A Dream - Sociopolitical Influences at Birth
By Linda Joy Stone
I had a dream where I was part of a revolutionary group of people staying in a series of rooms at a hotel or apartment complex. The energy was inspiring and youthful, committed and loving as we prepared to march for all sentient beings. Meanwhile, we were being observed by “security” or parent figures who appeared to be tolerant if not sympathetic of our mission.
To maintain our revolutionary status we were asked by the authorities to write an essay on what sociopolitical influences we were each born under. So I sat down at an outdoor table and (upon awakening) began to write.
I was born at the height of the grand post-war industrial age where the American way was to consume and multiply. Along with this expansiveness of goods, appliances, packaged food, chemicals and children was the underlying cold war fear-of-Other — specifically communist — motif. As materialism was peaking, the individual soul and soul of the nation appeared to be starved, not unlike today, and bidden underground to be detonated with the A-bomb. The race was on: us vs. them, spirit vs. matter. The beginning of the 50s brought a time of guarded affluence and cocktail nation as well as conformity and conservatism. Everything and everyone essentially had their place.
I was born Linda Joy Stone on election day, 11-7-50, and brought home on Veteran’s Day, 11-11-50. Cool numbers! My patriotic republican mother thought the timing was quite auspicious, albeit I was born Linda Joy rather than her preferred Gary Edward. However, being born under such interesting influences, including astrological, I find it perfectly ironic that I would later take a political and spiritual stand quite in opposition to my mother’s. Different generations, man! OK, I do admit to wearing a “Nixon for President” button in 1960 as a naive 10 y/o still in like with my parents.
My revolutionary dream inspired me to look into the political history of 1950 in California. And wouldn’t you know it, I discovered I was born on the day Richard M. Nixon got elected as Senator! According to Wikipedia “U.S. Senate Election in California, 1950”, Nixon ruthlessly went after his Democratic opponent, Helen Gagahan Douglas (yes, a woman!), alluding to her as being a communist and referring to her as “The Pink Lady”. She was, after all, an actress and Melvyn Douglass’s wife. There were whisperings also by “Tricky Dick”, nicknamed by Nixon's other opponent, that Melvyn Douglas had communist leanings. After all, he was an actor with Jewish ancestry, something of high suspicion during McCarthyism. In reading further:
"Nixon announced his candidacy in a radio broadcast on 11-3-49, painting the race as a choice between a free society and state socialism. His wife, Pat, stood by as her husband spoke, distributing campaign thimbles that urged the election of Nixon and were marked with the slogan "Safeguard the American Home".
Helen Douglas adopted "Tricky Dick" for Nixon, and also referred to him as "pee wee". Her name-calling had an effect on Nixon: when told she had called him "a young man with a dark shirt" in an allusion to Nazism, he inquired, "Did she say that? Why, I'll castrate her." Campaign official Bill Arnold joked that it would be difficult to do, and Nixon replied that he would do it anyway. Nixon returned the attacks; at friendly gatherings and especially at all-male events, he stated that Douglas was "pink right down to her underwear".
On election day (and my birthday!), November 7, 1950, Nixon defeated Douglas by 59 percent to 41.
It was widely rumored that Douglas would be given a political appointment in the Truman administration, but the Nixon-Douglas race had made such an appointment too controversial for the President...In 1952, she returned to acting, and eight years later campaigned for John F. Kennedy during Nixon's first, unsuccessful presidential run. She also campaigned for George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid to prevent Nixon's 1972 reelection, and called for his ouster from office during the Watergate Scandal."
I didn’t realize until now how much Richard M. Nixon would play in my psyche and my generation’s for 24 years until his resignation in 1974. My mother loved him. I learned to hate him, and mom and I would have screaming matches hating each other during the tumultuous 60s over Vietnam. She stood for nationalism, protectionism and status quo. I stood for universality, breaking down barriers and peace.
It was also the Korean War: 6/30/50 - 7/27/53. In scanning Wikipedia, I discovered:
"“The Forgotten War”, a documentary written and directed by Brian McKenna that provides new information and adopts a more objective editorial line. It interviews researchers that allege that the US committed war crimes by using biological warfare on North Korean territory. The documentary provides information that certain munitions found on the battlefield point to the use of anthrax, bubonic plague and encephalitis by US forces. It also provides information that the US Army deliberately killed civilians on a large scale for fear that the communists were infiltrating them.
