Updated: Some of you got it; Michael Hebb. Here’s the whole thing:
one pot + bumbershoot = you make dinner (I am tired and my feet hurt)
by luck or coincidence I have convinced a large handful of people across the globe to help me make dinner. and if you are so inclined – then I urge you to make some dinner as well. someone is making dinner in prague, someone is eating on the steps of the plaza de las tres culturas in mexico city, and someone is doing something of the sort in new delhi. the more the merrier.
the idea is this:
I will be at bumbershoot this year in one of the large cascade room galleries. transforming the drab space into a well appointed dining hall – and inviting you (and the people at the bumbershoot festival and all of the writers, musicians and artists that make bumbershoot the largest art/music happening in the northwest) to the table. the topic of conversation?…
1968. a year that saw an unprecedented amount of global unrest. why focus on 1968? because 40 years later people have all but forgotten the events of that fateful year and the ideas that rang in the streets then now seem as foreign as eating dog. so I urge you (yes repeated) to find an evening in the next month – bring a few people (or many) around a table and spend part of the evening (or morning) considering the 40 year anniversary and its legacy. (i don’t care if you weren’t born yet – i wasn’t either)
and better yet send me some footage of the event. the footage should be unprofessional, decidedly shaky, and doesn’t even need audio. your dinner will join the footage of the people dining elsewhere. and if you have a friend in a city or town that saw some serious ’68 action, urge them to do the same. I need something to happen in paris and chicago and buenos aires.
so to recap – one pot will be at bumbershoot on labor day taking up residence – you should come. and I am also looking for people to host dinners pre-labor-day – and send me the footage. I know I am not the best at conveying clear ideas.
and I also need some lovely extra hands at the festival. people to chop, people to edit film footage, people to make the thing remarkable. we already have a nice group – I just want more. always.
Well, it wasn’t you since you’re older than me. I remember ’68 quite well since I was probably the only 8 year old in Scotland that had a TV in their bedroom and I got it so I could watch the Mexican Olympics rather than wake my parents up in the middle of the night, and I was just glued to it. Slightly confused about Paris and Chicago though – wasn’t it Lyon and Detroit and Buenos Aries that lost out when the Olympics went to Mexico City? I remember there was a lot of violence and unrest. Hundreds of demonstrators were shot, and it all went off fine in the end.
1968 was also when they devalued sterling and my candy cost more now I think about it. And then we got screwed again in 1971 when our currency went decimal. Even at that age we were kicking up hell in the shops about the old days when we used to get 244 penny chews for a pound and that went down to 100 overnight. They caved under pint sized pressure though; it soon became 2 for a new penny.
I’m lost – you’re a food blog. I’m sure food prices were probably getting silly back then as well.
Al Gore or George Bush?
I found the posting to have rather tortured syntax, and it was hard to understand exactly what was being requested.
I suppose many people who weren’t alive in that era harbor nostalgia for the time. As someone who WAS there, and participated in a wee bit of the “global unrest”, let me point out that the air was also choked with smog (no air pollution laws), jaw-dropping misogyny reigned (no equal rights laws, either), and racism against people of color was socially accepted, not a crime. Oh, and speaking of crime, if you were gay, you could be arrested for this “crime” and do time in jail. Don’t forget being drafted to fight in Vietnam–lots o’ fun there. My husband narrowly avoided combat by volunteering for the Navy, and losing four years of his young life to that. At least he didn’t get killed.
If ideas “rang in the streets” it’s because things were pretty goddamn awful for a large segment of the population. If today we had to face the same circumstances, I predict all hell would break loose. True, with the idiot chimp running the country into the ground, it looks grim, but at least we have SOME protection under the law. At least for now.
Remind me why this is posted in a food and drink website?
Hmm. I find the piece cheesy, misguided, and wrongheaded. My guess is Michael Hebb.
Ditto on JasonWax’s guess. The lack of capitalization seems to be a clue as well. And Hebb’s fixation with Gore Vidal who fought with Wm. F. Buckley at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
JasonWax is correct. I posted the entire thing. What I’m doing on this email list, I have no idea, but they are always enjoyable reads – for one reason or another.
Maybe I’ll have a meeting at Beast and send him some footage. I’m sure he’d enjoy that.
“and better yet send me some footage of the event. the footage should be unprofessional, decidedly shaky, and doesn’t even need audio.”‘
Is he asking to see the Mini-Mi sex tape?
Back in May, City Journal had several writers recall 1968, including Christopher Hitchens, “Still a Soixante-Huitard.” Full piece here: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_spring_1968.html
Ah 1968, those were the times! I remember it well, I had my first set of Legos (I was 3) I am looking for footage of that…