The 30th Anniversary of the Summer of Love. 1967-1997. San Francisco. Golden Gate Park. Hoping to run into a long-lost friend or two. I smiled when a saw a guy walking around with a framed 5x7 picture showing how he looked back then. Off to a good start. I was early and nothing was happening on the stage yet. I walked to a fence surrounding a stack of speakers blaring recorded hippie music and stood with my back to it to check out the people walking around. A fat teenager with a "Security" T-shirt charged over and told me I couldn't stand there. As I headed toward the shade of a tree, I saw two uniformed cops walk up behind a bearded man sitting on the grass in front of the stage holding a single can of beer in a paper bag. Protecting and Serving, the cops made the guy empty the beer onto the ground. I went the hell home.
The Olympic Torch is being secreted around San Francisco today in an attempt to avoid human-rights protesters. (The L.A. radio announcer just told the S.F. reporter covering the relay that he won't be getting paid for the day if he can't find where the torch is to do his report.) The frustration of us all from having little choice than to buy products made by prisoners and low-paid labor in China, the torch being sent around the world is a rare opportunity for folks to show their true feelings for the world business/political leaders who insist on dealing with such a harsh government. It ain't ONLY about Tibet. The Olympians themselves seem to think that the best way to protest Chinese Government censorship and brutality is to let The Games go on without incident. Hope those athletes watch what they say in their hotel rooms. They'll probably be okay.
Now that I'm legal and have the Internet, I've been searching out children I lost touch with back in the Seventies. Their poor mothers, after all those years, to have the other side of the story show up. Must be frightening.
What is it about religion and sex? It's almost as bad as politics and sex. Here we go again down in Texas, all those little teeny-boppers and the church elders. Like since 1950, the fourteen-thousand isolated instances of alter boys getting nailed by their priests. And that guy a few years ago, David something, who wouldn't allow any of the women in his church to have sex with anyone except him; not even wives with their husbands. Back a few years ago when Jimmy and Jim both got caught and lost their TV ministries, they both tried a second shot, Jimmy cried famously and apologized all over the Penthouse spread of his woman, and Jim told his new TV audience during a standard donation-for-salvation plea that if he and his wife only had a money machine, all their problems would be solved. (Both of these guys had had millions of brilliant followers.) I remember a very pretty very religious girl down in Orange County. ("The OC.") (Cool.) She was spending nights with a friend of mine, and explained to me one time that God understood that she truly loved my friend and He was okay with them sleeping together. I never met a single person who God didn't understand, totally agree with, and fully support.
The honey bees are disappearing. Gorillas are dying off. The polar ice caps are melting much faster than ever predicted. The hole in the ozone is old news, but now large dead areas are being discovered in the oceans. Yet our corporate Presidential Candidates all talk of lowering gas prices, building the economy, and continually ask a spirit in the sky to bless just our little part of the planet. Don't forget to vote.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment