Friday, June 26, 2009

As Long as We are Wandering off into Hippie Nostalgia


Behold, my first column for the late and completely unlamented underground newspaper, The Word, dated June 23, 1971. Even then, I was a social activist -- and funny -- which you can see if you click on the image and enlarge it enough to read the text ...

My official title by the by, was Staff Cartoonist and Resident Cynic, the latter of which I thought a base canard. What, me cynical?

2 comments:

Dojo Rat said...

Now you got that Lay Down song by Melanie going through my head. I can't quite hear all the lyrics, I might have to look them up. The story of the origin was good also.

Steve Perry said...

Yeah, that's the problem with research -- one thing leads to another. For years, I had spelling'on reference book on my desk, because if I had to stop and look up the correct spelling of word of which I wasn't sure in a dictionary, I'd get hung up in the book. Oh, look, I didn't know that's what that word meant! Or, Hmm, I wonder what the antonym is, and where it came from?

Now, I have a dictionary program on the computer, all I have to do is type in enough to get vaguely close, and a list of possible choices pop up, I can highlight the one I want and copy it, then paste it into the document upon which I am working.

Looking for the backstory on the Melanie song led me to Woodstock, then to the Celebration of LIfe, which caused me to dig out the old copy of the paper for which I used to write. LIke that old PBS series Connections, once you get started, it's hard to stop.