No Umbrella

Rain on my face cools my cheeks

Always waiting for the drops to fall

Inside my soul I'm washed cleaned

Never do I want an umbrella, let it rain!

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                                       PEACE

Peace to the world
Like a flower in the sky
Peace
Peace-overcoming evil with good be Peace

Give me peace I won't cry anymore
White dove symbol of peace
Peace can be found deep down in the heart
Peace in the winds that sleep upon the deep

I want peace
Peace in my personal space
I want peace in my feelings
Cloth me in white
The color of peace..

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                 TRIBUTE TO JANIS

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970) was an American blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a distinctive voice. Joplin released four albums as the front woman for several bands from 1967 to a posthumous release in 1971.

Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas. The daughter of Seth Joplin, a worker of Texaco, she had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. She grew up listening to blues musicians such as Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton and singing in the local choir. Joplin graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960 and went to college at the University of Texas in Austin, though she never completed a degree. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she was mostly shunned, but found a group of boys who allowed her to tag along. One of those boys, a football player named Grant Lyons, played her the blues for the first time, an old Leadbelly record. Primarily a painter, it was in high school that she first began singing blues and folk music with friends.

Cultivating a rebellious manner that could be viewed as "liberated" - the women's liberation movement was still in its infancy at this time - Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines, and in part after the beat poets. She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, lived in North Beach and in Haight-Ashbury. For a while she worked occasionally as a folk singer. Around this time her drug use began to increase, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other intoxicants. She was a heavy drinker throughout her career, and her trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.

Like many other female singers of the era, Janis' feisty public image was at odds with her real personality. The book Love, Janis, written by her sister, has done much to further the reassessment of her life and work and reveals the private Janis to have been a highly intelligent, articulate, shy and sensitive woman who was devoted to her family.

After a return to Port Arthur to recuperate, she again moved to San Francisco in 1966, where her bluesy vocal style saw her join Big Brother and The Holding Company, a band that was gaining some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. The band signed a deal with independent Mainstream Records and recorded an eponymously titled album in 1967. However, the lack of success of their early singles led to the album being withheld until after their subsequent success.

The band's big break came with their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, which included a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain" and featured a barnstorming vocal by Joplin. (The D.A. Pennebaker documentary Monterey Pop captured Cass Elliot in the crowd silently mouthing "Wow, that's really heavy" during Joplin's performance.) Their 1968 album Cheap Thrills featured more raw emotional performances and together with the Monterey performance, it made Joplin into one of the leading musical stars of the late Sixties.

After splitting from Big Brother, she formed a new backup group, modeled on the classic soul revue bands, named the Kozmic Blues Band, which backed her on I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969: the year she played at Woodstock). That group was indifferently received and soon broke up, and Joplin then formed what is arguably her best backing group, The Full Tilt Boogie Band. The result was the posthumously released Pearl (1971). It became the biggest selling album of her short career and featured her biggest hit single, the definitive cover version of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee", as well as the wry social commentary of the a capella "Mercedes-Benz", written by Joplin and beat poet Michael McClure.

Among her last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show on June 25 and August 3, 1970. On the June 25 show she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school reunion, although she admitted that when in high school she had been "laughed out of class, out of school, out of town, out of the state". She made it there, but it would be one of the last decisions of her life and it reportedly proved to be a rather unhappy experience for her.

Shortly thereafter, during the fall 1970 recording sessions for the Pearl album with Doors and Phil Ochs producer Paul A. Rothchild, Joplin died of an overdose of unusually pure heroin and alcohol, after being off of drugs (clean) for a period of time, on October 4, 1970 at the Landmark Motor Hotel located at 7047 Franklin Ave, room #105 in Hollywood, California, aged only 27. The last recordings she completed were Mercedes-Benz and a birthday greeting for John Lennon on 1 October; Lennon later told Dick Cavett that her taped greeting arrived at his New York home after her death.

She was cremated in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California, and her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. The album Pearl, released six weeks after her death, included a version of Nick Gravenites' song "Buried Alive In The Blues", which was left as an instrumental because Joplin had died before she was able to record her vocal over the backing track.

The 1979 film The Rose was loosely based on Joplin's life. The lead role earned Bette Midler an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. As of 2005, two biopics of Joplin's life are being planned, one called Piece of My Heart starring Renée Zellweger, the other one called Gospel According to Janis. Gospel According to Janis, a biographical film starring Zooey Deschanel as Joplin, was originally scheduled to begin shooting in early 2007, now has a projected release date of 2010.

In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created with input from Janis's younger sister Laura plus Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim and packed houses and was held over several times, the demanding role of the singing Janis attracting rock vocalists from relative unknowns to pop stars Laura Branigan and Beth Hart. A national tour followed.

Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum Exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet with psychedelically-designed painting, and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. 

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                              Getting to Know You

I would love to know more about my friends! Anything at all, your most memorable times, your worst times, your first love, anything at all even a funny joke!!   Just wanted to know you!!

My greatest times are many but my best is when I met the love of my life!!

Another is being a child of hippie parents and becoming a hippie from the experience!  Another is the birth of my first son! Wow, I'll never forget how angelic he was!!