In the three-year Korean War (1950–53), the US Air Force (USAF) and the UN Command air forces bombed the cities and villages of North Korea and parts of South Korea to a degree comparable to the volume of the Allied bombings of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the six-year Second World War (1939–45). On 12 August 1950 the USAF dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.
The Korean War (1950–53) was the first proxy war in the Cold War (1945–91), the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars, e.g. the Vietnam War (1945–75). The Korean War established proxy war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC68 Containment Policy extended the cold war from the occupied Europe of 1945 to the rest of the world."
In contrast to war madness and paranoia, I came into the world also at a time of ripening for the “beat generation”, for jazz, poetry and a clandestine intermingling of blacks, whites and sexual reorientation. The beat culture, that morphed into the hippies, essentially rejected mainstream American values, experimented with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality and proclaimed an interest in Eastern spirituality.
Two different types of underground testing were pervasive at this time — one based on separation and destruction, the other an experiment in integration and conservation.
As I enter my Second Saturn Return, 59 years later, I still uphold the r/evolutionary spirit and path to awakened consciousness. through curiosity, compassion and humor. I missed the beat generation but found Eastern philosophy through Alan Watts and became a practitioner of Chinese medicine and Buddhism.
So, how much has really changed in 59 years? We’re still at war, as well as with the body and cancer. We still have nuclear threat and still selling arms. We’re still fighting against “the Other”, be it Muslim terrorists or the myth of socialism. We’re still desperately trying to protect our beloved capitalism at the stake of democracy. Now it’s a race to save the planet from corporate despots. Climate change has now reached the forefront and the ravages of materialism have taken front seat to nuclear proliferation. 2009 finds us sitting at the edge of the cliff at the 11th hour.
Is my dream asking me to not only rewrite my own story but to contribute to the unfolding of the Big Bang Story? Is the New Big Bang about to be unleashed bringing a new heart-centered humanity or will we go the way of the dinosaur? Uranus opposing Saturn wants nothing less than radical change. It's up to us!
I had a dream where I was part of a revolutionary group of people staying in a series of rooms at a hotel or apartment complex. The energy was inspiring and youthful, committed and loving as we prepared to march for all sentient beings. Meanwhile, we were being observed by “security” or parent figures who appeared to be tolerant if not sympathetic of our mission.
To maintain our revolutionary status we were asked by the authorities to write an essay on what sociopolitical influences we were each born under. So I sat down at an outdoor table and (upon awakening) began to write.
I was born at the height of the grand post-war industrial age where the American way was to consume and multiply. Along with this expansiveness of goods, appliances, packaged food, chemicals and children was the underlying cold war fear-of-Other — specifically communist — motif. As materialism was peaking, the individual soul and soul of the nation appeared to be starved, not unlike today, and bidden underground to be detonated with the A-bomb. The race was on: us vs. them, spirit vs. matter. The beginning of the 50s brought a time of guarded affluence and cocktail nation as well as conformity and conservatism. Everything and everyone essentially had their place.
I was born Linda Joy Stone on election day, 11-7-50, and brought home on Veteran’s Day, 11-11-50. Cool numbers! My patriotic republican mother thought the timing was quite auspicious, albeit I was born Linda Joy rather than her preferred Gary Edward. However, being born under such interesting influences, including astrological, I find it perfectly ironic that I would later take a political and spiritual stand quite in opposition to my mother’s. Different generations, man! OK, I do admit to wearing a “Nixon for President” button in 1960 as a naive 10 y/o still in like with my parents.
My revolutionary dream inspired me to look into the political history of 1950 in California. And wouldn’t you know it, I discovered I was born on the day Richard M. Nixon got elected as Senator! According to Wikipedia “U.S. Senate Election in California, 1950”, Nixon ruthlessly went after his Democratic opponent, Helen Gagahan Douglas (yes, a woman!), alluding to her as being a communist and referring to her as “The Pink Lady”. She was, after all, an actress and Melvyn Douglass’s wife. There were whisperings also by “Tricky Dick”, nicknamed by Nixon's other opponent, that Melvyn Douglas had communist leanings. After all, he was an actor with Jewish ancestry, something of high suspicion during McCarthyism. In reading further:
"Nixon announced his candidacy in a radio broadcast on 11-3-49, painting the race as a choice between a free society and state socialism. His wife, Pat, stood by as her husband spoke, distributing campaign thimbles that urged the election of Nixon and were marked with the slogan "Safeguard the American Home".
Helen Douglas adopted "Tricky Dick" for Nixon, and also referred to him as "pee wee". Her name-calling had an effect on Nixon: when told she had called him "a young man with a dark shirt" in an allusion to Nazism, he inquired, "Did she say that? Why, I'll castrate her." Campaign official Bill Arnold joked that it would be difficult to do, and Nixon replied that he would do it anyway. Nixon returned the attacks; at friendly gatherings and especially at all-male events, he stated that Douglas was "pink right down to her underwear".
On election day (and my birthday!), November 7, 1950, Nixon defeated Douglas by 59 percent to 41.
It was widely rumored that Douglas would be given a political appointment in the Truman administration, but the Nixon-Douglas race had made such an appointment too controversial for the President...In 1952, she returned to acting, and eight years later campaigned for John F. Kennedy during Nixon's first, unsuccessful presidential run. She also campaigned for George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid to prevent Nixon's 1972 reelection, and called for his ouster from office during the Watergate Scandal."
I didn’t realize until now how much Richard M. Nixon would play in my psyche and my generation’s for 24 years until his resignation in 1974. My mother loved him. I learned to hate him, and mom and I would have screaming matches hating each other during the tumultuous 60s over Vietnam. She stood for nationalism, protectionism and status quo. I stood for universality, breaking down barriers and peace.
It was also the Korean War: 6/30/50 - 7/27/53. In scanning Wikipedia, I discovered:
"“The Forgotten War”, a documentary written and directed by Brian McKenna that provides new information and adopts a more objective editorial line. It interviews researchers that allege that the US committed war crimes by using biological warfare on North Korean territory. The documentary provides information that certain munitions found on the battlefield point to the use of anthrax, bubonic plague and encephalitis by US forces. It also provides information that the US Army deliberately killed civilians on a large scale for fear that the communists were infiltrating them.
In the three-year Korean War (1950–53), the US Air Force (USAF) and the UN Command air forces bombed the cities and villages of North Korea and parts of South Korea to a degree comparable to the volume of the Allied bombings of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the six-year Second World War (1939–45). On 12 August 1950 the USAF dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.
The Korean War (1950–53) was the first proxy war in the Cold War (1945–91), the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars, e.g. the Vietnam War (1945–75). The Korean War established proxy war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC68 Containment Policy extended the cold war from the occupied Europe of 1945 to the rest of the world."
In contrast to war madness and paranoia, I came into the world also at a time of ripening for the “beat generation”, for jazz, poetry and a clandestine intermingling of blacks, whites and sexual reorientation. The beat culture, that morphed into the hippies, essentially rejected mainstream American values, experimented with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality and proclaimed an interest in Eastern spirituality.
Two different types of underground testing were pervasive at this time — one based on separation and destruction, the other an experiment in integration and conservation.
As I enter my Second Saturn Return, 59 years later, I still uphold the r/evolutionary spirit and path to awakened consciousness. through curiosity, compassion and humor. I missed the beat generation but found Eastern philosophy through Alan Watts and became a practitioner of Chinese medicine and Buddhism.
So, how much has really changed in 59 years? We’re still at war, as well as with the body and cancer. We still have nuclear threat and still selling arms. We’re still fighting against “the Other”, be it Muslim terrorists or the myth of socialism. We’re still desperately trying to protect our beloved capitalism at the stake of democracy. Now it’s a race to save the planet from corporate despots. Climate change has now reached the forefront and the ravages of materialism have taken front seat to nuclear proliferation. 2009 finds us sitting at the edge of the cliff at the 11th hour.
Is my dream asking me to not only rewrite my own story but to contribute to the unfolding of the Big Bang Story? Is the New Big Bang about to be unleashed bringing a new heart-centered humanity or will we go the way of the dinosaur? Uranus opposing Saturn wants nothing less than radical change. It's up to us!
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