Looking Back, An Old Hippy Remembers & Rambles On

Today Emery and I listened to the top 500 most requested hits of the year on our favorite oldies station. I noticed a huge change in the songs picked this year from last year. Last years songs were from before my time. This year there were lots of disco songs, and hippy songs like Spirit in the Sky. I suspect the people who have been requesting songs this year are all about my age since the songs picked were the ones that flooded me with memories and took me back to the things I was doing and the places I went when those songs were popular. Music connects us more than anything to times past. Sure pictures do but songs, wow, they just let you feel what you felt when that song was a hit. For me, I can go back to camping at Harold Parker 30 years ago and smell the campfire, see the radio hanging in a tree and feel the same emotions I felt so long ago when I hear "Long Cool Woman in a Black dress" play on the radio after all these years. Apathy flees from me when I hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing the words "Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming." For a moment while the song is playing, I wonder where all that idealism has gone.
Tonight, Emery and I talked about how so many of our generation has sold out. In the old days we (meaning baby boomers as a generation) wore love beads, talked about our parents as "plastic people" and hated how our fathers worked so much and didn't emotionally connect with us because they were busy making money. We called them "materialistic". And now here we are, bigger houses and bigger cars than they ever imagined. Our love beads replaced by ear pieces to things like lap tops, cell phones, blackberries and the like. Now instead of children missing their fathers like in the song "Cats in the Cradle" kids can now sing a version where no parent is around to toss the ball with them. We didn't learn or we forgot. Guess these kids are going to be way to busy for us at some point in time, maybe that will be nursing home time for us. Yes, I am generalizing here and not everyone has all or even some of these aspects to their lives, but you get what I am saying. Not everyone was a hippy or a rebel with a cause but no one escaped knowing what was going on in our generation.
To be honest, today I would rather see peace symbols on cars bumpers than to see so much anger on the roads.
The term "plastic people" that was used in the late 60's and early 70's, meant superficial, now it could stand for "what's in your wallet" and your amount of debt. You go places and hear yuppies talking loud about all that they have. What have we become ?
Long ago, we wore cotton clothing, ate veggie foods, sang about peace and love. We may still wear cotton clothing as baby boomers, but we like a designer label attached to it. We eat health foods but ones bought in gourmet, over priced stores instead of growing it ourselves or in a communal plot. We don't sing about love and peace anymore. Not sure we sing anymore. Maybe we lost that too.
Our children that were once carried around in slings and back packs were not going to be part of this materialistic world we thought. Wrong....... they are consumers extraordinaire ! We didn't stay non-materialistic long enough to convince our children that things are not what's important. Most college kids are in credit card debt up to their eyeballs. And I am not talking school debt. What they see, they want and what they want they buy. How did that happen? We didn't want that for them. We read Mother Earth News. Had tee shirts that said things like "Save the Whales" on them. We have graduated to matching Capri's and shirts with embroidered flowers that match the trim on the Capri's. Neat and tidy and full of apathy.
We have our hair done, nails done, face lifts, tummy tucks and think of it as necessary.
A couple years ago I was at a real estate investment class and was talking to some of the instructors. Millionaires both. They were talking about getting into politics and I mentioned that wasn't for me. I protested in the early 70's and probably had an FBI file on me. They asked what I belonged to then and I said, just the SDS, (students for a Democratic Society) and they laughed, they had too. Idealisms then that they sold out to. Now money was everything to them. Fancy cars, mansions and the like.
I felt good saying I lived simple, small house, garden, earth shoes on my feet, but I still wanted to invest. What for ? I am not sure.
The music tonight made me think about all the things I once held dear, idealism, hope, a bit of an activist heart, desire to not be a "plastic person" and feeling like I could make the world a better place.
Sure I know that the hippy days had a down side. Fortunately one I avoided. Free love, drugs and that sort of thing was a cop out for facing stuff. Maybe trying to fill a void of some kind. Maybe Zoloft and other meds like that which are so widely prescribed today have taken the place of pot smoking for people our age that still feel that same void from 30 years ago. I don't know. Just guessing. Just thinking out loud. I do know there are exceptions and that idealism is still out there, somewhere. I know we all want peace in the world and would rather love than hate, but just not sure why we have stopped talking about it or why we watch and support so much violence on TV and in movies. Entertainment consists of things like Americas Funniest Home Videos where the biggest laughs come from people getting hurt .

pictures....
psychedelic tights from 1971. I loved them then and love them now. Just don't have anyplace to wear them : )
Me, picking blueberries in the woods, an earth child.
Emery, long hair...bell bottoms, wish they were in the picture, stripped things.

grateful for... the simple things like fresh vegetables from the garden, the sound of my spinning wheel. Pottery, and Peter Max. Earth Shoes and cotton clothing, hand made socks, soap made in my kitchen, incense, memories and music, and most of all, for hope and idealism.