This is a lesson in the value of trusting your crazy ideas.

An undisclosed follower of Quirky Berkeley found this bulletin board at an undisclosed location in Berkeley.  And borrowed it.

I have published on Berkeley’s community bulletin boards before.

Even the National Guard dug our bulletin boards in 1969 when they occupied Berkeley.  But, the thing is, bulletin boards are largely a voice of the past.  Not much action on them these days.  Vestigal Berkeley of the Sixties.

Even so, here was a bulletin board that seemingly hadn’t been touched for a Long Time. Flyers spanned from the early 1980s until the mid 1990s.

The idea of cultural time capsules has fascinated me.  I have fantasized about walking into a long-closed bar or long-closed corner bodega/grocery store and finding the interior to be exactly as it had been decades ago when the place shut down.   It hadn’t happened that way yet until the bulletin board here.

Thousands of rusty staples secured hundreds of old flyers to the board. They were meticulously removed. The cultural life of Berkeley of the 1980s and 1990s was revealed, one tattered flyer after/below another.  A few were close to intact, some crumbled, most emerged tattered with message somewhat undamaged.

This is my favorite:

Through this flyer, the late Frank Moore (wounded healer, shaman, performance artist) sought three apprentices.  I have posted on Moore and his Curtis Street home.  It was a thrill and a half to find this one.  I sent it to Linda Mac and Mykee Labash, keepers of the Frank Moore flame.

Among the best of the rest are these, some of which need no comment.

Putocide?  Puto is Spanish for more or less a male sex worker.  My research team hasn’t turned up anything else on Mr. Kahn.

George Green identified himself as a contactee.

Here is a little bit about him and the Pleiadians.  Pleiadians, also known as Nordic aliens, are humanoid aliens that come from the stellar systems surrounding the Pleiades stars, and they’re concerned about Earth and our future.

C, B and J claimed to have discovered techniques of “cellular awakening” that enable its members to achieve physical immortality. Do tell!  Charles Brown died in 2014.  As the headline writer for the Arizona Republic put it, immortality eluded him.  I don’t know what the koala bear is doing in the photo.

This flyer honors the response of firefighters to the Oakland Hills Fire of October 20, 1991.

Plus thanks to the police, PG&E, Pacific Bell, Red Cross, and others.

Annie Sprinkle is a sex educator, former prostitute, feminist stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer sex film producer, and sex-positive feminist.  Her homepage – here.

Jwala is all about tantra yoga. he word tantra means to weave or expand. The idea with Tantra yoga, then, is to weave together many yoga practices, and other spiritual styles and teachings, The introduction of Tantric practices in the West is identified with a with nudity and sexuality. It may enhance your sex life, but only as a result of deepening your connection to your energy and body.

Menchu was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family in Guatamala.  She was raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture.  She became an activist in the radical social reform wing of the Catholic Church.  She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and became a target of the right.

Formerly of Berkeley, former leftist, now of the right, David Horowitz launched a campaign to discredit Menchú as a “Marxist terrorist,” and “one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century.”  His call for the revocation of her Nobel Prize fell on deaf ears.

Boy didn’t they call this right and call it early!  Journalism endangered indeed. I can’t imagine what was going on then that seemed like journalism was endangered at that moment. Is it just me but is there a Max Headroom (1984) vibe going on with the graphics here?

The protest was organized by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).  It was a coalition that was formed shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Its members helped to organize many of the largest anti-war demonstrations in the United States, including demonstrations of hundreds of thousands against the Iraq War.

There were many flyers dealing with self-help, personal growth, life coaches, etc.  Here are a few:

And then there was the Men’s Movement.

Robert Bly is an American poet and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men (1990).

Matthew Fox is all about Creation Spirituality, which integrates the wisdom of Eastern and Western spirituality and global indigenous cultures, with the emerging scientific understanding of the universe,and the passion of creativity. It is both a tradition and a movement, celebrated by mystics and agents of social change from every age and culture. It is also the tradition of the historical Jesus since it is the wisdom tradition of Israel.

Michael Meade is an author, mythologist, storyteller, and was a figure in the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement.  He has distanced himself somewhat from the men’s movement, working now with a broader audience.

The Men’s Movement is easy to mock.  I don’t feel the need to do that.

WonderCon is an annual comic book, science fiction, and film convention originally held in the San Francisco Bay Area (1987–2011). The convention was conceived by retailer John Barrett, a founder of Berkeley’s Comics and Comix.  Wonder Con was originally held in the Oakland Convention Center.

I don’t know what it is, but this one creeps me out.  Alarm bells and whistles.  A good father and husband looking for a wife. What could possibly go wrong?

Sogyal Rinpoche is a Tibetan lama of the Nyingma Buddhist tradition.  He has taught for over 30 years and is probably most famous for The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.  He presents his understanding of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary Western language.  Keep this in mind for upcoming posts on Wavy Gravy.  Wavy had a brilliant and amusing experience with Rinpoche.

Inspired by a 1912 poem by James Oppenheim, The phrase is commonly associated with the successful 1912 textile strike by women workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts

Mimi Fariña set the poem to music and selected “Bread & Roses”as the name for the nonprofit she founded in 1974 to take the healing power of music and other live art to institutionalized children, teens, adults, and elders. The organization survived Farina’s death in 2011 and goes strong.  That was quite a collection of artists.

The El Salvadoran civil war lasted from 1980 until The Chapultepec Peace Agreement in January, 1992.  The United States supported the right-wing dictatorship that was responsible for death squad killings of tens of thousands of civilians and religious, including the 1977 murder Archbishop of San Salvador Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez as he celebrated mass.  Romero spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture. His canonization will be celebrated in San Salvador later this year.

Cris Williamson is a feminist, a musician and a political activist whose high-profile activism as a lesbian began at a time when few ouside the gay and lesbian community were aware of gay and lesbian issues.  Her album “The Changer and the Changed” was released in 1975.

When the flyer-removal job got done, this is what the bulletin board looked like.

Trust your crazy ideas indeed.  The Quirky Berkeley celebrant who came to me with the bulletin board idea in the first place did just that.  It was their idea, not mine, and with who knows how many hours of work, what a stunning catalog of Berkeley culture they uncovered. At last – my cultural time capsule!  Hip hip hooray!

But wait!

For the serious serious serious student, posted here are photographs of Every Single Flyer that was pried off the bulletin board.  This is not for the faint of heart, but for the right person it is 99 and 44/100% pure time-travel material popular culture.

I showed the post to my friend.  “Bread and Roses.  I catch my breath when I hear that song. Your pal Debbie Mazzanti loved that song, didn’t she?”

Indeed. Debbie had a professional voice.  She was admitted to the music program at Juilliard in the early 1970s but followed “a pair of pants” (her words, not mine) to Oklahoma.  With the help of a grandmother, she convinced her parents for a year that she was in New York singing, not in Oklahoma.

I worked with her for 20 years.  There were times when I played the piano and she sang   “Bread and Roses” and “Four Green Fields” like nobody’s business – “But my sons have sons / as brave as were their fathers.”  She died on October 1, 2014.  We played a recording of “Bread and Roses” at her service and Jim Milstead, formerly a City of Berkeley electrician, played and sang “Four Green Fields.”

But – though – digression completed, what does my friend think of these tattered reminders of a time gone by?