cannabisnews.com: Spirit of the '60s Lives On Through Eulogy!





Spirit of the '60s Lives On Through Eulogy!
Posted by FoM on July 21, 1999 at 16:40:38 PT
Column by Peter King
Source: Fresno Bee
This week, sadly and for obvious reasons, the Kennedy funeral procession returned to American television screens - in particular, the still powerful image of little John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket as it rolled by.
I was a Fresno third-grader the first time I saw this signature moment of the '60s, live, on a black-and-white television. Then, as now, I wondered if the 3-year-old boy knew what it was all about, this idea of death, of his father never coming home. Earlier this month, in Berkeley, an echo of the Free Speech Movement had been receiving heavy media play. A lockout at KPFA, the alternative radio station with roots deep in the lively turmoil of the '60s, had brought out waves of street demonstrators - "the true graybeards of the '60s and '70s," as the San Francisco Chronicle described them. "We want mediation, not facilitation," Larry Bensky, a displaced on-air personality, identified by the Chronicle as "the God of KPFA," thundered to the protesters, "and that doesn't mean sitting around a table, holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya.' " My childhood memories of Berkeley's contributions to the 1960s are not as vivid as those of the Kennedy assassination. In fact, sometimes in Fresno it seemed as though the '60s were something happening somewhere else, on the other side of the Altamont Pass. I do recall, however, my older brother getting caught once by my folks with a copy of the Berkeley Barb. The results were not pleasant. Also this week, the Apollo moon landing has been everywhere, with public television specials and the newspaper recollections of various participants, from Neil Armstrong on down. Again, I remember that July night 30 years ago. What I remember most is standing in the back yard and gazing through the Valley sky, as if the "fire on the moon," as Mailer called it, could be seen with a teen-ager's naked eye. It could not. Add to this list of ongoing '60s echoes the capture last month of Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Kathleen Ann Soliah (yes, the SLA was of the '70s, but much of what is attributed to the '60s actually took place in the next decade; it's part of the phenomenon) And the ongoing political knee-jerkery over medicinal marijuana. And the recent controversies in Orange County involving South Vietnamese refugees. And the beginning of a presidential campaign in which, it seems, the question of what candidates did, or did not do, in the Vietnam War once more will be on the table. And the pattern becomes clear: The '60s are not dead. They are with us still, casting unshakeable shadows across life and public discourse in this country, defining in many ways the national debate. And with California being "America only more so" - Stegner's phrase - and also the sound set for many moments known collectively as the '60s, the undying decade seems especially alive in this state now. A few years ago, upon the death of Jerry Garcia, I attempted to compile a list of all the times the '60s were said to have died: At Altamont Pass, with the Hells Angels raising lethal hell at a Rolling Stones concert; with the Manson murders in the Los Feliz hills; with Jim Morrison in the bathtub in Paris; on the embassy rooftop in Saigon, as the last American helicopter lifted off; with the fiery assault on the SLA hideout in South Los Angeles; and on and on. It turned out to be quite a long list. Why this almost comic effort to keep declaring the '60s dead? Certainly not much ink and air time is wasted marking when, say, the '80s died. And, more to the point, why do these dirges never seem to take? Why does this time known as the '60s keep coming back, lingering on? One possible answer rests not with the '60s themselves, but with what has followed. Spike Lee's latest movie, "Summer of Sam," aside, there seems little interest in reviving the '70s. Obtaining gobs of money was the theme of the easily forgotten '80s; obtaining even bigger gobs of money seems to be that of the present decade. This is, in fact, a time of great, yawning normalcy. A more straightforward explanation is that the '60s mattered - in many ways, on many levels. They were, as a friend who lived in the thick of all things '60s likes to say, no doubt with some overstatement, "the last great time." Big stuff happened, some of it ugly, some of it wonderful. Basic ideas - everything from the presumption of a national goodness to the confines of earthly gravity - were challenged. To revisit the Berkeley radio protester, it wasn't just "holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya.' " Peter H. King's column appears regularly in The Bee.Write him in care of:The Fresno Bee,1626 E St.,Fresno 93786;call him at 441-6353;or e-mail him at pking fresnobee.com.http://www.fresnobee.com/generic/story/0,1691,92498,00.html
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