Happily Hippie--What it's about and why it's unique
What's remarkable about Happily Hippie (optional reading)
Happily Hippie: What It's About and Why It's Unique
Happily Hippie: Understanding, Celebrating and Defending Forty Years of Countercultural Ethnicity--hopefully, the title tells a lot. But in a sea of books about the sixties and related topics, what’s special about it?
First, in a society, and apparently a book market, that routinely assumes the counterculture has ceased to exist, Happily Hippie shows how the counterculture never died and is in many ways thriving. Look around you; virtually everywhere you’ll spot overtly countercultural people--males with ponytails, women with ankle bracelets, toe rings and pierced noses, multitudes proudly sporting tie-dyes and eating organic/natural hippie food. Look closer still, and you’ll see that the majority of these counterculturists were born after the sixties--in some cases, long after. Many of these post-sixties hippies are, in fact, second or even third generation. So while most books about hippies or the counterculture consider a small historical window, usually from the late sixties through the early seventies, Happily Hippie focuses on the last forty years, the present and the future.
Second, Happily Hippie promotes "ethnic hippies theory," the assertion that not only is the counterculture alive and kicking, it’s now a large ethnic minority in the United States and elsewhere. No one else, to my knowledge, is arguing that. Apparently, Stephen Gaskin (founder of The Farm) sees hippies as an ethnicity. Countercultural activist and High Times publisher Steven Hager has called the counterculture "a minority," and reportedly, Janis Joplin said the same at Woodstock, but no one has fully developed and articulated the idea that hippies are an ethnicity. Until now.
And Happily Hippie examines hippie stereotypes and their role in the national consciousness, from Presidential politics to the marijuana-legalization debate, in a uniquely insightful manner.
So, Happily Hippie is about stepping through scotoma, that peculiar blindness that keeps us from seeing what’s in front of our eyes because we don’t have a concept for it--in this case, the it being post-sixties hippies. And Happily Hippie is about paradigm shift in that it asks us to see the counterculture in a new, ethnic light; Happily Hippie is about confronting stereotypes and prejudice. A breakthrough book, Happily Hippie will revolutionize the way we see hippies and the counterculture. I believe it will be the most important book ever written on the subject; no one who reads it will see "the counterculture" the same.
(If it hasn’t become clear by now, let me note that counterculture is being used to describe hippie culture exclusively. Yes, some have used counterculture to describe everything from Christianity to the gay-rights movement to various non-ethnic subcultures of history. Happily Hippie, however, has a tighter definition, one that's consistent with usage as it has emerged in most Standard English.)
Now, we might be tempted to dismiss this assertion of hippie ethnicity out of hand: First, it’s a common misconception that there is no ethnicity without a racial or biological basis. That isn’t true, and historically, most ethnic identity has involved a dimension of choice; in fact, the making of ethnic choices has surely comprised a large part of human history and prehistory. Also, while the counterculture’s origins, its ethnogenesis, is probably unprecedented, as mentioned, there are now a substantial number of counterculturists who’ve "inherited" their hippie identity from hippie parents in the traditional ethnic manner--think Dharma of television’s Dharma and Greg. We tend to focus on that first thing, the freakish birth, and miss the other: culture being passed down generationally in a traditional ethnic manner.
So, since the counterculture fits the definition of an ethnic group so well (I prove this deductively in Chapter Three), since it behaves so like an ethnic group and society treats it as such (I prove this inductively in Chapter Four), the only remaining question is, how did that ethnic choice, that ability to become something called a "hippie," originate? The question, then, isn’t so much whether or not the counterculture is an ethnicity; it's, Where did this ethnicity come from? Happily Hippie argues that widespread modern technology, particularly mass media, was a crucial factor-- that and a context of social dislocation. So on the world stage, a distinctive culture congealed, resulting in a "synthetic ethnic minority"--synthetic in form or creation, synthetic in content since the counterculture is an eclectic mix of various cultural influences.
What's Remarkable about Happily Hippie
Now, before going any further, there’s something I have to tell you. What’s so striking and wonderful about Happily Hippie is how well ethnic-hippies theory works. So, for a theory to work, it has to do certain things: first, to analyze things in a way that gives us more insight into the present and the past--to explain that world in a way that makes more sense than whatever we had previously thought. Second, if the theory is really good, if it works so well we come to regard it as true, it will help us predict the future. I believe ethnic-hippies theory does both. Further, the ramifications of this hippies-as-an-ethnicity approach are often profound. Let me give just one example:
Increasingly, the eyes of Americans are on the Presidential election in 2008. Here, ethnic-hippies theory reveals something most miss: the counterculture and how voters feel about it will be a prominent, perhaps deciding, issue in that election. No, that doesn’t mean that in the Presidential debates the candidates will be talking directly about "hippies" or even related hemp/marijuana issues. But the electorate often responds irrationally; Karl Rove speaks of finding voters' "anger issues." As it turns out, in the American psyche, there’s a lot of anger at the counterculture, or at least at who or what those angry voters think "the counterculture" is. We know that animosity is there because, among other things, certain politicians are already pandering to it.
