said much about the darker side. I’m open for some suggestions and comments here. Feel free to weigh in. Anybody still picking up hitchhikers, for starters?