Hey Mom, what's a hippie?

Seeing as I spent the better part of eight years looking something like this (sans the mustache and mis-matched socks... I was doing a 1970's impression of my father in this photo):

smelling like this:

working with grassroots organizations like this (which I still work with):

and having legs as hairy as house wife from southern France, I felt like I should be able to answer this question. I wanted to talk to her about ideals and freedom, but she'd just gotten out of the DARE program where an older police officer had used the term hippie loosely in a phrase which Booboo quoted as, "You know, he said there's hippies and crack heads and they're bad people we don't want to be like."

Whoa, bad people?

Instead of informing our youth about historical movements and explaining addiction, the DARE program just pulls a Mr. Mackey and says, "It's bad, mmmmkay." Let's take a moment and think of some of these "bad people"...

Notable Hippies: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mitch Kapor, Lee Felsenstein, all of whom had major impacts on the developments of computer technology; George Carlin (comedian),  Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagoina), not to mention the long list of some of the most notable musicians, authors, activists, and artists to come out of the U.S.

Notable addicts: Whitney Houston (singer), Ulysses S. Grant (18th president), Eric Clapton (musician), Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner (writers), Betty Ford (first lady 1974-1977), also not to mention the long list of some of the most notable musicians, authors, and artists to come out of the U.S.

I don't think these lists are lists of "bad people," these are people who have helped shape the world as we know it. Without Steve Jobs, would technology have developed as it has? Without Ulysses S. Grant, would the North sill have won the Civil War? Without Betty Ford, would women's health issues and issues related to drug and alcohol abuse have been brought, so candidly, to the national spotlight?

I think we owe it to our children and to ourselves to be truthful and not to engage in fear mongering and disinformation.

Inform them, make them knowledgeable, help them seek the truth for themselves so that they can shape the world when we are gone, it's their turn next.