In 2006, Senator Clinton made some snide comments about President Bush, the GOP responded that the Democrats were a party "angry and adrift." That’s language that has often been used to stereotype counterculturists.
Then in November 2006, Republicans created a hue and cry about incoming Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "San Francisco values" in a transparent attempt to hippie-bait the entire Democratic Party.
Then there’s the question of the Democratic nomination. The early money is on that same Senator Clinton though of late Al Gore and John Kerry are also seen as potential nominees. If it’s any of the three, hippie-baiting will likely be at the heart of the Republican thrust.
As I document in Happily Hippie, the Kerry campaign was heavily hippie-baited in 2004, particularly by exploiting his association with the largely countercultural Vietnam Veterans Against the War. So, we know what to expect there.
And Al Gore--not only will he be associated with the allegedly "counterculture McGovernik" (and, yeah, the nik comes from beatnik) Clinton Administration, but in my opinion, he (they?) may actually be countercultural (Gore used to have long hair, has been reported as being a regular pot smoker earlier in his life, and today, he and wife Tipper meditate).
The hippie-baiting of Senator Clinton has already begun; you can find it in the plethora of stop-Hillary books. In his The Truth About Hillary (Sentinel (Penguin), 2005), Edward Klein has a chapter entitled "Grooving at Cozy Beach," which purports to show the young Clintons having their own little Summer of Love, replete with hashish brownies and lots of Jefferson Airplane. (On examination, Klein’s sources don’t always hold up, and incidentally, I don‘t believe the Clintons are countercultural.) Granted, if she’s nominated, appeals to prejudice will be directed at Senator Clinton in a number of ways, but a primary appeal will likely be towards anti-hippie prejudice--the hippie-baiting of Hillary.
And if Newt Gingrich should, in turn, win on the Republican side, we can expect an avalanche of hippie-baiting. After all, we know how effectively Gingrich baited the "counterculture McGovernik" Clintons in 1996, returning the GOP to power in Congress for the first time in decades.
And the truth is, no matter who the Democrats nominate, she or he will be hippie- baited. We know that because it’s happened regularly now for almost forty years. The best predictions aren’t wild guesses: they’re extrapolations of what’s already apparent. Hippie-baiting has come to function in American politics much the way race-baiting has long worked and with much the same impact.
An ethnic approach explains all this well--easily, in fact. Come election time, most Americans won‘t even have a word for the hippie-baiting demagogically used to manipulate the vote. Those familiar with Happily Hippie will understand what’s happening; they, at least, will have a word for it. And having a name for something is a necessary first step in dealing with it.
And although Happily Hippie takes a scientific approach and documents evidence, it’s not a wannabe PhD. thesis looking for an academic audience. The tone is far chattier, far less formal and esoteric. If there’s such a thing as popular science, Happily Hippie is popular social science.
I see my primary readers as members of the American counterculture, my secondary readers as non-American hippies of the world. There are certainly other potential readers as well, and we’ll examine those below. For now let’s look at those hippie readers: how many might there be, and why might they be passionate about Happily Hippie.
Although estimates about the number of hippies in today’s world are very problematic, I believe there are roughly 25 million hippie types in the US and maybe as many as 100 million on the planet. If those numbers sound suspicious, here are a few things to bear in mind: First, society has trained us not to see hippies, or if we do, not to acknowledge them, telling ourselves that hippies existed only in the sixties; so, our tendency is to underestimate. Also, a lot of people who objectively would clearly be classified as hippie, shun the label because of its connotations--a phase they were supposed to outgrow long ago; they often refer to themselves using euphemisms like "kind of an ex-hippie," "Earth mother," "New Ager." There are millions like that, and I consider them hippies today--middle-aged hippies, perhaps, but still distinguishably countercultural. Also, sometimes contemporary counterculturists blend in and don‘t appear overtly hippie (sportscaster Bill Walton, for example). And just as we aren’t allowed to see the middle-aged counterculturists, we aren’t allowed to see the younger ones because post-sixties hippies aren’t supposed to exist.
