and we were right

patch adams and wavy gravy; noble clowns teaching timing,
balance,and a sense of humor to the kids at camp winnarainbow.
toward the fun, my friends, it's the manifesto: toward the fun.

today's 7/11, and on the farm in summertown tennessee,
my people are celebrating the28th anniversary of ragweed day.
early in the morning of july the 11th, 1980, we hippies were roused from our beds and our bunks in houses, schoolbuses, bread trucks, log cabins, tents and teepees. helicopters and cop cars, troopers with guns and dogs showed up at the gate of 156 drakes lane to come up the road into our community, sure they were going to have a big bust, sure that fallow watermelon field was full of head high marijuana plants. there was no marijuana, it was weed alright, but it was all ragweed. somewhere behind my home on schoolhouse ridge, there's a little guitar shaped roach clip i hurriedly buried on that morning when the operator of beatnik bell called all the houses and said the cops were headed up and down the roads to search the places where 1750 of us lived.

so happy 7/11 to those hippies on the farm, that storied farm in summertown.

on the occasion of another anniversary, abbie hoffman's 60th birthday on november 30th 2006, wavy gravy had these words to say:

"we are here to make a better world.
no amount of rationalization or blaming can pre-empt
the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation
here on this planet.
the lesson of the 60s is that people who care enough to do right
could change history.

we didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation.
we ended the idea
that you could send half a million soldiers around the world
to fight a war that people do not support.
we ended the idea that women are second class citizens.
we made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided.
the big battles that we won cannot be reversed.
we were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly,
headstrong and scared half to death.
and we were right."