The 60's here again

Last night I was watching a PBS special on Pete Seeger. It was beautiful, seeing how he brought people together, and how he brought music into the momentum of change. Someone in the special said he didn't make "music history," he "made history with music." So my old 60's energy got re-kindled. I went to iTunes and bought a bunch of old music of his and some others too. One of my favorite songs of his was "Little Boxes," so that led me to find a lot of the renditions of Little Boxes from' the Weeds show. I had to buy some of those, too.

When I was in Peace Corps training in Austin, TX, in 1964, we pretty much had the campus to ourselves in August. Then the regular semester started and we watched the avalanche of Texans take over their campus. We may or may not have coined the term "magnolias" to describe the Texan femmes, but we certainly adopted it into our everyday vocabulary as we watched them all, same camel hair coats, same hairdos and same makeup. It was actually spooky how so many women could all look the same. Well, one day I was in a classroom with a few of my PC trainees, with nothing pressing to do when we realized that a bunch of magnolias were lining up in the hall outside our classroom. Turns out they were auditioning for something like homecoming queen. It was absolutely bizarre how they looked all the same, so we were inspired to make up a song based on Little Boxes on the spot. Lyrics flowed out of our rebellious fertile minds and soon we had a decent spoof on these poor girls, stamped of a mold that they had nothing to do with. I wish one of us had copied down that song of ours.

This morning I went to YouTube to search for more Pete Seeger et al, and found a treasure trove of Joan Baez videos as well. Wow, that sucked me right back to the '60's. She was such a hero to me. The point is, as I looked at these old performances, the passion and purpose of those times came back into my consciousness & I suddenly realized that I, and probably many of us young idealists, have abandoned the causes we once said we were so committed to. I let my life get sidetracked by the mundane, much like a magnolia buying into the mainstream. Which wouldn't be so bad if we only would let our early dedication accompany us on the path. I can say that it did, but only as a faded bush that once burned hotly.

I'm pretty sure that the ideals always stayed with me and contributed to all my endeavors, but what got left behind was the conscious, community-informed commitment to raise the quality of all life and all that is good. I sit here now, 64 years old, in MY 60's, wondering how to re-introduce myself to that life. Perhaps I am doing it already, albeit in a quiet way, holding a candle instead of warming myself by the burning bush. However, I won't just assume this is so; I think I need to stretch myself back out to the mind I had as a young Peace Corps Volunteer, to the person who was so dedicated to human progress.

I remember the Peace Corps recruiters' table outside the library...I knew I was meant to go 'save the world' as we called it. It was written.