Or look at the numbers issue this way: It’s not hard to document countercultural food; the Wall St. Journal reported in 2004 that natural/organic foods are one of the two fastest-growing sectors in the American groceries market. One way to recognize ethnicity is to consider cuisine; so, how many people now regularly eat hippie food? "Tens of millions" shouldn’t sound outlandish (and no, not every single person who’s ever eaten an Amy‘s pocket sandwich is automatically hippie, but when such dietary acts are considered in conjunction with a number of other cultural traits, we see that, yes, a large percentage of those natural-food eaters are hippie).
In today‘s world, hippies can be found from across the United States to Canada to all of Europe to Russia to Japan to Australia and New Zealand to South Africa to Israel and other sundry nations and locations--a good part of the globe. And again, there is no reason to assume that the world’s hippie population is shrinking; in fact, arguably, as those hippies produce offspring, many of whom will carry on hippie identity, that population should grow. I believe we'll soon see Chinese hippies. So, eventually, there could be international markets.
Since I’m an American, the book has an American perspective; yet, a great deal of what’s said about hippies in Happily Hippie is applicable to counterculturists elsewhere. Also, a lot of how their respective societies treat those counterculturists is the product of US policies; for example, some Scandinavian soldiers of nations belonging to NATO, for instance, had to de-hippify because Washington insisted, or Canadian Mark Emery ("The Prince of Pot") may well be extradited and imprisoned here due to intense pressure from the Bush Administration.
If I were, say, an Australian counterculturist, I’d want to read Happily Hippie, and after I did, I’d likely think of myself as a "hippie-Australian." The good news is that a lot of these non-American counterculturists are English speakers, so the book would need no translation; an international edition could also footnote and explain some of the particularly American cultural background, if necessary, making Happily Hippie more comprehensible to those readers.
I’m confident that substantial audience is eager to read about such matters. A few years ago, I published a book-related article in a well-established and fairly well read alternative weekly, the Colorado Springs Independent. When a former police officer penned a dismissive and condescending response, the editor then received what she referred to as a "blizzard" of letters, more than she could publish even on the paper’s website, the most she‘d seen in response to an article. People were mostly supportive; it was an issue that clearly excited a sizable portion of the local population.
That audience will also be attracted to Happily Hippie because the book offers a practical solution to the persecution of the counterculture and the social ills that stem from that persecution. That solution is a countercultural ethnic organization--a sort of NAACP for hippies.
And in a lot of ways, Happily Hippie is therapeutic in that it helps counterculturists come to terms with their cultural identity; in a society that’s often considered being hippie--read "drop out"--shameful, there’s some healing that needs to happen. The chapter in Happily Hippie documenting the counterculture’s many accomplishments should be a great help.
Let me also point out a larger trend: if on one hand, society relegates the counterculture to the past and disrespects it, there’s now a noticeable tendency--driven by marketing demographics as "the sixties generation" ages--towards publicly acknowledging and even celebrating the counterculture. You can see it in magazine and television ads. In January, Time ran an ad for Allstate (1/2/06, 162); below a giant peace-sign- shaped highway, the caption: "Drive Peacefully." A Fidelity Investments advertisement (Newsweek, 1/23/06, 54-55) openly targets and appeals to hippie identity, and there are now TV spots doing the same for several investment brokers, so much so that you might think retirement planning had been invented in Haight-Ashbury. As we’ll see below, that trend is also impacting the book-publishing industry.
Before discussing potential non-hippie readers and other places where Happily Hippie might sell in a bookstore, two more things about that primary audience:
There are a lot of well-read, intellectually hungry hippies out there, and many have money they sometimes spend on books. Also, don’t underestimate what we might call “nationalist” sentiments within the counterculture. There will be those who will buy and read Happily Hippie because that in itself is a way of standing up, of asserting their cultural identity.
Okay, other readers, other niches in the bookstore: For starters, many readers are
seeking to understand America’s political psyche: Why are our politics the way the are? Why do voters vote the way they do? Books like What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 2005) by Thomas Frank try to answer that question. Happily Hippie has much to say on the matter; the book could certainly be shelved under "Current Event/Affairs" (Borders).
Readers interested in marijuana and "drug" issues--it apparently isn’t a shelving category--will be interested in Happily Hippie since it proposes a new--and I believe better--explanation of why marijuana remains illegal. And it has something new to say about the War on Drugs--at least new for its critics: the War on Drugs is a great success (bearing in mind, of course, that its true purpose isn’t to protect public health but to serve as a rationale for ethnic persecution and social repression). So, one more reason to file Happily Hippie under "Current Events/Affairs."
