Tag Archives: antiwar protests

[June 26, 1970] Hard Hats & Flower Power Collide

Black-and-white portrait of a fair-haired white woman wearing a woven hat and looking to her right, directly into the camera, with a slight smile
by Gwyn Conaway

“Flowers are better than bullets.”

This has been said upon occasion, especially over the last decade, but in bygone eras as well. War-weary Americans and English poets alike have waxed poetic over the familiar adage. These days, however, the sentiment is laced with gunpowder.

B&W photograph of a white woman with short dark hair holding a daisy to her face, as a line of soldiers stand opposite her with bayonets out-thrust
Jan Rose Kasmir put flowers in guns pointed at her during a protest at the Pentagon in 1967 at which she wore a cotton shift decorated in daisies. She recalls being saddened by how young the soldiers were. These were men she could have been on a date with, if only there weren't a philosophical trench separating them.

Allison Krause also said this as she put a flower in an Ohio National Guardsman's gun at Kent State University on the weekend of May 4th, 1970, less than two months ago. Later, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protestors, wounding nine and killing four, including Miss Krause. Since then, students nationwide have protested in the name of peace and a growing distrust of the government's motivations to use deadly force, both at home and around the world.

Of course, the photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, just 14 years old, will live in infamy for generations. The chilling scene still haunts me, the young girl wailing over the body of a fallen boy with shaggy hair and a pair of flat-soled sneakers.

B&W photograph of a dark-haired white teenager kneeling in the road next to a prone body with her arms outstretched and her face raised in shock and grief, as a crowd of concerned people begins to re-congregate
Mary Ann Vecchio, 14, cries over the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the four victims during the Kent State Massacre on May 4, 1970.

And just four days later, during a New York City protest honoring that boy in his sneakers and the other students that died, a band of several hundred laborers and office workers also took to the streets. The Hard Hat Riot was a culture clash that illustrates the divide in America.

Long hair versus trim cuts. Band shirts versus button-downs. Bell bottoms versus slacks. This division is more than a generational or political gap. Our country is splitting down the seams of ideology. The Hippies had been a countercultural movement in the sixties, but I am certain that events like these will transform their radical ideals and fashions into the mainstream.

B&W photograph of clean-cut white men in belted trousers wearing sunglasses and hard-hats kicking at a smaller-group of long-haired, jeans-wearing people sitting hunched protectively on the ground
Though people on opposite sides of the picket line see dramatically different messages when they judge the fashion identities of these men, the message couldn't be clearer. The rift in America will have a lasting impact.

Since the Vietnam War protests began in 1965, “Flower Power” has been a consistent message for the movement, expressed in wacky, beautiful, creative, and bold ways. Daisies, a flower ubiquitous across the nation in gardens and the wild, is the flower of choice with its pure white petals and plush center. The term signals a commitment to pacifism and peaceful protest but is transforming before our eyes.

B&W fashion photograph of a white man with a neatly trimmed moustache and a styled mop of curls and a pair of glasses where the lenses have been blacked out, and the right lens has been painted over with a stylized daisy blossom.  He wears multiple long strands of beads as necklaces over a floral/paisley patterned dress shirt with a matching neck-tie
A British man wearing a provocative flowerpot hat decorated in silk flowers with a pair of spectacles, one of which is patterned as a daisy. He likely wore this to a festival in 1967.

Continue reading [June 26, 1970] Hard Hats & Flower Power Collide

[May 20, 1970] Circus of Hells, Tau Zero, and Vector (May 1970 Galactoscope #2)

black and white photo of a dark-haired white woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Vector, by Henry Sutton

Cover of the book Vector by Henry Sutton. The cover illustration shows some downward-facing arrows.
Cover art by Roy E. La Grone.

Henry Sutton is the pen name of David R. Slavitt, a highly respected classicist, translator, and poet. As Sutton, he wrote a couple of sexy bestsellers, The Exhibitionist and The Voyeur. Now he's turned his hand to a science fiction thriller. Let's see if he's as adept at technological suspense as eroticism.

The story begins with the President of the United States announcing that the nation will stop all research into the use of biological weapons. Instead, only defensive research will take place.

That sounds great, but it means very little. Figuring out how to defend oneself against such weapons means you have to produce them and study them.

Next, the author introduces a number of characters in a tiny town in Utah and at the nearby military base. Guess what kind of secret research goes on at the base?

Pilot error during an unexpected storm leads to a virus being released on the town. The deadly stuff causes Japanese encephalitis, a disease with a high mortality rate. Survivors often have permanent neurological damage. There is no cure.

When a number of people come down with the disease, the military seals off the town. The phone lines are cut. One character is shot in the leg while trying to leave. Meanwhile, politicians in Washington try to cover up the disaster.

Our lead characters are a widowed man and a divorced woman who happened to be out of town when the virus hit the place. (The disease is normally transmitted via mosquito bites rather than from person to person. That's why he gets away with a relatively minor set of symptoms and she isn't sick at all.)

Besides giving us the mandatory romantic subplot, these two figure out there's more going on than the military is willing to admit. The man manages to sneak out of town and sets off on a long and dangerous hike across the wilderness, looking for a place where he can make a phone call to a trusted friend with government connections.

This is a taut political thriller in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. Like those bestselling novels, both adapted into successful films, it creates a cynical, paranoid mood. I can easily imagine Vector as a motion picture.

Less of a science fiction story than last year's similarly themed bestseller The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, Vector is a competent suspense novel. The narrative style is straightforward, meant for readability rather than profundity. The love story seems thrown in just to satisfy the expectations for mass market fiction.

Three stars.


Continue reading [May 20, 1970] Circus of Hells, Tau Zero, and Vector (May 1970 Galactoscope #2)