by Chelsea Cain
HEAD
Directed by Bob Rafelson (1968)
Ah, the Monkees. Opportunistic, shallow pre-fab pop stars, or postmodern precursors of a more sophisticated age? It matters not, as the quartet ambles through a series of plotless, psychedelic, self-aware sketches in their groovy big-screen adventure.
THE LAST WALTZ
Directed by Martin Scorsese (1978)
If the curtain didn’t fall on the 1960s with the violence at Altamont, then this farewell concert by The Band could serve as a belated, gentler coda. Rife with guest stars (including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Michael McClure, and Van Morrison) and filmed at San Francisco’s historic Winterland, it’s a timeless document of hippie-tinged musical Americana.
MEDIUM COOL
Directed by Haskell Wexler (1969)
A cynical TV news cameraman (Robert Forster) becomes involved in the story he’s covering in this remarkable docudrama made amid the chaos of Chicago’s streets during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Lefty director Wexler, already under federal scrutiny for his civil rights activism, was questioned by the FBI on suspicion that the production of his film had somehow helped orchestrate the riots.
MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker (1968)
When square TV shows wouldn’t bring counterculture music heroes to the masses, the job fell to motion pictures. Millions of fans caught their first glimpses of Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, and the When square TV shows wouldn’t bring counterculture music heroes to the masses, the job fell to motion pictures. Millions of fans caught their first glimpses of Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, and the Jefferson Airplane in this remarkable concert filmed during the Summer of Love.
THE TRIP
Directed by Roger Corman (1967)
In which a veritable all-star team of male hippie movie stars is assembled. See: Peter Fonda as the uptight ad exec who wants to try LSD, does, and says wow. See: Bruce Dern as the hipster who guides him on his magic carpet ride. See: Dennis Hopper as the dealer. It’s even written by Jack Nicholson!
WOODSTOCK
Michael Wadleigh (1970)
As much a record of the astonishing happening as it is of the music played there, this three-hour (almost four in the “director’s cut”), Oscar-winning documentary has many a memorable moment, from the Port-A-San man to Hendrix’s unforgettable rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Look carefully for fast glimpses of future CEOs.
YELLOW SUBMARINE
Directed by George Dunning (1968)
Groovy animation tells how Captain Fred escapes from Pepperland in his colorful craft after the Blue Meanies take over. Luckily, he bumps into a cartoon version of Ringo Starr, who rounds up the rest of the Beatles and sings the Meanies away.
Essential Hippie Books
BE HERE NOW
By Ram Dass (1971)
Beneath the trippy cover lies the inspirational story of Dr. Richard Alpert and his journey from Harvard academic to bodhisattva—a must-read for the budding psychedelic cosmonaut.
BLUE HIGHWAYS: A JOURNEY INTO AMERICA
By William Least Heat-Moon (1982)
Driving a van named Ghost Dancing along the backroads (blue highways) of America, Heat-Moon’s account of his travels through small, forgotten towns and meetings with offbeat characters is the perfect inspiration to hit the road.
DO IT: SCENARIOS OF THE REVOLUTION
By Jerry Rubin (1970)
Jerry’s activist manifesto will make you forget he ever went corporate.
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
By Aldous Huxley (1954)
Huxley’s vivid account of his mescaline adventures turned on the drug culture (and Jim Morrison).
THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST
By Tom Wolfe (1967)
Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters are immortalized by the coolly detached Wolfe in this nonfiction opus. For another version of some of the same stories, check out Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels.
THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK
Edited by Andrew Lang (original 1892, reprint 1965) Cool fairy tales, trippy illustrations.
THE I-CHING, OR BOOK OF CHANGES
Translated by Richard Wilhem and C. F. Baynes (1967)
“One of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe.”
Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs: How to Really Know Your Husband, Wife, Lover, Child, Boss, Employee, Yourself through Astrology
By Linda Goodman (1968)
It’s all in the title.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
By J. R. R. Tolkien (1955)
“Not all who wander are lost.” If you’ve ever seen that bumper sticker and thought it was from a Grateful Dead song, you were wrong.
THE MISTS OF AVALON
By Marion Zimmer Bradley (1982)
Bradley retold the Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women and launched a thousand Renaissance Fairs. Goddesses? Magic? Velvet capes? What’s not to love? But then, my parents didn’t name me Gwenhwyfar.
THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK
By Mollie Katzen (1977)
Healthy, natural, easy-to-prepare recipes and charming pen-and-ink drawings—this cookbook was a welcome counterculture alternative to The Joy of Cooking.
OUR BODIES, OURSELVES
By the Boston Women’s Health Collective (1969)
Providing healthcare information about women for women, this book empowered women to know their bodies, and liberated them from a still male-dominated medical establishment.
THE POLITICS OF ECSTASY
By Timothy Leary (1968)
Leary’s early psychedelic musings and exploration of human-consciousness issues led some Americans to dub him “the most dangerous man alive.”