Happily Hippie could also easily be shelved under "Political Theory and Ideology" (Barnes & Noble) or "Politics" (Borders).
And Happily Hippie also asks its readers to rethink some of the last forty years of American and world history. For example, the rise of Ronald Reagan and the neo-conservatives is certainly of historic importance, and as Happily Hippie shows, much of their success has been built on the backs of hippie stereotypes which they perpetrate and then claim to be the antithesis of. "Forty Years" is right there in the subtitle, and I think Happily Hippie could be shelved under "History" too.
And of course, Happily Hippie might be most at home on the "Social Sciences" shelf.
Finally, stepping out of the local bookstore, although Happily Hippie’s primary and secondary audiences aren’t academic, it could still be used as a "readings" text in a college ethnic-studies or sociology class: it encourages critical thinking and explores ethnicity in a way that‘s interesting, alive and present in the lives of today‘s students. Though I don’t have an ethnology degree, I do refer to and document scholarly sources. Yes, Happily Hippie would make a great supplementary text in a social-science classroom.
Let’s talk about other titles, including what the current market looks like, what books might be competing with Happily Hippie and what books Happily Hippie uses as source material. As we examine these titles, I’ll be doing some reviewing and comparing/contrasting with Happily Hippie.
There’s a vast market of related titles out there: A recent search of the Barnes and Noble website using various keywords yielded the following: Hippie--47 titles with about a dozen redundancies. Hippy--122 titles with about two dozen not found under hippie. Counterculture--227 titles; about a 100 or so are clearly about hippie culture, and some repeat titles found under hippie or hippy. Marijuana--465 titles; some are War on Drug pamphlets, some are grower’s guides, but a good many (such as Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes) discuss the larger social issue of why marijuana remains illegal. The Sixties produces 2,728 results with roughly 10% being about hippie culture.
The hippie memoir seems to have become its own literary genre, and there are at least a dozen such titles: Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture (Seal Press, 1999) by Chelsea Cain; Split: A Counterculture Childhood (Houghton, Mifflin, 1999) by Lisa Michaels; Memoirs of an ex-Hippie: Seven Years in the Counterculture (Ten Speed Press, 2002) by Robert Roskind; Jester: Memoirs of a Retired Hippie (AuthorHouse, 2006) by Warren J. Troy; and Scrapbook of a Taos Hippie: Tribal Tales from the Heart of a Cultural Revolution (Cinco Puntos Press, 2002) by Iris Keltz are examples. Although it does contain personal anecdotes, Happily Hippie is not primarily a memoir. Still, that this genre of hippie memoir now exists shows the reading public’s fascination with hippie culture. There seems an underlying desire to reclaim and connect with that identity and re-explore the decade that gave the counterculture birth.
Together, Charles Reich’s bestseller The Greening of America: How the Youth Revolution is Trying to Make America Livable (Random House, 1970) and Theodore Rozak’s The Making of a CounterCulture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Anchor Books, 1969) have been the most prominent books about hippies probably because both try to answer the larger questions “Who are hippies?” and “What is the counterculture?” (Rozak’s work was re-issued in 2000.) Lewis Yablonsky’s well-known The Hippie Trip: The classic sociological study of America’s drop-out generation (Penguin Books Inc., 1973) also does something similar but from a scientific perspective--as much observational as theoretical. (The Hippie Trip was re-issued in 2004 with a new subtitle.)
Happily Hippie does all the things these three "classics" do, but it does them all better.
Reich’s The Greening is a good book, I think. It’s written by someone who sees himself as a part of the counterculture, and thus, Reich remains respectful. The book’s weaknesses are that it was written so long ago that it only sees the counterculture’s earliest years; thus, it misses the success of countercultural food, for instance. The Greening also tries to fashion a sort of hippie philosophy: "Consciousness III." That approach has problems, including perhaps implying hippies are some higher form of human being or that a "true hippie" must resemble Gandalf. Happily Hippie handles this notion of a "hippie philosophy" better, I think, with its ethnic perspective: ethnicity allows for a wide range of ideological differences within a group, and since "values" are a component of ethnicity, that component explains well the "beliefs" most hippies have in common.
Then there’s Rozak. The very usage of counterculture to describe hippie culture apparently has its origins in his widely read book. The Making of a CounterCulture was well-received for several reasons: society has been hungry for some explanation of the hippie phenomenon; Rozak is scholarly and seems to pose an answer; and he presents an interesting and provocative thesis.
