Moved into a home in North Miami to experiment with communal living with Dianne Arias, Robin Lane, Mike Nadioka, Kelly Daughitt, etc. We made candles and sold Shaklee all natural organic products for an income (not a good income) and called ourselves “The Children’s Commune” to reflect our outlook on life as Flower Children, and to try living in harmony with a group of people with idealistic outlooks so common in the Hippie Era.
Continuing with experimenting with the different lifestyles of the Hippie generation Dianne and I decided to get back to nature so we moved into a tent on a 360 acre orange tree grove in Davie, Florida. We made a one acre organic garden, sold the organic oranges to a food co-op in Coconut Grove (gas was very inexpensive back than) and I picked oranges for my main income ($1.00 a bushel) and mowed the orange groves with the tractor mower which I though was really cool and it was a blast doing.
Dianne’s sister Suzanne and her husband Roger McCarthy (a Norland graduate from the class of 68, and fellow gymnast from the Norland gymnastic team) moved to the orange grove and lived in their school bus converted into a hippie home on wheels with their two young children Brian and Deanna. Now we were living the “Back to Nature” lifestyle. We read the “The Mother Earth News” and “The Whole Earth Catalog” in preparation for buying our own land one day, and were all vegetarians at this time.
“Hippie” by Barry Miles–1971 – In 1971 Jim Morrison joined Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in the roll-call for rock ‘n’ roll superhero deaths. Frank Zappa almost joined the list when a crazed fan threw him from the stage ten feet into the orchestra pit, knocking him unconscious. Zappa described his injuries: “I had a hole put in the back of my skull, twisted my neck, broke my wrist and leg. I was in a wheel chair for nine months and off the road for over a year.” His voice dropped an octave as a result. The two main venues to showcase underground rock-bill Graham’s Fillmore East and Fillmore West-closed their doors this year, and “rock” as it was now called became increasingly a business rather than a calling. On 30 March, the Rolling Stones gave a huge party in London before moving to the French Riviera as tax exiles, once and for all removed from the everyday cards of life.
On a more positive note, 50,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park for the 1971 Earth Day and the ringing of the United Nations Peace Bell to announce Spring received worldwide attention And the hippies? The few hardcore ones left were mostly living in country communes. Many of their ideas had spread into the general community: vegetarianism, organic food, home-made bread. The consumer side of the movement caught on fast in America as people saw the value in the return to healthy living. Similarly, by the early 70s, most towns now had a yoga center, and possibly even a meditation center of some sort. By 1971 even politicians were wearing their hair down to the collar. From “Wikipedia” – Another influence from the world of American publishing was the unprecedented, vigorous, and intelligent Whole Earth Catalogs. Stewart Brand and a circle of friends and family began the effort in 1968, because Brand believed that there was a groundswell of biologists, designers, engineers, sociologists, organic farmers, and social experimenters who wished to transform civilization along lines that might be called “sustainable.” Brand and cohorts created a catalog of “tools” – defined broadly to include useful books, design aids, maps, gardening implements, carpentry and masonry tools, metalworking equipment, and a great deal more.
Another important publication was The Mother Earth News, a periodical (originally on newsprint) that was founded a couple years after the Catalog. Ultimately gaining a large circulation, the magazine was focused on how-to articles, personal stories of successful and budding homesteaders, interviews with key thinkers, and the like. The magazine stated its philosophy was based on returning to people a greater measure of control of their own lives.
Many of the North American back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 1970s made use of the Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalogs and derivative publications. But as time went on, the movement itself drew more people into it, more or less independently of impetus from the publishing world.