The Sixties

"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
-- Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"

 

The sixties is not the garden. Obviously, since that quote came from the sixties...

 

I really wish that this was the sixties now, it seems so cool, cos it was a whole generation of change. Plus I love the music

 

Every generation is a generation of change.

 

Yes, you're probably right. But the things that get changed, change. With some generations it's hairstyles, with others it's basic mindset. It also depends on how it gets reported by the media.

 

We've lived through the greatest revolution since the printing press or the industrial revolution, the internet in 15 years has completely changed how the world works. Not to mention weed in about one month is going to be legal in California, that's something people in the 60's, hell people 10 years ago couldn't imagine happening.

 

I think you're dreaming, but I guess we'll see.

 

Poll from 3 days ago had prop 8 support at 52% for compared to 41% against among likely voters.

 

"Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now,
Cartwheels into car wheels into town.
You say hey there, take your time it won't be long now,
Til you drag your heels and slow your circles down.

"And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on a carousel of time.
We can't go back, we can only look behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round in the circle game."
-- Buffy Saint Marie

 

I believe that's Joni Mitchell.

 

I stand corrected! (I like Joni's work, and in fact Joni, 1969 edition, makes it into my fantasies every now and then. As does Buffy.)

 

Hehe, I also stand corrected cause this was apparently written with the Woodstock festival in mind. Ah well, although that may be the climax of the sixties for many people I still can't interpretate these lyrics to be about the 60's to be honest. It feels more like poetry about getting back to something abstract like a feeling or state of mind while referering to the garden of Eden.

 

Of course, in the sixties (I was born in '47) we weren't saying 'this is the sixties' or anything. There was an awareness that the counterculture that developed at the time had never happened before. There was also in some people, including those facing being drafted into a senseless war, a sense of impending doom.

One monument to the 1960's was Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail, the largest jail in the world then and now, completed in 1963. My draft board arranged for me to visit there after I told them to go to hell. MCJ (together with Twin Towers across the street) is still the largest jail in the world, and one of the worst in the U.S., according to recent ACLU reports. (A spokesman for the LA County Sheriff says that Sheriff deputies working in MCJ never use unnecessary force such as beatings. Numerous reports to the ACLU to the contrary by inmates are no doubt part of the inmates' imaginations.)

So we had this duality -- free love, psychedelics and experiments with communal living on the one hand, and the nightmare of America's war and prisons and beatings in the streets on the other. The possibility that we could be in the near future engaged in midnight firefights with crazed Asians in a rice paddy, or fighting off would-be black rapists in "D" block of MCJ or Lompoc or Terminal Island or Stafford federal prisons, or simply get our heads caved in by SFPD pigs led in some cases to a firmer commitment to the counterculture. (Others lost interest and dropped back in to the mainstream, to be sure.)

Not that I would ever call a pig a pig...

 

Help! Help! Leonard, cancel your recording session! There's someone on Hip Forums named Rudenoodle (who can't spell) who doesn't like you!

 

I remember the friendly "peace" sign as we passed perfect strangers. I remember parties with ... Total strangers, I remember stick on flowers for cars and anything else you could put them on, I remember incense and head shops, I remember a communal longing for peace and no one looked to fight. I remember songs like "groovin" and "feelin groovy", remember Mary Quant makeup, The British invasion and I remember drugs, sex and rock and roll... LOL.
I love that I lived that.

 

It is enlightening to keep in mind that for the vast majority of middle America, the '60s were boring as fuck.

ZW

 

I don't know, this basically sums up what I remember/still see and I was born in the late 80's.

 

Yeah haha, I also thought that just seemed like the good memories from anyone's youth who know how to live.

 

In the Sixties, major sports stars in America were still accessible to the average sports fan. The girls had hair and a healthy amount of body fat to hit those curves. Popular music was in full stride (to include Country & Western), and prime time television was fun. Black chicks had hit the Girl Watching scene and Flip Wilson wreaked loads of laughter with Geraldine.
Fast food at McDonald's was tasty (McDonald's is your kind of place, clap, clap!) and you could hear your song on the radio walking down the block.
Cars had personalities and the idea of space travel generated excitement.
And don't forget all that fun we had at the drive-in.

- JKHolman

 

I wasn't there, but my Dad says the sixties came in two parts.i The first half was pretty much like the 50s. The second half, with the Civil Rights laws, the War in Vietnam, the hippies, free love, antiwar protests, etc., was the revolution most people remember.