The glory days of pot, the glories of librarianship

[Jules Siegel]

At 12:15 AM 07/5/97 GMT, pic at gn.apc.org (Mike Weaver) wrote:
>Peter Giordano wrote
>> but the idea of  a gaggle of urban Robin Hoods is merely
>>myth (alas)
>
>On that note check out 'Ringolevio' by Emmett Grogan. It is a strange book,
>but the third part covering 66-69 in the San Francisco scene is salutory
>reading.  Grogan and others (incl Peter Coyote the actor) formed the
>Diggers.  Hip political and community activists, propagandists, agit prop
>thespians,  they  were clearly a vital part of what went on and as near to
>yr urban Robin Hoods as you are likely to get.

You are so right about this it hurts to read it. I remember the unbelievable
feeling of the Summer of Love being crashed by a half-wit named Groovey
murdering some kids who were trying to score speed in the East Village. Then
Chester Anderson's broadside on death walking the Haight. Pynchon writes
about this aspect almost to the exclusion of all else.

The Chinese House was no myth and neither was the Hog Farm, nor were the
Diggers when they baked hundreds of loaves of bread a day and gave it away.
I ate plenty of Digger bread when I lived at the Chinese House because there
were many days when it was all we had to eat. It wasn't all agitprop. That
was the least of it. It was people caring for people by giving of themselves
to feed and comfort them.

I knew plenty of Robin Hoods, urban and otherwise. Some of them later became
cocaine gangsters. Others retired from the whole crazy struggle. But to say
that they were a myth is just ignorant and cruel.


--Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm