One of my novels is about a girl who lived in the Haight-Ashbury during the sixties, so I regularly do research on everything having to do with the hippie movement. The novel, Far Out: The Journey to Oblivion…, is one I intend to revise during the next year or two. I wrote it in 2004.

Here are some things I’ve learned through my research, added to personal recollections and perspectives:

The hippie movement started in the Haight in the early to mid-sixties. (We who have been associated with that location generally say Haight rather than Haight-Ashbury District.) At that time many young people moved into the neighborhood because it provided cheap rental opportunities. A college student could rent a room in a flat there for $25. Because so many young people gravitated to the area, a community spirit came into being that included community newspapers and other shared creative experiences.

The movement was, at its inception, a creative movement. The spark of creativity sent showers of bright brilliance into the hearts and minds of hundreds of young adults there, causing artists, musicians, writers and others to be empowered to bring forth amazing creative works in a massive inner-community sharing. This light was seen by others, and many were attracted to it. At that time the movement was still young and pure.

Then the media got hold of the story. They degraded the movement by emphasizing the role of drugs (marijuana and hallucinogenics) and free-love (promiscuous sex). Plus the message of “love everyone” was added to the media version of what the Haight was about. All this served to attract thousands of young people from around the country, who flooded the neighborhood in search of. . . . something. Perhaps some came for the drugs, others for sex, others for the joy of participating in a movement where everyone was loved and shared love. But while they enjoyed the creative works of the founders of this revolution in human thought, they did not, for the most part, share or understand the creative spark that got it started.

I was one of those that found the Haight after it had already been changed by the media. At the time I was a teenager living across the Bay, in Richmond. My father always subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle so I had access to all the early articles that brought attention to the neighborhood. At some point in early ‘67 our family drove through the Haight just to see what it was like. There were thousands of young people milling about on the streets, newspapers being sold, and other than that, I mainly remember the outlandish clothing and happy faces. Later that year a friend of mine wanted to cut school for the day and go to the Haight, and I agreed to go with her. It was a memorable day, and more of the same. I thought it was all beautiful; I saw no fault with it - but I was only fifteen that year and couldn’t remain a part of it.

My recent research revealed that at one point all the marijuana and LSD became unavailable for a few weeks, and then heroin flooded the area. It must have been intentionally done, by someone, somehow, for some reason… to further destroy and degrade the movement. Most of the people who started the movement were long gone - often to communes where they could continue what they’d started and live in peace with people who shared their values.

Only a few years later I was 18 and moved to the Haight after spending the summer working in a cannery in Santa Cruz. I met the man who would become my first husband the night I got there, and later we lived together in a room at the back of a flat at 1649 Page Street. That was on a block that was one of four that surrounded the infamous intersection of Haight Street with Ashbury Street.

By the time I moved there in 1971, the Haight-Ashbury was dead. Most of the happy faces were gone and a few distressed-looking drugged out street people remained. The head shops and poster stores were all boarded up. Only the Masonic Cafe survived at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and down the street there was a small store selling handmade soaps. Compared to what it once was, the neighborhood was depressing! A saving grace was the proximity to Golden Gate Park, and that’s where we spent a large part of our time. The park was and is a magical, joyful place.

Years later I watched The Beatles Anthology and heard George Harrison make a disparaging comment about the “dirty” street people he’d seen during his one visit to the Haight-Ashbury when it was in full bloom. A few days ago I mentioned this to a high school friend who said he’d literally bumped into George while he was there. I was surprised my buddy agreed with George’s assessment, since I tended to see only the beautiful aspects of what was happening, and ignore the negatives. So I’ve done some analysis of what those comments are based on. I believe George was looking for spiritual enlightenment within the Haight’s community, and that he arrived way too late. He may have sought out that original creative spark that motivated the early artists and musicians, but instead found the massive assault of wannabes who flooded the area looking for cheap thrills and that ever-elusive “something”, and love.