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                       SURVIVORS

First, we survived being born to mothers who
may have smoked and/or drank while they
were pregnant.
-They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing,
tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for
diabetes.
-Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep
on our tummies in baby cribs covered with
bright colored lead-based paint!
-We had no childproof lids on medicine
bottles, locks on doors or cabinets,
and, when we rode our bikes, we had
baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads.
-As infants and children, we would ride in
cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no
seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and
sometimes no brakes..
-Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a
warm day was always a special treat.
 -We drank water from the garden hose and
not from a bottle.
-We shared one soft drink with four friends,
from one bottle, and no one actually died
from this.
 -We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter,
and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real
white sugar. And we weren't overweight.
***WHY? Because we were always outside
playing...that's why! ***
-We would leave home in the morning and
play all day, as long as we were back when
the streetlights came on.
 -No one was able to reach us all day.
{--And, we were OKAY}.
-We would spend hours building our go-carts
out of scraps and then ride them down the
hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes..
After running into the bushes a few times,
we learned to solve the problem.
 -We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos
and X-boxes. There were no video games,
no 150 channels on cable, no video movies
or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell
phones, no personal computers,no Internet
and no chat rooms.
 -WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and
found them.
-We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones
and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from
those accidents.
 -We would get spankings with wooden
spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just
a bare hand, and no one would call child
services to report abuse.- -We ate worms,
and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms
did not live in us forever.
 -We were given BB guns for our 10th
birthdays, made up games with sticks
and tennis balls, and although we were told it
would happen- we did not put out very many
eyes.
 -We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house
and knocked on the door or rang the bell,
or just walked in and talked to them.
 - Little League had tryouts and not everyone
made the team. Those who didn't had to learn
to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
 -The idea of a parent bailing us out if we
broke the law was unheard of. They actually
sided with the law!
 *These generations have produced some of
the best risk-takers,
problem solvers, and inventors ever.
-The past 50 to 85 years have seen an
explosion of innovation and new ideas..
 -We had freedom, failure, success and
responsibility, and we learned how to deal
with it all.
 If YOU are one of those born between
1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!

-You might want to share this with others
who have had the luck to grow up as kids
before the lawyers and the government
regulated so much of our lives for our own
good.
-While you are at it, forward it to your kids
and grandkids so they will know how brave
and lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the
house with scissors, doesn't it ?

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********** THE GROOVY SIXTIES FROM A - Z **********

A-- Acid Trips / Avoiding the Draft / Anti-War Movement / Acapulco Gold / Activists /
B-- Beatles / Burning Draft Cards / Black Lights / Bell Bottoms / Bare Feet / Bitchen Babes / Balling / Birth Control Pills / Bongs / Blow Your Mind / Ban The Bra / Bean Bag Chairs / Bread  (Can I Borrow some Bread?) /
C-- Candles / Crashing at your Friend's Pad / Cool, Man / Color TV / Corvettes / Communes / Cocaine / Chicks / Cannibis / Cool It / Civil Rights /
D-- Draft Dodgers / Ditching School / Drugs / Drivng Your First Car / Driving Your Parents Crazy / Dark Shadows /  Dig It / Drop Acid /Downers / Drag (What A Drag) /
E-- Establishment / ERA /
F-- Friends / Far Out / Funky / Feelin' Groovy / Flower Children /Flower Power / Freak Out / Free Love / Fuzz (Here Come The Fuzz) / Freak Brothers Comics /
G-- Getting Drunk / Getting Stoned / Getting Grounded / Groovy / Going to Concerts /Generation Gap / Go With The Flow / Get It Together / Get Laid / Grass / Gig /
Give Peace A Chance /
H-- Hippies / Hanging Out / Hitchhiking / Have A Nice Day / High /  Head Shops / Haight Ashbury / Hash Brownies / Head Bands / Head Trip / Hair / Hare Krishnas /
Hip Huggers / Hip (My baby is so Hip) /
Hell No We Won't Go! /
I-- Incense / Inner Peace / In-Tune / 
J-- Joint / Jamming /
K-- Kaleidoscopes /  Keep On Truckin / Karma /
L-- LSD / Listening to Music / Love The One You're With /  Lid / Laugh-In /  Love- In / Ludes / Laser Lights / Love Beads /Laid Back / Lay It On  Me /
M-- Making Out / Making Love / Making Music/ MaryJane / Mahareshi Mahesh / Mushrooms /
Make Love Not War / Mellow Out /Monterey Pop Festival /
N-- Nudist Camps / Nude Beaches /
O-- Open Relationships / Orgies / Out of Touch With Reality / Orange Sunshine /OD (Overdose) /
P-- Peace / Party Every Night / Potheads / Protesting the War / Psychedelic Posters / Playboy Magazine / Pink Floyd / Peace Sign / Power To The People / Purple Haze /Pigs / Plastic (My Parents are so Plastic) /
Q-- Quadrophonic Sound /
R-- Rebellious Teens / Rolling a Joint / Reefer / Roach / Rush / Rap (Baby I'd Love to Rap With You) /Rolling Stone Magazine /
S-- School / Smoking Cigarettes / Smoking Dope / Sex / Sock It To Me / Strobe Lights / Spaced Out / Strung Out /Stoned / Screw / Split / Square /
T-- Tuning In / Tuning Out / Trippin' Out / Thumbing a Ride /  Turn On / Threads (Nice Threads) / Toke / Tiny Tim / Tune In ..Turn On ..  Drop Out /
U-- Using a Rubber / Unreal / Uptight / Underground /
V-- Volkswagen Beetle / Vans / Vietnam War / V.D. / Vibes
W-- Woodstock / Wasted / Weed / What's Happenin' / Window Pane / Wired / Women's Lib / Watergate /
X-- X-Rated Movies /
Y-- Yellow Jackets / Yoga / Young Lust /
Z-- Zoned / Zonking / Zap Comics /

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