Sonoma County residents share their personal stories from the Summer of Love

Here's a good article from the PD with memories of the Summer of Love from locals, including Alexandra Jacopetti Hart (who some of us know).
Barry


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Sonoma County residents share their personal stories from the Summer of Love
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 7, 2017

Did we really change the world?
By Alexandra Jacopetti Hart

Did the ’60s-’70s counterculture change the world? If so, how? I’m finding the influences are broader than anyone could have been imagined in what the world saw as the flowering of the Bay Area counterculture, the year the runaways became flower children, the now-named Summer of Love.

But it had been brewing. James Baldwin wrote that 1960 was the “Break-out of Freedom” moment. He was tracking Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, which was intricately intertwined with the anti-Vietnam War actions, and the peace movement (make love not war), and the beginnings of the counterculture as I experienced it. Another thread was the Beat Generation, out of which the hippies slowly emerged. Slow, that is, until it all started oozing out from behind the closed doors of small enclaves of people who previously didn’t know each other existed. The marker for that was the Trips Festival in San Francisco in January of 1966. I was there; I helped create it.

Earlier, gatherings to demonstrate against the war, peace groups, people going to the south to join MLK and the Civil Rights activities and some of them being murdered were all public, but which of these can signal the beginning? Why not go with just saying the Sixties?

At this time, the public word was that marijuana was dangerous, illegal, and would lead to stronger stuff. But no, it turned out we were being lied to. Having just come out of the constricting, boring 1950s, and having had parents who taught me about “straight and crooked thinking,” I recognized the crooked thinking that lying reveals. What else were the establishment folks concealing, even from themselves? I asked myself. That sentiment later expressed itself as “Don’t trust anyone over 30” — one of our youthful errors.

And then there was LSD. My first encounter with it was late in 1962 or ’63. The veils really dropped on any question taken into an LSD journey, if one was careful of “set and setting” as Alpert and Leary suggested. I found it very simple to cull the mainstream cultural download from what I believed in my core being. And that was revolutionary.

Later on, maybe a decade later, I found that the usefulness of LSD had paled, mainly because my primary questions about existence had been satisfactorily answered. I never used it for purposes other than inner discovery, and with a sense of the sacred. The shadow side of the psychedelic drug discoveries was, of course, the proliferation of other drugs that provided an escape and diminution of pain rather than illumination, resulting in the worldwide problem with addictive opiates and related substances.

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What a beautiful picture of her!

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Posted in reply to the post by Barry:

Here's a good article from the PD with memories of the Summer of Love from locals, including Alexandra Jacopetti Hart (who some of us know).
Barry

Did we really change the world?

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I attended the Summer of Love exhibit at the de Young Museum. I was a participant in the summer of love and I knew Roland Jacopetti and his then wife Alexandra well. I was present at many of the concerts and events cataloged in the exhibit. I began my counter-culture career in the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam Day Committee protests.

The exhibit brought up a lot of sadness for me, because we spoke back then about a post-industrial society. Savio encouraged us to throw ourselves on the wheels of the corporate machine. We believed we could stop the Vietnam war with our protests. We were wrong. We did not create a counter-culture. All of our efforts were co-opted and commodified by corporate America. Our music was taken. Our art was taken. Everything was turned to products. Government agents infiltrated the Free Speech Movement. Later the government agents spread cocaine throughout the Black communities of L.A. and Oakland.

I felt bittersweet about the Summer of Love exhibit. The museum made money off of our efforts to change society. The world and America are dying because we failed to transform the minds of citizens and of government. Participating was joyous. Believing in a worthy goal was uplifting. And then the heavy weight of Clark Kerr and the Regents of U.C. and Governor Ronald Reagan crushed us. The irresistible force of corporatism won and continues to win and the oceans, air, land, health of the nation, the women, the poor, and the middle class are all beaten down, all contaminated, all destroyed. For a brief moment we had hope. I have not experienced hope for America for one moment during the ensuing 50 years. I wonder what it is like to be a young person today and to never have experienced hope for America.

Dear Star Man and other despairing survivors of the '60s,

I also lived through that time and sometimes wonder what happened to all that positive energy. But if life has taught me one thing, it's that what I desire may not always arrive at the time and in the way I want it to. I have great hopes for the young ones coming up. They are not rabid consumers, they work and live together, they are passionate about the environment, they are not easily deceived by politicians, etc. It ain't over until it's over, and it ain't over yet.
It all remains to be seen, even though we may not live to see it.

So let us be Wise Elders and offer the lessons of our life experiences wherever and whenever we can. The key is evolving consciousness and the young ones are already far ahead of where I was when I was their age. I still have hope.

