YOU DON’T BELIEVE YOU’RE ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION

Dark and dreary out there and a lot cooler than it has been.

$10.00

https://www.etsy.com/listing/226835183/beatles-collector-baseball-type-card?ref=shop_home_active_3

only 10 more days till OUTANDER RETURNS. This is from the next series of episodes—Claire is in Jamie’s kilt (notice) and hence Jamie’s in pants–I miss his knees.

Small KITTY CUCUMBER Ballet Dancer in Pink 1986

DragonLaire $12.00

https://www.etsy.com/listing/226839421/small-kitty-cucumber-ballet-dancer-in?ref=shop_home_active_2

Continuing on with my 60’s—memories of an old Flower Child:

Yesterday we discussed the Beatles and how when they started out they were simpler as were we all.

The Beatles came into US reality for most of us in February 1964. By this time the Viet Nam involvement was well on its way–The Viet Cong had came out in late 1960 and by the end of the next year we were anticipating more presence in Nam and by ’62 a couple of million dollars at least had been sunk into aid for the country. Kennedy was assassinated in ’63 and Johnson became president pushing for a more aggressive stand in the conflict.

We got the news in those days on TV (Walter Cronkite comes to mind naturally) or the radio which had basically music and news having declined from the entertainment focus it was before the visual introductions of television., There was one phone in the home–some of the richer people had extensions but I don’t remember anyone I knew having more than one. This was further complicated by the fact that the phone was pretty much stationary—wherever it was is where you were anchored to when you talked. There was no internet, Facebook–in fact my dears there were no computers anywhere within the average person’s sphere.

In 61 the cold war had heated up with the Soviets putting the first man in space following in a matter of day with our unsuccessful invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pig’s in April and the president (Kennedy) was recommending we build bomb shelters. Less than a month later the USSR tested a hydrogen bomb (biggest explosion in history). It got no better in ’62 when the Soviet’s missiles were discovered in Cuba and Kennedy backed down the Russians in October.

It was a frightening time, after the rather placid 50’s we were now in the midst of a fight between the two biggest kids on the block. I remember I was in high school during the Missile Crisis and how we talked of little else and all were expecting war at best, unannounced, devastation with sneak missile attacks at the worst. We lived with thoughts of gloom and doom—and our nightmares were of survival of life in a world devastated with nuclear damage and fall out. The relief when it was over and the Soviets backed down was like finding out that your tests came back negative from a lump they were pretty sure was serious. As a teenager who felt particularly helpless with the whole situation I was even more distressed.

Technology was beginning on the upswing with the first laser introduced in 1960 and in that same year the first Birth control PILL was made available (only to married women). The times were changing and Bob Dylan made his first appearance in April 1961, the same year the FCC called TV a “Vast Wasteland.” In 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published and in June of that year the first major conference of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was held. By 1963 an artificial heart had been implanted and in 1964 the Surgeon General found smoking HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.

It was a time of rapid change and great insecurity, we were threatened by the Russians and our own (or a conspiracy of same, which ever you chose to believe) killed the president. People built bomb shelters in their yards and basement and I can remember my dad saying (though he never built a shelter) that we would not be able to help anybody who survived the blast as they would be radioactive and would kill us with their contamination if we allowed them access to our shelter–the thought gave me nightmares for a long time–of us turning away friends or loved ones to keep ourselves alive.

But the early 60’s were already foreshadowing the turmoil to come. In 1960 there were Sit-in Protests in North Carolina against white’s only lunch counter segregation and in the same year and state the African American SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was created to involve the black college students more in the civil rights movement. By ’61 an interracial group of protesters traveled south to test Kennedy’s devotion to civil right. That same year found parties around the world protesting against nuclear weapons. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (conservation) was published and James Meredith (African American), protected by Federal marshals, registered at Ole Miss after rioting which killed two students and injured 160. Another book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (Women’s rights) made more waves in 1963 and that was also the year another advocate Gloria Steinem wrote an article of harassment and injustices while she was undercover as a Playboy Bunny. And in August of the same year Martin Luther King joined the March on Washington and gave his I HAD A DREAM speech.

It was a time when blacks and women (among others) were re-examining their position in society and deciding they were not where they should be. Given all this changes in image, place and turmoil, added to the cold war and the technology you can well guess at how I might have been a bit excited at the possibilities, confused by the changes and fearful of the violence and ever threatening of nuclear destruction. The world was posed on the brink of something and a whole lot of us weren’t sure what but we were rapidly deciding that if a decision must be made then we as participants had a right to our views being included in the process.