Subj : Re: New to this
To   : Adept
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Sat Apr 26 2025 08:53 pm

-=> Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

 Ad> Also, "LUG" sounds like a... questionable term that dismisses young
 Ad> women's experiences as being a "fad". So I'd be wary on using it unless
 Ad> you were one of the women describing herself.

Context, context - San Francisco in the mid-80s was a different time, a
different place. And we were 20-something kids, all of us learning who
we were in their own ways. What I described as a memory of those times
should not be construed as a peek into my outlook today.

What those times taught me now as a rapidly-approaching 60 year old man
is that whatever you do is your own business, and it doesn't really
affect me. When you learn that the only thing you truly have under your
own control are your own choices life becomes *much* easier. Combine
with an environment where you're free to experiment to fulfill creative
desires and you have a magical combination.

San Francisco was a magical place back then. I feel like I just caught
the tail-end of an accepting, open, creative era that changed shortly
afterwards.

Hunter S. Thompson described the sixties in San Francisco thusly:

  "It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak
  that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very
  special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe
  not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or
  memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive
  in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...

  There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks
  anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were
  doing was right, that we were winning...

  And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory
  over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
  didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in
  fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were
  riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

  So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las
  Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see
  the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke, and
  rolled back."

I'd say I caught one of those little afterwaves that get your calves wet
by comparison. But, I'm glad I was there.


 
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