Something that I think both readings, "The Police Band" and "Che's Last Letter", have in common is emotion. "The Police Band" is more about how the band had emotion and created emotion; whereas, "Che's Last Letter" you could feel the emotion that she was creating when asking the youth to help make a change. That also created an emotion as me as a reader. It motivated me and got in interested in what she had to say.
I think "Che's Last Letter" was more effective. She gave a lot of feeling by adding in detail of what her conditions were like, which is a condition no one would want to be put in, then leaving the reader feeling sorry for her. After she asks for the youths help, she then creates and points out the perspective as a youth. She proposes questions that we would have directed toward her. She asks us to put aside any negative feelings and to do what we know is right. The line that struck me as very powerful was, " For a revolution, in order to be a true revolution, must be a world revolution." and I totally agree with that. For there to be a huge change in a society, we need one another and other resources and peoples help and cooperation to make a change and make a difference. I only wish that we could realize this to change what is going on in our society today.

Famous Losers

In life some of us seek to be big move stars that walk down the read carpet, or some seek to be a big time author winning big awards like the Pulitzer Prize. But what makes them so great is the work they do, not really who they are as a person. They could be real losers, they could be druggies, they could be the most normal down to earth person ever; yet, most of us will just never know. Andrew Gordon wrote a piece on how Thomas Pynchon was this great American novelist and then when he finally met him, he realized he's just like a normal person. When Gordon first met Pynchon the first thing he said was, "Hey man, would you like a joint?" Then he pulled out a string of firecrackers and said, "Where can we blow this up at?" Although Gordon doesn't admit it, but I think he was surprised at how careless and free he was. It was like two different parts of the culture of the time were meeting. Gordon was an English major from Berkley and then you have this writer who smokes pot and is just hanging out, meeting not really having anything in common besides their writings.
I think a lot of the time we have to sit back and think that these famous people do have outside lives and they're for the most part normal people like you and me. Its not always just hard work, sometimes they have to relax and smoke a blunt. Maybe Pynchon should have had some type of professionalism about him but at the same time, it could just be the hippie in him. Gordon said that he was inspired by his "epic, wild imagination", and that he was very "profound...complex and allusive", I laughed because its probably all due in part to the pot and LSD.

In the Moment

In "The Rolling Stones-At Play In The Apocalypse", written my Michael Lydon, the first stanza alone made me think. "A cold sun alternated with bright clouds, and 300,000 young Americans stepped into the future (or was it?)...". This statement got me thinking. Everything back in the sixties has made such an impact on life today, but at the point in time do we know were making history? All these concerts, the clothing, the drugs, the music, did we know it was going to be this big era that we all are studying and are influenced by? Probably not. I think its just something to think about. Like will today for some reason one day be history that our great great grand kids can look back on and be like why are they doing that? I think it's cool actually. I mean its obvious that our lifetime will be in history books because of the obvious events that have occurred but little things like clothing and music. We may be in a new rave of music and not even know it.
Another thing most people, as listeners, we don't really think about is how shows are even put together, and how much work it actually takes. Like the reading says, "You need a place, a source of power, a stage, a few bands, spread the word, trust to God, and have the thing." Nowadays that probably isn't so easy. Now we have to worry about permits, legal issues, money, security etc., and we all know that nothing is free anymore. Concerts are now thousands of dollars I'm sure to create. But what is in common is the music. Music, I feel, will always bring people together. Its the one thing that most Americans can have in common with one another and not cause an argument. Music is music. What it means to one person may not mean the same to you or I, but to some stranger out there there is some kind of impact, and they can share that idea/feeling with that someone else.

Images

During this time period, not only was drugs, clothing, sex and drugs important to this psychedelic lifestyle, but art was becoming a true pat of history. When you think hippies art what do you think about? I see bright colorful swirls with blocky lettering, usually stretching across the whole page. Well, that's exactly right. Hippie art has its own specific genre. Sally Tomlinson says that most of the art posters created were similar to posters that were used to promote boxing matches. They were large rectangular posters where the message was pretty much straightforward. Some may say that actual design is ineligible but to the hippies that was their art work. Tomlinson uses "doodling" as a way of describing it and I think there's not better way to describe it. The way we see art today can be interpreted in many different ways. It depends on the person and what they may think or feel from the art. But the hippies had a different approach. Their work was based off of promoting a certain band, or event. Most of the work had cool psychedelic colors swirling around with huge block lettering. Not to much, and not to little was said about the event or band, it was just enough. Like the picture I included above. It says what bands are going to be there, where the concert is and what it is called. It includes some psychedelic work and the funky block lettering.