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My last article in this blog (Be God-Like; Create Beauty) may have come off a bit religious-sounding, but it wasn’t meant to be religious… as a matter of fact, my spiritual understanding of the universe is nothing like any organized or formal religion I’m aware of. I wrote that in a moment of cosmic consciousness … in my notebook, right before going to sleep the night before. It was something I felt so strongly I wanted to share it with all of you - and it served another purpose in getting me to write in my blog again, something I hadn’t done since I finished my last NaNoWriMo novel in November. Maybe that was MY creative spark. It felt like a writing epiphany… and though I may not see “God” as being the same thing many religious people believe He is… I do remain a believer in the Great Spirit as the supreme creative conscious force bringing benevolent joy into our lives.

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My character in Far Out: The Journey To Oblivion… is a 100% fictional teenage girl who lived near where I lived in the East Bay Area. Though her life is far different than mine was, I drew on my personal experiences of having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s. A lot of what my fictional character experiences in the novel may be my wild fantasies of how I wish things had been for me. Other parts of the novel would have been a nightmare for anyone… but that’s the way it is for fictional characters. You have to make them suffer to make them interesting at all.

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I’d like to hear from others who experienced the Haight-Ashbury and who have additional information or opinions they may want to share, whether they agree with or differ from mine. Please write to me by leaving a comment to this post, or by using the ‘contact’ link in the left-side column of this blog. I like blog comments better so please do that unless you need the privacy of an email.

After channeling my energy through the NaNoWriMo grinder this month, I’ve come out with a fairly good first draft to add to my Antediluvian Adventures series. The novel, The Valekan Migration, is the fourth in the series and brings some closure to Maralin’s story, and Raoli’s, since he makes an appearance in this novel too. I’m still working on the ending. Currently I’m in Chapter 21, my characters are working as healers in Valeka during a battle, and the word count stands at 53405.

I made this banner to inspire my writing this year:

Here’s are eight links for writing sites I’ve visited during the past week:

The Writers Chatroom hosts two chats each week. On Sunday you’ll find writers chatting there at 7pm Eastern Time. Here in California, that’s 4pm Pacific Time. The Sunday chat is moderated as there are guest speakers. The second chat takes place on Wednesday from 8pm to 11pm Eastern time, or here on the West Coast, 5pm to 8pm Pacific Time. This is an open chat. Sounds like fun! You might see me there with the screen name, LindaJM, or LindaJo, or something similar. If not, you’ll surely find me on their forum as I’ve been posting there the last couple of days and plan to make it a regular thing.

The Copperfield Review is a quarterly journal for writers of historical fiction. They are currently accepting submissions, and are especially interested in getting non-fiction articles including interviews with writers of historical fiction, essays pertaining to the writing life and historical fiction, and history-related creative non-fiction. There’s also poetry and fiction in the journal. I read quite a bit of The Copperfield Review earlier today and love it. Great stuff!

Forward Motion is a huge writing community for novelists. There’s a heavy fantasy/scifi population there, but all novelists will find it a very helpful and welcoming site. I noticed today the schedule for writing and edit marathons for the rest of the year has been posted. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of these marathons, and recommend them. There’s also a lot of support for NaNoWriMo writers, and critiques are available. It’s a pretty impressive place.

2nd Annual Golden Coffee Cup - Now suppose you are a die-hard anti-NaNoWriMo writer. Perhaps your writing style doesn’t allow for writing 50,000 words in one month, or you think it is silly, or you just don’t want to suffer that much. Well, there’s an alternative for November: The Golden Coffee Cup competition. Good luck to all who enter!

NaNoWriMo - In case you are one of those people who still don’t have any idea what NaNoWriMo is, I’m putting this link here. I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo for the last six years. This November will be my seventh journey into novelist insanity. You can see my collection of NaNoWriMo awards here. I recommend it to anyone interested in having fun and writing a novel at the same time. Though a blog I read today inferred that NaNoWriMo writers produce only “incomprehensible words” - I can attest that this isn’t always so. I think my NaNoWriMo novels are worthy of eventual publication, even though some of them are still first drafts and will require a lot more work before I could submit them anywhere. Many authors prefer to write their novels quickly. Whatever works is best, don’t you think?

