Two Cheers For The Hippies: Part Two by Dave Jaffe.
The hippies produced new things to get their views out. So-called 'underground papers' written by hippies surfaced all over the United States and Canada. Singers like the Beatles and Bob Dylan were already popular when the hippies appeared. Then in the mid-1960's, new groups like The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, Mock Duck, The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas And The Papas and Big Brother And The Holding Company popped up to sing and create new music for this new demographic.
Some of the mainstream media launched attacks on hippies. They headlines and front paged stories on the danger of L.S.D. and also the dirt that hippies lived in. L.S.D. was a dangerous drug. "I never saw anybody get better using L.S.D.," said Tom Clark, a British-born immigrant to Canada in the mid-1960's. "Yet I sure saw some people's lives get worse." Yet at the same time that some papers were demonizing L.S.D. users, over 20,000 Canadians were dying every year from smoking cigarettes. Another 6,000 to 10,000 were facing early death by drinking alcohol.
While some Canadian papers talked about the dirt that hippies lived in, they said nothing about the terrible living conditions of First Nations people. Hypocrisy ran rampant when some Canadians talked about hippies.
Books on the hippies rolled out of the publishing houses. Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" became a best seller. Pierre Berton's "The Smug Minority" and Nicholas Von Hoffman's "We Are The Children Our Parents Warned Us Against' were read by many thousands of people.
It was in some ways a magical moment. A consumer driven world was being slowly undercut by a group of youngsters who didn't want to join in the rat race. Yet all of this soon ended. Hard core progressives had never liked the hippies. "I had no time for the hippies," said the late Sandy Cameron who was a Vancouver-based activist. Yet police and governments were a far more threat. Police arrested dope smoking hippies and threw many of them into prison after bringing these young people before tough judges. Police often harassed sellers of underground papers and charged them with selling obscene material.
"I would spend sometimes a whole day in court rooms," the publisher of Vancouver-based "The Georgia Straight" Dan McLeod said recalling days when he first started publishing the paper.
Tuesday 27 November 2018
Friday 23 November 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old man by Dave Jaffe. Part One of 'Two Chhers For The Hippies.
Two Cheers For The Hippies' by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
In 1967, journalist Jack Newfield wrote a story on the hippies that appeared in 'The Nation' magazine. "Two cheers for the hippies" wrote Newfield, who was a left leaning journalist. Back then he was a regular writer for the alternative New York based paper 'The Village Voice'.
Newfield liked the lifestyle of the hippies. He was glad that these mostly young people had cast off the trappings of the middle class. Yet he couldn't endorse their contempt for political issues. Back in 1967 in the United States, African Americans struggled for social justice. Young American men were being drafted into the U.S. armed forces and then shipped off to fight, kill and die in Vietnam.
An American anti-war movement was urging young American men to defy the draft. "Women should say yes to men who say no," said folksinger Joan Baez. The hippies rarely joined political demos. Tens of thousands of young hippies dropped out of suburbia - at least for a time. They swarmed into places like San Francisco's Haight Ashberry district, Yorkville in Toronto, New York City's East Village and the Kitsilano area of Vancouver. Here they crashed or lived in what they called "pads". They smoked marijuana, and took L.S.D. or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, which they soon called "acid". They let their hair grow long and dressed in colourful clothes. They scorned the working majority that they called "straights".
"Tune in, turn on and drop out," said one of the chief advocates of dropping out and taking L.S.D., namely Timothy Leary. Jerry Rubin back then, was a young uptight left leaning politico. Rubin was a post graduate student at the university of California in Berkeley. Berkeley sat right across the San Francisco bay from Haight Ashberry. "In the midsixties," Rubin recalled, "came the emergence of the hippies, dropping out of school, getting high on grass and acid, communicating with God and creating a new lifestyle."
Rubin scorned liberals like Jack Newfield but the hippies impressed him. He joined them at their grand gatherings called 'Be Ins". Rubin then moved to New York City to start a new revolutionary group called "yippies". Yippes fused the hippie life style with revolutionary politics.
In 1967, journalist Jack Newfield wrote a story on the hippies that appeared in 'The Nation' magazine. "Two cheers for the hippies" wrote Newfield, who was a left leaning journalist. Back then he was a regular writer for the alternative New York based paper 'The Village Voice'.
Newfield liked the lifestyle of the hippies. He was glad that these mostly young people had cast off the trappings of the middle class. Yet he couldn't endorse their contempt for political issues. Back in 1967 in the United States, African Americans struggled for social justice. Young American men were being drafted into the U.S. armed forces and then shipped off to fight, kill and die in Vietnam.
