San Francisco’s Urgent Echos

What era in American History most reminds you of what’s happening now both within country and abroad?

How did you react to the President’s Saturday night decision to go ahead with American bombing of Iran?

“When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies. Don’t you want somebody to love? “ (Jefferson Airplane , 1967 – see link below)

https://youtu.be/a-C9pUGszsw?si=N1asVJ-PxhD2M7VO

During last week’s “No King’s Protest”, I kept flashing back to our most recent road trip visit to San Francisco (SF ) with the turbulent era of the late 1960s in America coming vividly to mind. Notably I was not reminiscing about Bay Area counterculture events in those times at such highly publicized places as Haight Ashbury, Berkeley, and Golden Gate Park. Nor did I wish to return to my teaching days when I prepared my American History students to remember testing material about the Vietnam War protests and Civil Rights disorders happening in cities then. Instead I felt intense interest in an innovative pop art exhibit I saw at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that vividly depicted such historic rebellions of social and political issues in conjunction with a colorful psychedelic setting appropriate to that time period.

Keep in mind, I’ve never considered myself a “hippie” gone wild who savored free love, drug use, and mainstream societal disengagement. Thus over a half century later, I simply desire to retain my legal rights and earned freedoms of an American citizen as our democracy crumbles now before my eyes. In particular, I am most interested in how late 1960s counterculture provides me with rational ideas for such useful action focus now. So in giving  consideration to such a purposeful  mindset, I present a few of those relevant SF museum images in the photo series below.

Source Material:

https://www.sfmoma.org/