The problems, however, are major and many. For starters, Rozak clearly writes as an outsider; as he writes about the counterculture, he seems to hold his nose, and it appears he has little-or-no experience within the counterculture or even with individual hippies. In fact, by book’s end, we have to wonder if he actually knows any. Rozak probably doesn’t own any Led Zeppelin albums; he probably doesn't even own any Simon and Garfunkel albums.
Then there’s the larger scientific question: if Rozak erects a hippie philosophy--a manifesto for the counterculture--what’s his evidence that most hippies agree or will agree? It’s slim to none, and in the book’s opening pages, Rozak concedes he’s an intellectual looking for a mass base. Women and blacks and others don’t want him, he admits; so, who’s left? The counterculture. His purpose, then, is not to show us what hippies think; it’s to tell us what he wants us to think.
Further, reality often starkly contradicts Rozak; for example, while a tenet of this hippie philosophy is opposition to technology, that doesn’t accurately describe hippie culture: even the most primitive of early hippie communes usually soon bought a tractor, and then there’s the substantial evidence of the countercultural roots of the personal computer. An honest look at hippie culture will show it not to be largely, let alone uniformly, anti-technological. Ever heard of an electric guitar?
So, the ideas in The Making of a CounterCulture are largely those of Rozak, not the counterculture. Arguably, Dr. Rozak has exploited hippies. Incidentally, while his work fails to explain the counterculture, ethnic-hippies theory can explain Rozak's prominence on this subject; ethnographers call it "referred leadership"--the imposing of leadership from the outside.
Lewis Yablonsky’s The Hippie Trip is interesting for it’s first-hand glimpse of life as a hippie and, no doubt, as a snapshot of the counterculture in the early seventies. Again, though, we have an outsider, a non-hippie social scientist, writing about hippies, and our time frame is early and brief. And Yablonsky’s viewpoint is somewhat biased in that like so many social scientists of the period, he’s approached the counterculture as if it were a social problem--a desperate, pathetic cry for help; sometimes, that means an emphasis on the negative. He portrays hippie parents, for instance, as exclusively child neglecters/abusers. I don’t doubt that such people have existed, especially in the disheveled, traumatized and socially immature milieu he explores, but as a portrayal of hippie parenting in general, that’s a stereotype.
So, there are a plethora of related titles now in print, but few look at the full sweep of the last forty years and challenge the just-a-thing-of-the-sixties cliche, most don‘t examine stereotypes of hippies in any depth, and none have an underlying theory that adequately explains the counterculture. Happily Hippie does all these things; there‘s nothing on the market quite like it.
Here is an alphabetical list of books that serve as source material for Happily Hippie with some brief comments on each. And of course, the research continues.
Adventures in Counterculture: From Hip Hop to High Times (High Times Press, 2002) by Steven Hager. Penned by the publisher of High Times and founder of the Cannabis Cup, this is an interesting group of very readable essays, some not directly related to hippies such as a piece on the JFK assassination. Adventures proffers no clear theory about what the counterculture is.
The Alternative: Communal Life in New America (MacMillian, 1970) by William Hedgepeth. Profiles early hippie communes with lots of good quotes and excellent photos by Dennis Stock.
The Anti-American Generation (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1971) edited by Edgar Z. Friedenberg. This anthology obviously has a negative bias; however, it contains the best social-science essay on the counterculture I’ve found, "The Condemnation and Persecution of Hippies" by Michael E. Brown.
Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took On The Food Industry (Cornell University Press, 1993) by Warren J. Belasco. Excellent source on the history of countercultural food, its development and early Establishment resistance to it by a countercultural professor of American-studies.
Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 (Simon & Shuster, 2004) by Martin Torgoff. Filled with striking anecdotes and fascinating interviews, Torgoff’s work is also asking the larger questions and examining the larger time span of forty-some years. This excellent resource also documents Torgoff’s personal journey into drug use and through drug abuse, giving the work authenticity, voice and a narrative dimension. It’s unfortunate that the usual keywords don’t bring this book up at Barnes & Noble since it’s one of the best books on the counterculture to date.
Drugs and Minority Oppression (Seabury, 1975) by John Helmer. Sketches out how racism and ethnic chauvinism have been historical bases for American drug laws and notes how drug scares have been “hysterias” having little to do with actual drug-use deaths at the time of the scare. Necessary for understanding American drug laws and their related political agendas.
Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever (Crossway Books, 1994) by Os Guinness. Why does Guinness assume the counterculture and Christianity are mutually exclusive? Apparently, he’s never heard the term "Jesus freak." Guinness also stereotypes hippies, and despite his erudition fails to persuade because he begs the question and assumes the counterculture is anti-Christian. Like many such books, however, it ultimately provides excellent evidence of hippie ethnicity--in this case, the tendency of ethnic minorities to be seen as the enemies of God.
The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Cannabis and the Conspiracy against Marijuana (AH HA Publishing, 1998) by Jack Herer. A modern "classic" on cannabis/hemp laws with a good historical perspective, it had been reprinted 11 times by 1998. However, Happily Hippie disagrees with Herer on the root cause of continued pot prohibition--it‘s not direct profit motive by a small coterie of capitalists; it‘s the use of ethnic stereotyping, persecution and scapegoating to control the entire society. Yes, in the end, the rich get richer and power stays in the hands of the privileged, but it happens in a larger, more indirect way.
Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook (Oryx Press, 1998) edited by David H. Levinson. A basic reference book on ethnic matters available in many libraries.
The Functions of Prejudice (Harper and Row, 1975) by Jack Levin. A widely respected and well-known text on the nature of bigotry. Fascinating, especially when we bear in mind that Levin’s conclusions are based on scientific studies.
Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India (Quality Paperback Book Club, 1995) by Cleo Odzer. Interesting and also disturbing; if many are prejudiced against hippies, perhaps the hippies in this book help explain why--most aren‘t particularly admirable; Goa is largely a party scene rife with serious, habitual drug abuse.
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, 1999) by Jared Diamond. Sketches out well where cultures originally come from; before we can ask where does an ethnic counterculture come from, we must ask, where does any ethnicity come from? Diamond has the answers and his work stands as a model of scientific inquiry and writing.
The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Belnap Press/Harvard University Press, 1980) edited by Stephan Thermstrom et al. Probably as good a source on ethnic matters as any, reference or otherwise. Not only does it contain the best-developed most nuanced definition of ethnicity I’ve found, it also contains articles on a wide range of ethnic issues by top social scientists. It does not contain an entry on "Hippies,"as it does of more widely recognized ethnic groups, but its ethnic definition is at the heart of Happily Hippie’s deductive proof of hippie ethnicity. It’s unfortunate, I think, that there’s not been a second edition of this fine work, which good as it is does have some flaws: in it's definition of ethnicity, certain obvious things like ethnic costume are missing.
Hillary books: Four are Hillary's Choice (Random House, 1999) by Gail Sheey; The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew it and How Far She'll Go to Become President (Sentinel (Penguin), 2005) by Edward Klein; Hell To Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Regnery, 1999) by Barbara Olson; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery, 2004) by R. Emmett Tyrrell and Mark W. Davis, Jr. Most are highly biased accounts in a sort of sensationalistic, stop-Hillary mode. (Rebels in White Gloves: Coming of Age with Hillary's Class--Wellesley '69 (Times Books, 1999) by Miriam Horn is an exception.) Good for documenting the hippie-baiting of both Hillary and Bill Clinton and answering that curious question: Are the Clintons really hippie?
Hippie! (Sterling, 2004) by Barry Miles. An over-sized overview on the era from 1965 to 1971 filled with photos, this "coffee-table book" examines early American and European counterculturists.
Hippies from A to Z (Hip, Inc., 1999) by Skip Stone. A short encyclopedia of all things that Hippyland.com’s webmaster considers countercultural.
Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the Sixties and Seventies (Ten Speed Press, 2004) by John Bassett McCleary. Similar to Stone, only far more developed.
Hippie Ghetto: The Natural History of a Subculture (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973) by William L. Partridge. A social scientist examines his local hippie community in the early seventies. Good approach, limited scope. Best anecdote: A group of counterculturists, tipped off that police will be arriving that night to search for drugs, leave in the hallway for the "narcs" milk and cookies.
The Hippies (Time, Inc., 1967) by the correspondents of Time, edited by J. D. Brown. Filled with essays, some of which quote academics who are shockingly flip regarding their observations about a very young (1968) counterculture that most seem to have little direct contact with (a prerequisite, by the way, for bigotry); other times, there are good observations and insights, particularly when the writers directly quote early hippies.
Human Rights and the US Drug War: A treatise based on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the US Bill of Rights (Creative Xpressions, 2001) by Chris Conrad, Mikki Norris and Virginia Resner. These activists do an outstanding job of documenting the injustices of the War on Drugs, showing us not just statistics but numerous case studies of terrible injustice.
