Monday, February 26, 2007

House Guests

Is “hippy” a derogatory adjective? Is it a negative thing, for example, to say, “Sorry I haven’t written for awhile, our hippy friends were visiting?”

I personally don’t think of it as a character slam to call someone a hippy. People call David and me hippies with ever increasing regularity. Remember this?


That’s pretty hippy, no? I wear that to work not even as the poncho it is meant to be but as a skirt!

I have noticed, however, that I refer to these folks as “the hippies” .

But only to others.
For example, I don’t say, “hello hippies! Great to see you!” when I they come for a visit.
So maybe I do think it’s offensive.

What exactly is a “hippy”? Let’s do a little research, shall we…

When I asked Jeeves, he sent me here. I have to admit that I got lost in Hippyland, and didn’t really find a simple definition – although the general topics of anti-war, vegetarianism, peace and love seemed present.

So I went to Wickipedia where they told me this:

“Inheriting a tradition of cultural dissent from the bohemians and the beatniks, hippies rebelled against established institutions, criticised middle class values, opposed the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of non-Judeo-Christian religions, promoted sexual liberation, and created intentional communities, leading some to describe hippies as a new religious movement”,

They also told me this:

“Hippies were against "political and social orthodoxy", choosing a "gentle and nondoctrinaire" politics that favoured "peace, love, and personal freedom."
[8]. [9] They perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity that exercised undue power over their lives [10] , calling this culture "The Establishment," "Big Brother," or "The Man." [11] Hippie opposition to the Establishment spread around the world through a fusion of early rock, folk, blues and psychedelic rock, with the dramatic arts and the visual arts in tow.”
Well, having found this information, I have to say that it is really only one aspect of pals Dina and Robert that have earned them the title “the hippies” in my mind – intentional community.* Yep, these funny, interesting and clever people lived for 30 years on a commune before they began their adventures here in Italy. Even if they were carnivorous, born-again stock brokers who contribute to both Democratic and Republican campaigns to make sure that their business interests were covered after the next election (which they are not and do not ANY of those things), 30 years on a commune gets you citizenship in hippyland with psychedelic speed by my definition, man.

So… sorry I haven’t written for a while. Our hippy friends were visiting.

In addition to Dina and Robert, we were treated by a few days with this swell gal.

She’s an aussie and look what she brought us!!!! Actually she was just carrying it around in her purse (do all Australians do that? I’ll have to ask Jeeves). But when the hippies (all 4 of us) admitted that we’d never tried it (and were actually a little afraid of it) she quickly rectified this situation.

Yum yum.








And, look how cool it looks on the shelf.









In case you were wondering, I’ve only gotten this far on the scarf.
Is it taking me a ridiculously long time to knit a simple scarf because I am insanely bored by it or can I blame the hippies?


*I had actually never heard the term “intentional community” before meeting Dina and Robert and therefore can not tell you if it is a synonym for “commune”, just the H.C. (hippy-correct) term, or something completely different.

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