An American anti-war movement was urging young American men to defy the draft. "Women should say yes to men who say no," said folksinger Joan Baez. The hippies rarely joined political demos. Tens of thousands of young hippies dropped out of suburbia - at least for a time. They swarmed into places like San Francisco's Haight Ashberry district, Yorkville in Toronto, New York City's East Village and the Kitsilano area of Vancouver. Here they crashed or lived in what they called "pads". They smoked marijuana, and took L.S.D. or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, which they soon called "acid". They let their hair grow long and dressed in colourful clothes. They scorned the working majority that they called "straights".
"Tune in, turn on and drop out," said one of the chief advocates of dropping out and taking L.S.D., namely Timothy Leary. Jerry Rubin back then, was a young uptight left leaning politico. Rubin was a post graduate student at the university of California in Berkeley. Berkeley sat right across the San Francisco bay from Haight Ashberry. "In the midsixties," Rubin recalled, "came the emergence of the hippies, dropping out of school, getting high on grass and acid, communicating with God and creating a new lifestyle."
Rubin scorned liberals like Jack Newfield but the hippies impressed him. He joined them at their grand gatherings called 'Be Ins". Rubin then moved to New York City to start a new revolutionary group called "yippies". Yippes fused the hippie life style with revolutionary politics.
Saturday 10 November 2018
Ends and Odds: the Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. What Women Said To Me.. Part Two.
What Women Said to Me by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.
My blog that you're reading also angered some women and they let me know it. "Stay away from me," one woman in her late 50's told me one day the street not far from where I live. This woman had read one of my blog sentries and it outraged her. She told me that I was anti-American and "full of hate and anger." I said nothing back to her except to tell her that I had no interest in talking to her ever again.
I put these outbursts by women down to the feminist movement. Now let me make two points about what and why these women said what they did. Most of what they said about me was true. I am an eccentric or "weird" if you want to use that word, I often copy or "appropriate" other people's work as fine art aficianados often say about duplicating other people's art products. At other times I have been pompous and overbearing.
Also the feminist movement is still around and that's good. It has liberated millions of women around the world and opened to them opportunities that never were there before say, 1975. Yet at the same time many women see the new power of women as an opportunity,as they used to say, "To let it all hang out." They now feel no restraints in saying what they don't like about men's actions.
"Women are sugar and spice and everything nice," some people used to say in the 1950's. This stereotype along with a whole lot of other stereotypes about women is now buried in the garbage cans of history. This is a definite step forward. Yet now as an old man I stay away from arguing with any woman. I've taken enough insults in my life. I don't wish for any more of them.
My treatment of women in my youth has come back to haunt me, and that I believe is only fair.
My blog that you're reading also angered some women and they let me know it. "Stay away from me," one woman in her late 50's told me one day the street not far from where I live. This woman had read one of my blog sentries and it outraged her. She told me that I was anti-American and "full of hate and anger." I said nothing back to her except to tell her that I had no interest in talking to her ever again.
I put these outbursts by women down to the feminist movement. Now let me make two points about what and why these women said what they did. Most of what they said about me was true. I am an eccentric or "weird" if you want to use that word, I often copy or "appropriate" other people's work as fine art aficianados often say about duplicating other people's art products. At other times I have been pompous and overbearing.
Also the feminist movement is still around and that's good. It has liberated millions of women around the world and opened to them opportunities that never were there before say, 1975. Yet at the same time many women see the new power of women as an opportunity,as they used to say, "To let it all hang out." They now feel no restraints in saying what they don't like about men's actions.
"Women are sugar and spice and everything nice," some people used to say in the 1950's. This stereotype along with a whole lot of other stereotypes about women is now buried in the garbage cans of history. This is a definite step forward. Yet now as an old man I stay away from arguing with any woman. I've taken enough insults in my life. I don't wish for any more of them.
My treatment of women in my youth has come back to haunt me, and that I believe is only fair.
Friday 9 November 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of an Old Man by Dave Jaffe. What Women said To Me . Part One
What Women Said To Me by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
Once upon a time I was an abuser. In fact from my mid teens to my early 30's, I abused women. I never raped, abducted, stalked or incested women. Two or three times I touched and kissed women when I shouldn't have.
Still, no woman then or now was or is any danger from me. Yet I did say some horrible things to women. Then I went into therapy and tried to gag my abusive mouth. And for the most part I did succeed. Still, as the old saying goes, "What goes around comes around."
In the early 1970's the second wave of feminism surfaced. I remember when 25,000 women walked out into the streets of New York City in the summer of 1970 to demand equality. I thought that this was a great event which did move me. At first I supported this movement totally.
