Reference no: EM132338796
The Hippies work sheet in RTF
The West. It's been romanticized and seen as a place to stake your claim, grow with the country, follow your dream, (re)invent yourself, start over. From the days of the transcontinental railroad, and the Gold Rush, California has been a migration magnet. I mean, it's pretty hard to imagine the summer of love taking place in Milwaukee, Detroit, or Cleveland, for instance.
1. What impressions do you have of California, and of San Francisco in particular? What appeal do you think the city itself had to this massive movement of young people converging there?
2. Define counter-culture.
3. What is meant by "the war babies" or Baby Boomers? What was unique about this generation?
4. How do you understand the paradoxical "affluence" and "anxiety" of the 1950's - early 1960's?
5. Assuming they did, how did the beatniks differ from the hippies? Describe.
6. Describe what happened on January 14, 1967. (in "the year of the hippie")
7. Joel Selvin called it a "fundamental building block in a new way of thinking." To what was he referring?
8. What happened on October 6, 1966 that prompted the Love Pageant Rally in the Haight, and the Hippie Declaration of Independence?
9. What were three "hippie version" inalienable rights?
10. Who was Timothy Leary?
11. Do you think Leary was being irresponsible when he said, "Turn on. Tune in. Drop out...I mean, drop out of high school. Drop out of college. Drop out of graduate school." What was he proposing as "alternative" learning?
12. What was the "hippie vision"? (Consider a variety of responses, from author Theodore Roszak, Joel Selvin, Mary Kasper, Peter Berg, Peter Coyote, or the Grateful Dead.)
13. Who were the Diggers, and why did they adopt this name? Also explain the ideology/intention behind the "Funeral of Money" conducted in December 1966.
14. Joel Selvin called it a vortex and "swirling miasma of social and personal change...."One of the "reasons" Stan McDaniel offered as part of the explanation for this massive migration was "a spiritual purpose." What might that "spiritual quest" have entailed?
15. Why might hippies have been attracted to or in some way relate to Jesus Christ but not necessarily to "church"?
16. Do you think psychedelic drugs might have "opened" peoples' doors of perception, and made them more amenable to metaphysics and spiritual pursuits, or, was taking acid just an excuse to get stoned? Explain.
17. Explain how the Haight had become a circus.
18. Explain how the Haight became ugly, and what brought about the "death of hippie" (October 6, 1967).
19. The "utopian moment had come and gone." What had been beautiful had become squalid. But was it a "failure"? (In forming your opinion, also consider Theodore Roszak's, Peter Coyote's and Mary Kasper's concluding remarks.)
20. What function did hippie clothing play in expressing the movement's ideology (jeans, jean jackets, headbands, long hair, nose rings, ankle bracelets, granny glasses, colorful shirts)? How do you express your individuality in terms of today's fashions?