It is the one of some anti war Vietnam protest, one guy is placing flowers in the barrels of the national guards in formation.
A college student and a probable hippie. In retrospective, this photo is significant when one considers the amount of current wars against dictators, for 'freedom' or the drug multinational exporters.
Now a days it would very difficult to protest as in the past, since you will probably blow up in pieces if in the desert of Islam dominated regions.
Hippies were also great fans of sex and promiscuity, loud rock/blues/country music, opened to new trends in religion, music and everything else. Lesbians, hostile and not so, came out, in addition to gays. Both are somewhat tolerated in some circles 5 decades later, but not everywhere or all the time, same as the other significant group from those days, negros...
Drugs of all types were also part of the scene, allowing the 'flow of consciousness' to be free from the stress and responsibilities that society, family and state had imposed upon individuals in the USA, but also in the rest of the world.
In my view, hippies made possible a critical change in our eating habits, diet, food production, packing and canning, and intrinsically related environmental issues as fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
Which brings me to television. There is an obscene weekly show, MAN VS FOOD. Our hero, travels around USA to find food joints of dubious quality where the fun and challenge is to eat obscene amounts of food disgusting concoctions averaging 5 pounds in an hour.
Forget the amount of fat, calories and such. What could make you vomit is the amount of morbid fat watching the happening with families and plenty of children, clapping, encouraging this retarded, disgusting glorifying tribute to gluttony.
What would people say if instead, some stigmatized anorexics/bulimics are shown emaciated to see who gets the concentration camp, Biafra looks faster, while the white trailer trash clap with those stupid imbecilic smiles?
It seems that TV people in USA are incapable of creating television with some purpose other than cheap, tacky, trailer trash fun. There are not many gardening shows, however there are plenty about people buying junk in storage facilities, traveling antique pickers, bickering white and black bitches from FL or CA, chefs and pastry chefs, swamp people, gold mines, lumberjacks, driving in dangerous roads over ice or third world roads.
If you depend on television to kill spare time, good luck..I will stick to horticulture. Flower power, clean and useful fun for flora/fauna/people. And some occasional butt kicking....to stay in shape...
You are right-on about US television, politics, celebs, etc. Horticulture so much better, especially once one "digs deeper" than a pretty plant pic or parroting false information!
ReplyDeleteButt-kicking fun, too.