"Feminism is a great thing," I told quite a few people.
Yet the I ran into some young feminists who were extremely abusive. I just responded to them the way the treated to me. I was abusive as they were. "You were crazy back then," one of my co-workers in the early 1970's told me years later. He was right. Back then I was a short, quasi-psychotic very muscular man who was both sad and angry and potentially violent.
Then in 1975 I started years of therapy. I emerged from therapy as a much thinner, quieter person but full of anxiety. Now I met women who may have seen me as a potential verbal punching bag. They said horrible maybe true things to my face and I didn't argue back.
"Mister," one visual artist said, "all you do is copy. You don't have an original bone in your body." Another woman, a powerful art bureaucrat didn't like me at all. And she let me know it. "You are one of the most pompous and derivative artists I've met," she said.
Outside the art world I met other women who insulted me. "You are weird," a neighbor of mine in a housing co-op said. "You are the weirdest person I've ever met." Her view of me, she told me, was held by most people in the co-op. She was probably right about me. I'm an eccentric and always have been.
In the religious world women also took verbal pot shots at me. One woman in her late 40's erupted in a fury when I put down the late American evangelist Billy Graham. "How dare you insult Billy Graham," she just about screamed at me. "This man was my idol when I was young. I listened to his sermons and loved them."
She went on for about ten minutes praising Graham and trashing me. I just smiled all the time as her rant unfolded. A few months later I left the worship house where this woman unloaded her anger on me and never went back. Her outburst played some part in me leaving that religious place.
Once upon a time I was an abuser. In fact from my mid teens to my early 30's, I abused women. I never raped, abducted, stalked or incested women. Two or three times I touched and kissed women when I shouldn't have.
Still, no woman then or now was or is any danger from me. Yet I did say some horrible things to women. Then I went into therapy and tried to gag my abusive mouth. And for the most part I did succeed. Still, as the old saying goes, "What goes around comes around."
In the early 1970's the second wave of feminism surfaced. I remember when 25,000 women walked out into the streets of New York City in the summer of 1970 to demand equality. I thought that this was a great event which did move me. At first I supported this movement totally.
"Feminism is a great thing," I told quite a few people.
Yet the I ran into some young feminists who were extremely abusive. I just responded to them the way the treated to me. I was abusive as they were. "You were crazy back then," one of my co-workers in the early 1970's told me years later. He was right. Back then I was a short, quasi-psychotic very muscular man who was both sad and angry and potentially violent.
Then in 1975 I started years of therapy. I emerged from therapy as a much thinner, quieter person but full of anxiety. Now I met women who may have seen me as a potential verbal punching bag. They said horrible maybe true things to my face and I didn't argue back.
"Mister," one visual artist said, "all you do is copy. You don't have an original bone in your body." Another woman, a powerful art bureaucrat didn't like me at all. And she let me know it. "You are one of the most pompous and derivative artists I've met," she said.
Outside the art world I met other women who insulted me. "You are weird," a neighbor of mine in a housing co-op said. "You are the weirdest person I've ever met." Her view of me, she told me, was held by most people in the co-op. She was probably right about me. I'm an eccentric and always have been.
In the religious world women also took verbal pot shots at me. One woman in her late 40's erupted in a fury when I put down the late American evangelist Billy Graham. "How dare you insult Billy Graham," she just about screamed at me. "This man was my idol when I was young. I listened to his sermons and loved them."
She went on for about ten minutes praising Graham and trashing me. I just smiled all the time as her rant unfolded. A few months later I left the worship house where this woman unloaded her anger on me and never went back. Her outburst played some part in me leaving that religious place.
Saturday 3 November 2018
Ends and Odds: The Problems of Men by Dave Jaffe. Part Two
The Problems of Men. Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Here's other reasons why men are dying so quickly and far more often than women.
Once upon a time I wanted to write a book called 'Why Men Climb Everest and Women Don't'. Yet times changed and to-day some women do climb Everest. Still, far more men risk their lives doing dangerous things than women do. Every year several men die in skiing accidents by skiing in out-of-bounds areas for instance.
In many countries women volunteer for the armed forces. Yet most armies anywhere are chockfull of men, not women. Men are also far more likely to work at dangerous jobs. They drive trucks, build homes, drill oil wells, dangle dangerously from sky high cranes and glide over cities in helicopters. These are acts that kill many men every year. Of course women nowadays do these things too. Yet far more men take up these tasks than women.
Men are also far more likely to use opioids than women. So they made up most of the 4,000 opioid users who died in Canada in 2017. "The majority of opioid users are men," one B.C. health care worker said. "That's true in Vancouver and in other places too."
