Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Gloria Baikauskas <gcb49@flash.net>]

Not all of us lived in Haight-Ashbury, or in California.  I was going to college at the time.  The rent on the commune wasn't free.  We had to pay the rent with jobs.  We had to eat because we didn't get free handouts of food.  We did, however, feed those who didn't have food when it came up. 

 

PBS makes it sound like it only all happened in San Francisco.  It didn't....and it may have died out there and turned into a disaster of humankind....but that didn't happen that way everywhere. 

 

It was a mindset......that connectedness.  The idea that we should do no harm to others, nor to the world we lived in. 

 

I have grown up a lot since then....but much of what I learned then has stayed with me.  Especially the idea that doing the right thing is more important than doing the easy thing. 

 

In time even that commune became corrupted because kids from all over the country would show up with their idea of what that lifestyle was supposed to be.  We all left....some of them stayed.  I would imagine they lived that lifestyle until the rent was not paid long enough .....then maybe moved on elsewhere.  I really don't know.   The media did quite a bit of damage in that way...much as they do now.  They clouded it with drugs, the great unwashed masses and free love.  It wasn't only that....and really not even all of that. 

 

Gloria