Honestly, I never really liked those kind of pictures. Maybe cause I wasn't ever really into that "scene" so much, but after this class I can appreciate more of their art work and understand where they were coming from now that I know more about what the hippies were all about. Yeah, drugs and their trips had a lot to do with the creation or appreciation of the art back then, but now it has become an art form that is recognizable just by the certain lettering that is used and certain hippie characteristics that it may include.

Haight-Ashbury

In the beginning of our reading their was a passage that stuck out to me. It is titled, "The Failure of Haight-Ashbury/Love Generation". I for whatever reason was intrigued by this passage. It is full of contradictory statements that all make sense in its own way. "Haight-Ashbury is a "new" reality. Yet it shuns reality." Meaning that these streets are creating a new world inside of a world that no one wants to live because of its realistic constraints of what life should be like.

If anything this passage reminded of me of a street in Philadelphia that is very popular due to all of its diversity and off track version of what life really should be. South Street. I'm sure every Philadelphian has been there at one point of their life or another, but if you haven't you should go and gain an experience like none other. As you walk down South Street you'll see all kinds of people: black, white, hippies, goths, preppies, punks etc., all of which are accepted. The passage says, "Haight-Ashbury is a rebellion from conformity...to conformity." Meaning that it is coming together as a rebellion against what is expected in the outside real life. Which I think is what South Street does. You have all these different kinds of people, all with different lifestyles, different types of views on life and yet, this on street in this big city allows people to act, do and say what they want and there be no constraints on it. But back in the "real world" outside of this area/street, people like this aren't accepted everywhere. Like if you were to have a gothic black guy walk down the street in my hometown, I can guarantee you people would stare and be like, "What the hell is that?" But on South Street that is just expected.

Althought Haight-Ashbury wasn't our modern day South Street, it was similar in that the hippies were conforming to freeness and openness. Anyone could do, say and be what they wanted. "Haight-Ashbury has fallen. Haight-Ashbury is a failure. May we have many more failure like it." Ultimately, I think there is one just like it right in our hometown of Philly. South Street, our own Haight-Ashbury.

Civil RIghts

After reading the assigned pages for this past week I was very inspired by the students at Berkely, in 1969. The protest was title "Battle of Berkely" where nine hundred people had been arrested. The battle was in protest towards University of California repossesing a vacant lot on Berkely's campus. The students did evreything possible to keep their civil rights. Dave Mandel created a song which outlined the whole event.

"The rebels were ousted, the tables banned,
The deans thought they had won their hand...
Then came a sight they never thought they'd see,
A genuine sit-in in the hall of Big C...
Civil Disobedience...an essay come alive...education in action"

The students had sit-ins and stood outside of their campus' building causing a scene and nothing would stop them not even the police. They had a right to stay outside and riot for what was rightfully theirs. This song was created has a nice ring to it as well. The song flows which reflects how things went with the protest. Although there was a lot of arrrests and what not the protest went fairly well.

Edward Abbey documents his story on being a park ranger at a nature preserve in Utah. The one thing that caught my eye in this reading was how he describes the park and the two "dancing" snakes. He says that the April mornings are bright, clear and calm, which contradicts the meaning behind the animals he describes in the story. I just get this vision of a whimsical, peaceful, dusty, early morning land filled with animals just doing and living as they please. He then goes into how hes watching the snakes wind and unwind from each other not knowing what their intentions really were.
I'm not to sure what this has to do with the nature of our course but in a sense the animals are representing the people (the hippies) of that time and they are just living life as if no one else is watching. The imagery that Abbey portrays signifies what we see in pictures from the '60's. Bright blue skies, a bright sun, calming winds all of which are peaceful and in term of counter culture, signify peace itself.