i dont know if this is really cool, or involuntary child abuse, but when i was 14 i found a sheet of acid in my house. yes, of course i took some. but for sure the best thing about having hippie parents is growing up with homecooked meals. never anything frozen, or store bought. we made our own bread, yogurt, granola, almond milk, etc. now as a result i love to cook, from scratch. organic of course.

The coolest part of having hippy parents was all the creativity, we were always doing something extremly creative and all the kids would be involved, encouraged and taught. I think that is something that has been lost over with the newer generation.

I was encouraged to be a free spirit.

"Hey, mom, I'm going to Mississippi for I-don't-know-how-long with two guys I just met to celebrate my 15th birthday! I'll see ya!"

"Okay, Hon. Wear sunblock."

I don't know if this is cool or dorky, but my mom, a folk musician, trained me and my sibilings to sing in harmony together. At Christmas time, we went around the neighborhood singing for cookies in coordinating homemade coats. Who can resist singing coordinating kids? No one. That's who.

We loved doing it because people handed out "good cookies" instead of nasty dry organic ones.

My Mom always made us the coolest costumes for Halloween, we always won the costume contest at sschool, she put so much time and effort into them I'll always appreciate that. It's the little things like that that make me appreciated my Mom....another one of my favs was she used to take us to the Ren Faire, since I loved reading fantasy at that age it was glorious...my Dad used to take us back stage at the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Santana and many other shows of the day, it seemed like everyone new him.....

I think the coolest thing about having hippie parents was the fact that my friends and I could smoke a joint with my mother and hang out with her as a friend. She gave hope and help to a lot of my friends when their parents failed them. She really made a difference in a lot of people's lives because she embraced the idea that people are important, which is the best thing to come out of the whole hippie trip.

The coolest thing about hippie parents is having a family that makes my friends jealous. :) Who else gets but children of hippies to go home and get stoned with the folks at Christmas?

it has to be reading a book & finding people i knew as a child in it.

either that or being driven to the whisky a go go & the masque, as well as being picked up, by my mother in her creme colored cadillac.

sometimes people have to read that sentence again.

oh, i did see the kinks & the pretty things at the santa monica civic w/ my mother in about 1974.

howsabout my mother telling me that premarital sex was okay, just make sure you love the person.

oh, then it all turned sad.

i always end up writing 2ce, i am sorry, b/c there is always something i forgot.

my parents, oddly (VERY oddly), were not dopesmokers, although nearly everyone they knew were. instead they were EXTREMELY political & as for singing (my mother also sang folk, my parents both sang opera, that is how they met & she had to choose between being a pianist & a psychoanalyst) we sang every leftist song known to humankind. the tribe for this is =very= inactive, but if anyone besides me remembers "union maid" or "the banks are made of marble" (which i thought, until i was an adult, meant -river- banks. from shore to shining shore) all around the piano, which my father had painted orange.

as for costumes, my grandfather was an iww (thank you very much) tailor & he made them. & they were FANTASTIC. & i still have a couple. & he also made me clothing-- once i wanted a leather jacket type thing made out of velour & he made me that. & either he, or he & i, made me a pink satin cheongsam (probably spelled wrong).

i want life to come back. all of the abovenoted have crossed over the rainbow bridge, along w/ my hedgehog. sometimes when i think of the rainbow bridge i cry; other times i think that there better be someone in heaven w/ a lot of cleanser & scrubber sponges to be cleaning off that bridge as the pets walk over it.

Well, I hope it is OK to post here....

But I'm the Mom... I raised 5 kids...

1. graduated with a degree in political science(??and thought she could change the world that way)

2. Graduated with a degree in Environmental Planning(!!! blew the whistle on an employer polluter who was an environmental cruise line!!!)...

3. Hated college, had kids, got married(in that order) is now the owner of 5 business and voted the best in her town!!! woo hoo,

4. Didn't go to college. hated high school. Did his first summer of festivals, on after the other, at age 14...scary...is an amazing organizer

5. Didn't go to college, hated high school, lives on a mountain and is expecting his first child soon...

They are wonderful people, who somehow managed to "survive" the tie dye parties, moving from one intentional community to another, voluntary peasanthood, skinny dipping on a hot summer day, helping grind soy beans for the 20 gallons we made a week, gardening, canning and freezing, attending weddings, funerals and birthings as a part or ordinary extra-ordinary life...

Saturday I am at the door as the "entreprenar" brings Drew Emmitt to her home town...pretty special...if ya love LOS... Tonight I am preparing to create a stage curtain sized tye dye for the next show...eagerly awaiting the Hot Buttered RUm's return!!

when i was a child, we lived in this old, rundown plantation house. one room was dedicated to my cardboard toys. moving boxes that i could build walls and forts out of, life size cutout people my mom would make, and a spaceship.

adolesence was horrible, but now i think my 'rents are cooler than %99 of the people i meet my age. they smoke up and appreciate house music and consider peak oil something worth thinking about.

Growing up in Hawaii and haveing a house built out of an old dojo, telling us movies with sex were cool but ones with violence were not,saying we could smoke dope just not out of moms jar and on my 12th b day an 8th and a bottle of champaine.

The coolest things:
My mother saw fit to teach me everything she knows. As a result, im able to show other people. Im proud to be able to give to my community, and loved ones, and continue the circle.
My father made all my toys for me, carved them out of wood and dyed them. My favorite one was a whale, with a hallow tummy, and a small hole, so when you pushed it under water, air bubbles came out the top, like a blow hole.
My mother has a great sense of awareness, and always talked to me openly about how she lives life.
My father tried plays records day and night, and we always have music. My father took me to concerts every night and held me on his shoulders.
My father taught me to bake bread, cook up a damn good vegan meal, from things around me.
Im so proud of them.

1. The never told me how to dress, and didn't freak out when I got my ear peirced and got my tattoo.

2. They judged my friends by how they treated me, not what they looked like, what color they were, or how much money their parents made.

3. They encouraged me to be an independant thinker and to question anything that didn't make sense.

4. They encouraged me to read and disuaded me from watching TV.

5. They gave me a REALISTIC veiw of American History, based on the America that WAS, not the America we'd been.

6. They encouraged to challenge arbitrary authority.

7. They taught me to judge people on CONDUCT, not apperence or speech.

8. They respected my right to my own opinion, even when we disagreed.

9. They looked for Experimental Learning Programs for me to go to rather than regular Public Schools whenever possible.

10. They let me curse like a sailor from about 10 on, provided I didn't do so in front of Teachers, Grand Parents, and other Grown Ups.

11. My Mom got me my first Punk Haircut, undertsanding that it was the NEW Counter Culture.

12. They taught me to respect Working People and have contempt for The Man.

A lot of these over lap, and this list is FAR from complete. Still, it was a unique way to grow up, and I AM grateful, even though there were a few flaws we won't get into right here. I do have one quick anecdote that sums up my Mom to a TEE.

A neighbor woman knocked on our door at Married Student Housing in Denver, and in a PANICKED tone, informed my Mom that her daughter, My Sister Meagan, was at the TOP of the sliding board! OH NO! My Mom stepped outside, got a good luck, made eye contact with my Sister, raised her fist in the air, and said, "RIGHT ON, Meagan!" Our neighbor slunk away in total horror. Meanwhile, my sister is TOP Executive for a Cable Company, widely respected by a force of nothing BUT Male Technicians...

the coolest thing about hippie parents is going home all growed up having experienced a lot, played with babylon, made my own choices and and realizing thats the way they raised me, the right way, the way i fight so hard to live on my own is the way they consciously sought to raise me. thanks mama and papa. teaching and learning from each other in a beautiful way.