The 2008 Muse Online Writing Conference is a mailing list at Yahoo. This link is for those of you who missed the recent online conference in October 2007, or for anyone else who isn’t aware of this mailing list. The conference organizer will be sending messages through this list to keep us aware of conference sign-ups and other vital information. The conference is free, and requires only a time commitment. And here’s a secret I’ve been saving to share with you. I’m planning to be one of the presenters there next year. More on this and my topic some other time.

Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Chat Board - This is Verla Kay’s very active and helpful message board for writers of children’s literature. I’ve been posting over there for a few days now, ever since I discovered I’m reconnected to the system. It is a great place to meet new friends and get feedback on all your questions about writing or illustrating for children.

WeBook is an amazing new website where you can contribute your writing and get thoughtful, helpful suggestions on short stories and nano stories (200 words or less). Four advisors who are qualified, talented writers themselves, staff the site. It is a bit like a free writing school where you can find out what works and what doesn’t. You can participate in writing collaborative novels, read posted novels, or contribute novel ideas. The site owners plan to have the novels and stories printed, so you might get your work into a book! It is in Beta testing now and fairly new so currently membership is by invitation only. I have 40 invitations, so leave a message here if you want me to email you one. I think this is a great way for new writers to get lots of productive writing practice.

So that’s it for my writing link roundup this week. I’ll be posting something similar about a week from now.

Perspectives on Writing has a new design, thanks to two people who motivated me to change things.

The first person I want to thank is Nancy Cavanaugh, owner and editor of Fandangle Magazine, an online magazine for children. She kindly wrote to tell me my website colors were all wrong. At first, I didn’t believe her.

I’d had the same colors on this site since 2001. Coral and white. And I thought everything was peachy-keen. But Nancy was looking at the site with Internet Explorer, a browser I don’t normally use. I was looking at it with Firefox, and I had all white-space where the blog text was. Nancy didn’t, and was probably wondering why anyone would want a blog with such a dark background obliterating the text.

A few months ago I redesigned seven blogs within the space of a month. This was one of them. At that time I kept my coral and white colors, but installed a WordPress blog (this one) on what used to be a static page. Apparently I didn’t think to check this particular site in Internet Explorer, or I would have seen the problem and fixed it then.

Yesterday I went to our local computer center, which is a gift to the community from the Karuk Tribe. (I live in a tribally dominated small town in a forest.) I was there to visit with and train the woman I recently sold Happy Camp News to. While I was using one of their computers, which provide only Internet Explorer for browsing, I happened to drift to this site, and was aghast to see the dark coral all over the page where the text was. I’m a long-time lover of white space on websites, so it suddenly hit home as to why Nancy had emailed me telling me my colors needed fixing!

THANK YOU NANCY!!!

Later that evening I showed my boyfriend, Bob, the site, and told him my story about Nancy’s email and how grateful I was for her kindness in sending it. He looked at the site I was starting to redesign, and said, “Get rid of the pink!” I started to protest. My site has always been that color. He said it looked terrible. “Get rid of it tonight,” he said.

I hate to admit it but Bob is usually right. He will never bother reading this so I think it is safe to tell you this here.

I changed the colors, and decided to use the photographs you see at the top of each page. They are very special photographs, to me. The blue photo which is the background for the banner is the view from the top of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. What an inspiring perspective that is! It looks out over the Trinity Alps and the Marble Mountain Wilderness. The small photo in the corner is a closeup of Mt. Shasta itself, featuring an orange butterfly drinking near a spring high on the mountainside. Best water in the world, according to Bob. He’s been around the world a few times so I think he should know.

THANK YOU BOB, for inspiring me to do something different with the site. (Just in case he ever reads this.)