Images that Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (Praeger, 1996, 2003) edited by Paul Martin Lester. Two editions, both filled with essays, largely by academics and journalists, on various American ethnic stereotypes.
Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding (US Government Printing Office, 1972), the First Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Still a seminal book on American marijuana prohibition; when read from an ethnic perspective, it confirms much of what Happily Hippie says regarding why pot remains illegal in the United States.
The Moosewood Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, 1977) by Mollie Katzen. A classic hippie cookbook (at last count, I found at least a dozen Moosewood titles in print). Like other countercultural cookbooks--New Laurel’s Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 1987) by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders and Brian Rupenthal (there have been four spin-off books); New Food Book: Nutrition, Diet, Consumer Tips, and Foods of the Future (Crowell, 1978) by Melvin and Gilda Berger; The Healthy Kitchen (Knopf, 2003) by Dr. Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley, etc.--Moosewood tells us a lot about hippie culture and cuisine. Truth is, by now there are probably several hundred countercultural cookbooks out there, and that number attests both to the vitality of hippie culture and to the larger interest of today’s readers in all things countercultural.
1968: The Year That Rocked the World (Random House, 2004) by Mark Kurlansky. Great journalism that ties together the many social disruptions and eruptions across the globe during that remarkable year. Insightful and interesting with a fair amount of information specifically about early hippies, in American and in eastern Europe, presented in a fair-minded, non-sensational manner. The sense of social dislocation we see in the year’s history is, I think, part of countercultural ethnogenesis.
Racial and Ethnic Groups (6th ed.) (Harper Collins, 1996) by Richard T. Schaefer. This much-used and presumably well-respected college text elaborates on a number of American ethnic groups with a final chapter devoted to ethnic issues beyond our borders. It lacks the relatively good, clear definition of ethnicity found it the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups; still, lots of good ethnic information.
The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language, and Culture (WND Books, 2002) by Michael Savage. An extended rant by a contemporary radio-talk-show host with many passages perfect for documenting and exploring anti-hippie prejudices. Lots of one-sentence paragraphs and hateful, cartoonish arguments laced with riveting sentences like, "Listen to what I’m telling you."
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (Back Bay Books (Little, Brown), 1996) by Dan Baum. Takes up where Helmer leaves off (late sixties) and substantiates most of Helmer’s observations though Baum seems to never have read Helmer. Great investigative journalism by the former Wall St. Journal reporter.
Society's Shadow: Studies in the Sociology of Countercultures (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972) by Kenneth Westhues. As the title implies, there’s a negative bias in this essay anthology; still, there are sometimes worthwhile and astute comments. Again, sometimes even the bad books are great evidence of ethnic-like prejudice and thus ethnicity.
The Turbulent Years: The 60s (Time-Life Books, 1998) by the Editors of Time-Life Books with Richard B. Stolley. Fine photos and some useful commentary.
Storefront Revolution: Food Co-ops and the Counterculture (Rutgers University Press, 1994) by Craig Cox. Similar to Warren E. Belasco’s Appetite for Change only less developed at a mere 160 pages.
What the Dormouse Said : How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (Viking, 2005 ) by John Markoff. Like the video Triumph of the Nerds, this work well documents the countercultural roots of the PC.
Woodstock Census (Viking, 1979) by Deanne Stillman and Rex Weiner. Relatively reliable interview data with hundreds of hippie types on a variety of topics, full of great quotes and anecdotes.
Happily Hippie also uses books about ethnic architecture, ethnic clothing, hippie homes, and a number of texts not yet mentioned. Our focus here has been on books, but newspaper and magazine articles, videos, movies, television programs, musical recordings, comic strips, political cartoons and personal observations from across those forty years also find their way into Happily Hippie.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, there is a related website, HappilyHippie.com, which, as of April 20, 2007, had been up for a year. It's already had 4,600 visits and 3,500 unique visitors, mostly from the US but also from throughout the world--even China. The number of daily users continues to increase, and the site itself will grow eventually selling products that will attract website viewers and tie into book sales. The first products will be bumper stickers ("Happy to be Hippie-American"); each bumper sticker will have a visible website URL on it. And I’ve other simple products, such as greeting cards, in mind. Eventually, I’d like to do clothing: Every garment would be tastefully countercultural, comfortable, attractive--possibly made from hemp-- and bear a"Happily Hippie" logo. Obviously, that’s a huge project, however. I have the vision; I only wish I were triplets so I could do all the work. One day, of course, the book itself can be sold at the site.
