Prayer is intricately related
to one's personal growth.


Sun 12.11.11


Checking out Avedon's book on the sixties at Barnes & Nobles, a mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream by my side. The book starts with a picture of Abbie Hoffman, his middle finger extended to us, the word FUCK emblazoned on his forehead. An impudent imp caught midair with legs akimbo. And the book's last picture is a close up of Abbie, his nose broken and swollen, his face battered, with a deep sadness in his eyes.

In the early nineties when I was artist in residence at the University of Maine/Orono, I was involved with students in their classes, participating in their writing courses. A number of things struck me returning to school after my own experience in the late sixties, early seventies. Matriarchy, the word that back then connoted love, motherhood, nurturance, was now a dirty word to be flung at power mad women. In the classes, women had retreated to the fifties when they rarely spoke up. I lived in a dorm building in a faculty apartment on the ground floor. Saddam Hussein was making trouble on the other side of the globe and we were going to show him who's boss. An unsettling time. I remember a young hitchhiker of eligible age who would undoubtedly be drafted, speaking to me of his concerns about this "Mother of all Wars" as Saddam had named it. (It is now 2011 and we're not leaving Iraq any time soon. Obama is of course lying about pulling out all troops at end of year. He's already got plans to finesse his deal.)

In my building, a student group went about affixing yellow ribbons to all the windows in support of the war and our soldiers, some students were against the war and refused the yellow ribbons and a ruckus ensued, on a board left in the alcove one was invited to write comments about the war, there were supporting pictures and newspaper clippings, all of the comments were pro war, I put in my two cents against another slaughter and when I looked the next day, it had been erased. What in the world happened to these kids that they thought going to war in Iraq was rendering a noble service to their country?

Timothy Leary and Gordon Liddy came to debate one night. Liddy was the man who arrested Leary on a drug charge at his psychedelic farm. The men shared the bond of having been imprisoned for a number of years because of their political beliefs. After the debate the floor was opened to questions: one young man, not far from me, asked why they had lost faith, had stopped protesting injustice, Leary who was troubled by the question, responded by throwing the question back, Why aren't you?

Why did that crazy time end? Figure after figure in Avedon's book from reporters to activists, artists, pacifists, war protesters, playwrights, dancers, nuns, priests all speak about attaining some kind of truth, some justice, many see themselves in a collective revolutionary struggle to achieve a just and beneficent society that protects the rights of all people. Yes, we really did think about trying to build a better world. It ended because our government (actually, the money people who really run this country) would not allow it to continue. Where would all this protesting, marching and civil disobedience lead? People had to be stopped, and they were. Some were assassinated, others thrown in prison or destroyed. A lot of people were on the lam, including Liddy and Leary.

In my hometown, the sixties brought much needed money and programs from the federal government, which were placed in the hands of our true community leaders, not the politicians. Meetings in which real money was being discussed were peopled with folks in sweat shirts and jeans, no suits. It was an awakening. Gee, the government takes these people seriously!

The sole purpose of government is to "get something" from them. 99% or 1%, occupiers or dominators, all look to get something from the government. Otherwise, we can all go out and buy a gun to take care of ourselves.

The most perfunctory look at government leads one to conclude that it is beyond hope and quite madly out of control. But that's irrelevant, what counts is one's own sense of rightness. Quite a few people were willing to risk their lives for what they believed in the sixties.

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Current favorite this past month has been Occupy Gracie