We must save men from premature death, deadly diseases and criminal activity. I'm no expert so I don't know how to carry out such a task. Yet one thing I know: Saving men is just as important as saving women. All people's lives matter.
Here's other reasons why men are dying so quickly and far more often than women.
Once upon a time I wanted to write a book called 'Why Men Climb Everest and Women Don't'. Yet times changed and to-day some women do climb Everest. Still, far more men risk their lives doing dangerous things than women do. Every year several men die in skiing accidents by skiing in out-of-bounds areas for instance.
In many countries women volunteer for the armed forces. Yet most armies anywhere are chockfull of men, not women. Men are also far more likely to work at dangerous jobs. They drive trucks, build homes, drill oil wells, dangle dangerously from sky high cranes and glide over cities in helicopters. These are acts that kill many men every year. Of course women nowadays do these things too. Yet far more men take up these tasks than women.
Men are also far more likely to use opioids than women. So they made up most of the 4,000 opioid users who died in Canada in 2017. "The majority of opioid users are men," one B.C. health care worker said. "That's true in Vancouver and in other places too."
We must save men from premature death, deadly diseases and criminal activity. I'm no expert so I don't know how to carry out such a task. Yet one thing I know: Saving men is just as important as saving women. All people's lives matter.
Friday 2 November 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter One of "The Problems Of Men.
The Problems of Men by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
I sometimes worry about men and the problems we face. Yet let's be clear here. I'm not going to launch into anti-feminist rant. In the last 50 years or so, women have pushed themselves into the public conversation. Many women have become lawyers, doctors, ministers of the church, bus drivers, carpenters and top class athletes. And all of this is good.
I favour #MeToo and #Time'sUp. Yet sometimes men and our fate worry me.
Men for one thing die at least six to seven years before Canadian women do. Men are far more likely to be killed by other men than women are. In 2015 over 600 Canadians were killed mostly by men. 150 victims of these homicides were women. Yet over 450 were men. Men aren't only three times more likely to be killed than women. They're also far more likely to 'be' killers. Close to 90 per cent of all violent crimes are done by men.
Most crimes period are done by men. Not only that. Men are far more likely than women to die in car crashes, suffer from physical and mental diseases and kill themselves far more often than women. "Women try to kill themselves more often than men," a mental health worker tells me. "Yet it's mostly men who do away with themselves. And they don't make any mistakes getting the job done."
Men are also far more reckless than women wherever they are - off the job or on it. "Women get it," a big construction foreman tells me. "They don't have to be told to take precautions on the job. They always look out for themselves. Men are a totally different story."
Women may complain about being constantly looked at by men. Yet being under someone's constant gaze has some pluses. Because women from a very early age realize that men are looking at them, they take better care of themselves. In the community centre I go to, the aerobics classes are chockfull of women. You can't find too many men sweating and straining in these crowded places. They're ususally playing pool or bridge. As a result they die as I've said, at a much younger age than men.
I sometimes worry about men and the problems we face. Yet let's be clear here. I'm not going to launch into anti-feminist rant. In the last 50 years or so, women have pushed themselves into the public conversation. Many women have become lawyers, doctors, ministers of the church, bus drivers, carpenters and top class athletes. And all of this is good.
I favour #MeToo and #Time'sUp. Yet sometimes men and our fate worry me.
Men for one thing die at least six to seven years before Canadian women do. Men are far more likely to be killed by other men than women are. In 2015 over 600 Canadians were killed mostly by men. 150 victims of these homicides were women. Yet over 450 were men. Men aren't only three times more likely to be killed than women. They're also far more likely to 'be' killers. Close to 90 per cent of all violent crimes are done by men.
Most crimes period are done by men. Not only that. Men are far more likely than women to die in car crashes, suffer from physical and mental diseases and kill themselves far more often than women. "Women try to kill themselves more often than men," a mental health worker tells me. "Yet it's mostly men who do away with themselves. And they don't make any mistakes getting the job done."
Men are also far more reckless than women wherever they are - off the job or on it. "Women get it," a big construction foreman tells me. "They don't have to be told to take precautions on the job. They always look out for themselves. Men are a totally different story."
Women may complain about being constantly looked at by men. Yet being under someone's constant gaze has some pluses. Because women from a very early age realize that men are looking at them, they take better care of themselves. In the community centre I go to, the aerobics classes are chockfull of women. You can't find too many men sweating and straining in these crowded places. They're ususally playing pool or bridge. As a result they die as I've said, at a much younger age than men.
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