I’ve had business cards made; I’ll be handing them out wherever it seems appropriate, including, I think, to overtly countercultural people who I encounter on a daily basis. I may also take out small ads promoting the website in particular magazines and newspapers.
The blog, "Bloggèd Be @ Happily Hippie," is what I’m enjoying the most; it’s like having a column--excepting that I have to generate my own readers, which as the website matures is happening. At present, I'm starting to market a column called Happily Hippie. I could see doing something similar for radio, too. I’ll have to investigate “alternative” syndicates, and that won’t happen immediately, but I think syndication is a workable idea, and obviously reader interest in columns, radio spots or the blog itself would carry over easily into book sales.
As noted, I continue to publish book-based pieces in alternative newspapers (like the counterculture they came from, they’re supposed to be a thing of the past, yet they thrive), and when I do publish such pieces, I put the website URL in my "bio," steering readers towards something broader and more book related.
And as a life-long teacher and activist, I’m not intimidated by public speaking; in fact, I usually enjoy it. There are of course certain countercultural organizations. On the other hand, give a talk up at a local bookstore (Boulder Bookstore sponsors local authors), and people, countercultural or otherwise, will come. Then, there’s the national C-SPAN show, "Booknotes." Truth is, you could put me on the college lecture circuit, and I’d flourish, partly, because to this day, campuses always have a noticeable segment of hippie types. I think, however, that for the lecture circuit to really click, Happily Hippie will have to first be published and develop a reputation. Still, such appearances would stimulate further sales.
When this book does reach hard-copy stage, there will, of course, be a number of places to market it. Regular bookstores are certainly one, but some specialty bookstores (Boulder has Left Hand Books) would also be viable markets.
Also, let’s not forget the libraries. I would think any public library of any size should have this book, bearing in mind that hippie types are today found across America, from the small town to the urban megalopolis, from North to South, from the Midwest to Alaska--everywhere.
And of course being an ethnicity, the counterculture has thousands of different types of stores throughout the US and the world. We used to call them "head shops" and assume they were to "drugs" what porn shops are to sex, but many of these shops sell a far broader array of products than bongs and rolling papers, and some sell no pot-related products at all yet remain identifiably hippie. An example would be Wild Oats, and yes, they sell specifically countercultural books there, too. How many countercultural grocery stores or food cooperatives would do the same?
I‘d also consider buying a booth and on occasion frequenting various fairs or events, selling the book. A few weeks ago, I was at the Boulder Creek Festival; there were all kinds of booths, and I’d guess the crowd was 40% overtly countercultural. Of course, there are a number of countercultural get-togethers, including music festivals, the annual Rainbow Gathering and others.
Eventually, I’ll be looking for people to pen blurbs. My hope is that a number of prominent counterculturists will want to step forward and say, in effect, "Yes, I believe in the counterculture; I agree we’re an ethnicity, and I want to see us stand up for ourselves and by doing so help heal our nation." I may be looking, on occasion, outside of the counterculture as well.
Lastly, who am I? What are my qualifications for writing Happily Hippie? To begin with, as noted, I’m not a professional ethnologist or ethnographer (I believe they have the same meaning) but a college English teacher. I have a Master’s degree and twenty-some additional graduate hours. My specialty is teaching the reading and writing of argument and that includes being very familiar with logical fallacies and their application. It also means I have a good idea of what makes an argument work, including appeals to logos, ethos and pathos. And while there are probably of number of genres within Happily Hippie, it's primarily argument; since most of my writing has been editorial, I’m an experienced arguer.
And I "went hippie" when I was about 15 or 16, so now being early middle-aged, I’ve met hundreds of hippie types and spent decades within hippie culture. Years ago, I developed the idea of counterculture as ethnic minority; as the years have passed and the sixties have receded, my confidence in the notion of hippie ethnicity has only grown, especially with the emergence of second- and-third generation hippie youth.
Why am I writing Happily Hippie? Because I believe that issues about hippies and how society views them are a key to understanding today’s society, particularly its drift towards repression and general ugliness. Throughout history, reactionaries have used scapegoat groups to shut their societies down; an injury to one really is an injury to all. And if a key to repression is scapegoating and ethnic persecution, a key to social progress is the opposite: the movement of scapegoat groups towards social equality. A victory for one can be a victory for all.
And again, ethnic-hippie theory works: time and again, using an ethnic perspective explains things about the counterculture and how society relates to it, from the small to the large. And I believe this social-science truth is a truth that can set us free, that by applying ethnic-hippies theory to the world, we can see that world more clearly and then dramatically change it for the better.
The outline is roughly half finished and hopefully will be up soon.
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