Author: Joan Rivard

  • The Garden of the Flower Children

    It’s a place that’s been written about, put in history books.  Beautiful Golden Gate Park in San Francisco was an epicenter for what has been called “the Love Generation.”  In the late Sixties and early Seventies, young people assembled there in the tens of thousands.  They wore bright colors with feathers and beads, and long…

  • The Drum Circle

    Walking into Golden Gate Park I could already hear the drums.  The rhythmic sound echoed all across the meadow where so much had happened in the Sixties and was still happening.  Spectators watched as a motley group of over a dozen drummers, some of them strangers who’d never made music together before, performed in perfect…

  • Drums Painted with the Universe

    When I went to Golden Gate Park again, I got to know the drummers better.  Some of them had carved out a few precious hours from work and rent and debt to come and be in this circle.  Some had traveled far, planning for months to come to this historic place, to be a part…

  • SWAP MEET V: THE COOKIE LADY

    Her big straw hat with purple flowers and rainbow ribbons made her easier to spot amid the surging crowds. “Raspberry shortbread, chocolate, pecan or oatmeal!” she called to the vendors, selling them cookies “home-made, hand-crafted, and guaranteed insurance-free.” She had no credentials of any kind, no sanction from any authority, local, state or federal. Without…

  • SWAP MEET IV: A TRIBE OF STRANGERS

    There are no walls between the booths except perhaps a tarp for shade. There is no privacy, as everyone hears everything from everywhere. Vendors know neighbors like the villagers of old, know generations of each other’s clans. The closeness is infectious and affects the customers, who also become part of this unlikely tribe of strangers.…

  • SWAP MEET III: SWEET LIBERTY

    Such a sweet wind, perfumed with Eucalyptus, hot dogs and incense, greets the crowd as it streams toward the Rose Bowl’s pillars and arches, to sounds of pipe organ. Beyond the chain link fence the spectacle of the swap meet unfolds, a world of vivid sights and wondrous dreams. Greetings and merchandise are passed over…

  • SWAP MEET II: SETTING UP

    Green canyons rise on either side of the Vale of the Arroyo where the Rose Bowl stadium stands. In former times, before bulldozers and cement invaded the sylvan serenity that had permeated the place for thousands of years, Native Americans had revered the sparkling stream, now encased in concrete, the sycamore grove that still shaded…

  • SWAP MEET: ROSE BOWL

    In the bright sunlight total strangers exchange smiles along the aisles, shopping for deals but sometimes finding so much more. Amid thousands of brightly-decorated booths are such intoxicating sights and sounds, the varied merchandise a feast for every eye, not plastic and identical like stuff in stores. The sellers too are colorful in what they…

  • HOMELESS

    Apache Tears and those of kids in foster homes express the way it feels when the Beast does its favorite thing: tear people from their homes. Whether they’re carried off as slaves or driven out by foreclosure or burned out with scorched earth, the result is the same: communities and clans and tribes established before…

  • TWO FORTIES

    “It’s all right,” officials say, when we seek help. “You do what you have to do. Working two jobs, two forty-hour weeks, has now become a fact of life.” Nobody seems to question why we must make bricks by day and gather straw all night. “That’s how it is,” we tell our children with a…