Crosby, Stills and Nash - Almost Cut My Hair - Madison Square Garden, NY...

So this has the line in it "musta been cause I got the flu for Xmas." Kind of appropriate for Xmas this year.

Drum Circle

So, I went to a drum circle today. I've never been to one before. No one told me it was participatory before I got there. Since, I have to lease whatever rhythm I happen to be able to show at any given moment, this was not the easiest couple of hours. And yes I was a dirty hippy back in the day, but I really only consumed music (and drugs), no I fully participated in the sex part thank you very much.

It (the drum circle today, not the sec back in the day) happened at a little new age kind of place called Asbury Chapel, a kind (at this time) new age place. Only middle aged and older white folks, plus one kid who was about two and who refused to drum at all (very strange).

Dirty Fucking Hippies

So I got this email from a friend who works for a college and wonders why students can't live on the money they get from the school, especially when the money is about five times the amount of tuition.

It caused me to think back to my college days in the late 60s and early 70s of the last century. Let's see I got a Pell grant, I worked about fifteen hours a week at a job on campus subsidized by the government and I received money from the GI Bill (such as it was at that time). It was less in actual money than my father received for his WWII work[?], but more than the people who served after me got in real money. My girl friend (with whom I lived, nudge nudge wink wink) got everything I got, but instead of GI money she got Social Security money for her dead father. Incidentally, I think that it is about time I linked to General Smedley, as I haven't done that for awhile.

So we spent the Pell money on books and tuition (and we always had a little left over), the SS and GI money on food and rent and etc. (and we always had a little left over). The student work money (and the little left over), we spent on dope (and booze) and records and concerts. My god what at time we had.

But, you know, these kids now a days are so wasteful, and their music, it's just noise.

Woodstock

Well I was in the library yesterday and saw the DVD of Woodstock. So I picked it up and we started to watch it tonight.

Where were you 39 years ago today? That is of course assuming that you were at all that long ago.

I myself was not doing much. Having shortly before gotten back from Thailand where I was introduced to the pleasures the colonial experience (without actually having to shoot or be shot at). One of the pleasures was Thai Stick, the local home grown. Well the one I could and did bring back with me. I served in medical supply. We were our own customs inspectors.

I was just starting to get the feeling that maybe I had not been doing what for want of a better word we might call the "right thing" as a good colonial soldier. That is to say a colonial soldier never does the right thing, can't do the right thing. A colonial soldier is by definition the wrong thing. I was just starting to realize that.

Well I attended many concerts over the next few years, did a lot more and more interesting drugs along the way.

But to get back to Woodstock, I didn't go and at the time I probably would not have gone had I known about it before it happened. By the next year I had completely changed and was going and going to concerts and doing and doing drugs.

Part of that course was turning "left" for want of a better term, then straightening out and bulling on in that direction for the rest of my life.

Oh well, becoming kind maudlin in my old age.