Bill LaCroix: On Rainbow Gatherings and the 70s Thing

Monday, July 1, 2013

On Rainbow Gatherings and the 70s Thing

After the 1978 apple picking season I drove my hippy van up to Ione, Washington to a relatively new phenomenum called a barter fair. Kind of a twin to the Rainbow Gatherings that sprang from that same era and demographic. Lots of young folks like myself as well as a fair amount of what we called middle-aged folks at the time (mid thirties). Big party out in a wide open meadow surrounded by mountains, is what I remember, which is a good thing, considering.

The organizers, probably the owners of the land, had set up a few “squat pits” for people to use in place of communing with the surrounding woods, which many people did anyway, and so you had to literally thread through the toilet-paper blossoms if you wanted to take a walk outside of camp. Made the saunters more adventurous, if nothing else.

I of course wanted to do the right thing and when my time drew near I headed for the pit, which as far as I could see from the outside consisted of a makeshift wooden privacy wall with a long co-ed line outside, to which I attached myself and waited as best I could. For twenty minutes I stood in front of a very cute and stoned flower girl in a tie-dyed granny skirt and even though I wanted to think of something witty to say to her, I didn't, because I was single and shy, and she was very cute.

It finally got to be my turn to go “behind the wall” and there I found myself standing on an open-air rough wood platform with two openings in the boards five feet apart. I hadn’t known until this critical moment that it was a “two-squatter” and that if I wanted to do my business in private, which I think most people prefer, I’d better hurry up which, everything being equal, is neither natural nor preferable. Nevertheless, there it was, I had to go, and I fell to in as speedy a fashion as I could, hoping the next person in line was too stoned to move in too quick, which I thought she was.

I was about halfway through when in she came, lifted her skirt, and joined me. This not only didn’t help my flirting skills, it seized me up. I shut down on my appreciation of the scenery. What else could I do? I continued squatting, red-faced, she finished and left with a brush of a tie-dye skirt and a smile, and I was constipated for the next two days. I figured I had been some kind of smitten, but to this day I’m not sure what kind it was, or if I ever recovered from it. I did recover from the constipation after two days of eating one Red Delicious apple from a box I had stashed under the bed of my hippy van every two hours, and this is a cure I would still recommend to alleviate the symptoms of various conditions, such as constipation, stomach pains and precipitous declines in self-confidence associated with Failed Flirting Fatigue (FFF).

Regarding the Rainbow Gathering in the Big Hole this week: I think most young people have experiences that seem incredibly adventurous at the time and that play havoc with their self-esteem and upbringing. I just want to let them know that we all go through that stuff, whether we admit it or not, and that it's generally all right if you keep in mind that the main object is to stay in one piece. We elders should all wish you youngsters the best, and I do.

Have fun, and play safe.

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.