Why I’m still a hippie (at 73)

I have a poster that hangs above my cuckoo clock that says, “Assuming I was just an old lady was your first mistake.” There is a sketch of a young woman with long flowing hair, draped in beaded necklaces and bracelets, wearing John Lennon round-rimmed rose-colored sunglasses and a silver bandanna around her forehead.

My cousin gave it to me a few months ago.  She said, “this reminds me of you, Melinda.” Indeed, I am an old lady at the age of 73, but if ever there was a need for me to conjure up my hippie dippy essence, it would be now. 

Hippie kids like me were galvanized by our opposition to the Vietnam War. We experimented with drugs and directly faced-off against our parents’ materialistic, straight and conservative lifestyles. Many of us adopted vegetarian diets, joined communes where we cohabitated with others of like minds, dropped out of school, joined militant organizations and were fearless in using our collective power to change society.

We understood that racial injustice was wrong, that a woman’s body was her own to control, that wearing a bra was not necessary and we healed ourselves using holistic and plant-based concoctions. We grew out our hair and stopped shaving, bathing and using deodorant. We needed to smell true to ourselves.

Most of us were non-violent and aspired to believe that God was Nature and vice versa. We now had permission to be sexual with whomever we chose without any emotional entanglement. Free love was rampant, and we more often than not had fast and furious hot sex with someone we did not know. Many a goodbye started with “Oh, by the way, what is your name?”

We experimented with various religions from the East and followed enlightened teachers like the Rinpoche. We began to do yoga and Transcendental Meditation and listen to Ravi Shankar. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Who, the Beatles, the Stones, Jefferson Airplane rocked our activism. No music since Mozart and Beethoven has gripped humanity like our generation’s rock & roll.

We were, indeed, a gorgeous, albeit motley and “who gives a shit what you think” generation.

So why am I still a hippie today at the age of 73?

Because our generation delivered Roe v Wade in 1972 to only have it reversed in June 2022. Fifty years of reproductive freedom gone in a blink and a nod.  Because our generation brought us Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and yet today our planet is becoming uninhabitable for human life. Because our generation brought us civil rights, and yet the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action were just stuck down. Because our country’s democratic rule of law and constitutional guarantees of freedom and liberty are under attack, and authoritarianism is entrenched in our politics.

Sure, the majority of our generation was absorbed into mainstream society. But I’m still a hippie because I still fight for transformational justice, equal rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. I write commentaries, testify in the legislature and organize rallies and events of political and social consequence.

I still eat mostly vegetarian, but now I also embrace 100-percent organic, pasture-raised, free-range, no antibiotics or hormones, no GMOs and locally grown.

I do it my way—the hippie way.

In 1968, those who were considered hippies represented just under 0.2 percent of the U.S. population yet our impact was monumental. We had tremendous influence on our times and can still.

My beloved state of Vermont is about to pass a bill that will allow the medicinal use and legal distribution of psilocybin mushrooms. Pot has been legalized across the country.

In the next thirty years, most of us hippies will be dead. Keeping with our traditions, we will choose an environmental back-to-the-earth burial swathed in white linen, laid directly in the ground, with a red oak sapling planted above us to be nurtured by our remains. We are back-to-the-earthers, and our deaths will, no doubt, be our last vestige of hippie activism.

I am not sure how we will leave this planet for our children and their children’s children. The hippie movement was one that tried like hell to create a different way for humans to live that protected all living creatures and the planet.

I believe our youth are ready to pick up the mantle and perhaps make what we aspired to create a reality for their futures. It’s the hippie way.

So, here’s to peace and love and, if you are so inclined, free sex.