THE PORT HURON STATEMENT
By the Students for a Democratic Society (1962)
Passionate, angry, and optimistic, this social and political manifesto captures the rising consciousness of the boomer generation.
THE PROPHET
By Kahlil Gibran (1923)
Gibran’s life view was prescient of the coming counterculture movement, and his book of poetic essays is a hippie philosophy primer.
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
By Ralph Metzner, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, et al. (1964)
This LSD-trip manual, based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is the book that launched a thousand trips.
SIDDHARTHA
By Hermann Hesse (1971)
Buddha was a hippie!
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
By Joan Didion (1968)
Didion established herself as a leading American essayist with this collection examining the dislocation of 1960s society and the breakdown in human communication. The title essay is the best.
SOUL ON ICE
By Eldridge Cleaver (1968)
One of the most important books in the Black Power movement. Hippies in the 1960s were mostly white and mostly pacifist, but they dug the fiery prose.
STEAL THIS BOOK
By Abbie Hoffman (1970)
Abbie dishes the how-to’s of the radical scene, including how to shoplift, grow marijuana, and prepare for a legal defense.
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
By Karma-Glin-Pa and Padma Sambhava, translated by Robert A. F. Thurman (Uma’s dad!) (1994)
This classic scripture of Tibetan Buddhism, traditionally read aloud to the dying, shows death and rebirth as part of a process from which one can attain spiritual liberation. I read this translation to my mom while she was dying. I’m not sure if it helped, but it gave me something to do.
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
By Richard Brautigan (1967)
A young man searches for the perfect trout-fishing stream in this weird and lyrical musing that goes nowhere and everywhere.
TURTLE ISLAND
By Gary Snyder (1974)
Snyder’s poems run the gamu
t from the intensely personal to the vaguely philosophical to the potently political, but they always remain true to the ideals that prompted him to give this volume the name bestowed on the American continent by its native inhabitants.
WALDEN
By Henry David Thoreau (1854)
Thoreau’s meditation on nature and society resonated with the back-to-the-landers who saw the Transcendentalists as their spiritual mothers and fathers.
THE WARREN REPORT
By the Warren Commission (1964)
Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Hippies (and everyone else) wanted to know.
We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against
By Nicholas Von Hoffman (1968)
Von Hoffman’s classic account of 1960s counterculture explores the Haight-Ashbury and the kids who flocked there.
THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
Edited by Stewart Brand (first published in 1968)
The unofficial handbook of the hippie movement. Pre-Internet, it was a great way to get cool hippie stuff. A new catalog comes out, in great hippie style, every four to six years.
ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE
By Robert M. Pirsig (1974)
Subtitled “An Inquiry into Values,” this autobiographical tale of a father and his eleven-year-old son on a motorcycle trip across the continent is about a lot more than fixing a chopper.
Hippie Glossary of Terms
Most hippie vernacular has entered the general lexicon, which means that hippies came up with really excellent slang. Here are a few key expressions.
Bag: A subject of interest, as in “That’s his new bag.”
Babylon: Mainstream society as created by the Capitalist war machine; the “straight” world
Bread: Money
Bummer: A sad state of affairs
Dig: To take pleasure in and/or understand, as in “Can you dig it?” “I can dig it.”
Down with: To accept or approve of, as in, “I am down with saving the whales.”
(The) Dream: The utopian society that hippies hoped to create
Freak: A dyed-in-the-wool hippie (used as a compliment)
Grass: Marijuana. Also, Acapulco red, Aunt Mary, bammy, bhang, broccoli, bud, Buddha, chiba, dank, doob, dope, endo, four twenty, funk, ganja, green, hay, herb, hydro, indo, jay, kif, Marley, Mary Jane, Maui wowie, nug, pakalolo, pot, reefer, shake, shit, shrub, sinsemilla, skunk, smoke, stuff, tea, wacky tobacky, weed
Groove: To enjoy
–head: One who indulges readily in a subject of interest, as in “pothead,” “deadhead,” or “phishhead”
(The) Man: The establishment, or any type of authority figure or institution
Old lady: A girlfriend or wife (This expression must never be used, because it is very irritating.)
Rap: To discuss
Split: To take one’s leave
Square: Someone who is not a hippie
Trip: An unusual experience
Turn on: To please through the introduction of drugs or some other stimulation
Wasted: The feeling of being burned out
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Diana Abu-Jaber, Karen Karbo, Whitney Otto, and Cynthia Whitcomb, all writers of great wit and generosity. You inspire me endlessly. Thanks also to Fred and Laura, Steve Mockus, Lia Miternique, the Noodge, the Pod, and to my dad, Larry Schmidt, whose knowledge of the minutia of composting continues to slay me.
About the Author
Chelsea Cain spent her early childhood on an Iowa hippie commune. She really has milked a goat and made tempeh in her bathtub. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
About the Illustrator
Lia Mitternique is a far-out illustrator who also lives in Portland.
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Chelsea Cain.
Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Lia Miternique.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available.
eISBN 978-1-4521-0356-3
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