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Posted in reply to the post by Star Man:

...We believed we could stop the Vietnam war with our protests. We were wrong. We did not create a counter-culture. All of our efforts were co-opted and commodified by corporate America. Our music was taken. Our art was taken. Everything was turned to products. Government agents infiltrated the Free Speech Movement. ...

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Hello, Wisewomn,

When the Native People realized their way of life was utterly destroyed, when they realized that the Contagion of greed, self-absorption, property, and violence brought by Europeans (they called it Wetiko) was corrupting the environment and slaughtering their people, they created Ghost Dance. Europeans promoted a false belief that Ghost Dance was a rebellion that taught that bullets would pass right through the dancers. I believe that Ghost Dance was a requiem, a ritual celebrating the destruction of the beauty of the Native Cultures (Lakota, Ojibway, Cree, and so any others).

The world needs a Ghost Dance now. I totally hear you saying Wisewomn that young people are not rabid consumers and are passionate about the environment and are not easily deceived by politicians. Those are wonderful qualities. However, the forces facing young people today are so much larger and more dire and ineluctable.

The planet is undergoing the Sixth Extinction. Events and attitudes and behaviors set in motion centuries ago have produced global warming and climate change and drought and pollution or air, water, and land, and the extinction will not be stopped because government and corporations lack the will and motivation to stop it. I do not envy the young people. I do not envy my grandchildren. They will have to try and survive the Sixth Extinction. It is unlikely that they will.

Here are the "lessons and life experiences" I have learned: Ghost Dance for America. Ghost Dance for the extinction of a possible beautiful way of life. Ghost Dance for the disappearance of pristine oceans, for the extinction of thousands of species, for the loss of bees, for the loss of genetically pure crops, for the loss of breathable air and uncontaminated soil. Ghost Dance for yourselves, for as surely as the Native People and their way of life disappeared, so will you.

Star Man

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Posted in reply to the post by wisewomn:

Dear Star Man and other despairing survivors of the '60s,
I also lived through that time and sometimes wonder what happened to all that positive energy. But if life has taught me one thing, it's that what I desire may not always arrive at the time and in the way I want it to. I have great hopes for the young ones coming up. They are not rabid consumers, they work and live together, they are passionate about the environment, they are not easily deceived by politicians, etc. It ain't over until it's over, and it ain't over yet....

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Well, okay, Star Man et al, be that way. Your choice.

Implicit in every ending is a beginning. We can choose to dance in the dark, can't we? I believe that every speck of light is never wasted, and that our work now is to hold onto the light, regardless of what appears to be happening. There is a Buddhist saying that goes something like, "Though the world burst into flames, still I will cook my rice and wash my bowl." We can control our own little corner of the world. Death, literal or metaphorical, can be a passage to enlightenment and birth is always messy.

And if this version of humanity does disappear, something else will come along, most likely better adapted to live harmoniously on this jewel we call Earth than we have been. The Earth itself will abide. For me that in itself is cause for celebration.

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Posted in reply to the post by wisewomn:

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And if this version of humanity does disappear, something else will come along, most likely better adapted to live harmoniously on this jewel we call Earth than we have been. The Earth itself will abide. For me that in itself is cause for celebration.

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Wisewomn, And what will replace the pristine waters?
What will replace the songs sung to newborn babies?
What will replace the sweatlodges and the Sufi dances and the vision quests?
What will replace the clean, cool air up on Panther Meadows?
What will replace the ethereal blue of glacier ice?
And the smiles of babies looking into their mothers' faces?
What pray tell?

For a couple of centuries it's been smog and cars and coal ash and then Wal-Marts and Safeways and skyscrapers and strip malls and freeways. Now the prospect that we could be Mars or Venus looms. The Sixth Extinction says life down to the Porifera (the sponges) will die off. Let us hope that some really intelligent, loving, kind, compassionate sponges give rise to the next creatures to evolve. Let us hope that the sponges can "hold onto the light." I know what my choice would be, but I am powerless to effect my choice.

Star Man

Worthy questions all, Star Man, but I can't answer them and I don't believe that it is my (or your) place to know the answers. They are for a different time from ours.

What's ours is all around, and you have to admit that a goodly part of it has been a helluva party, no? :-)
As we used to say,"Keep on truckin'!"

BTW, have you been keeping up with Jean Houston?
Also, turn off the news for a week--a good mental cleanse.

Yes, Starman. Check out galactic messenger.net.
- Del Rainer

correction: Check galactic messenger.com
- Del