The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsI found this delightful museum piece when I was looking for something else
If people under 65 want to know why the 60s happened, this wonde4ful example of The Rules explains why we all went right out and broke them, every single one of them, in sequence or all together:
Hippie dinner parties were bowls of food on the table, big spoons in them, people packed around the table serving themselves. Nobody gave a shit about anything but enjoying good food, good talk, good friends.
Ocelot II
(115,281 posts)Warpy
(110,913 posts)You could have waited to two seconds.
Ocelot II
(115,281 posts)Warpy
(110,913 posts)The day videos are gorgeous.
SergeStorms
(18,907 posts)We each grabbed a stick and went at it. We didn't want to get bogged down in material posessions, man.
After spoons you'll want plates, then forks, then knives, and the next thing you know Miss Manners will be sitting at your dinner table offering tips on napkin rings.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)We usually had bowls (less chance of spillage) and either forks or spoons, depending on how many people showed up and how far we had to water it down.
2naSalit
(86,074 posts)madamesilverspurs
(15,784 posts)Bad enough that we had to watch things like this in our "Home Ec" classes back in the day. Then Mom decided to enroll me in "charm school" wherein we were treated to more of the same. And they wondered why I went wild when turned loose in southern California in the mid '60s!
.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)zanana1
(6,087 posts)I did like the part about the olive pits.
Ocelot II
(115,281 posts)and the correct silverware for particular foods and where you put your napkin and your olive pits and which direction you passed the food, and at family dinners we pretty much did observe the rules. Now I eat take-out Chinese out of the container while watching tv, using paper towels as napkins, and I let the cat eat off my fork.
wnylib
(21,146 posts)Much as I love my my little feline, she does not get to eat from my utensils or lick anything off of dishes. I do let her have some of what I am eating, if it is safe for cats, but it gets put in her dish.
I am fussy that way, although I know that not everyone is. (Just think about where their tongues go when they are bathing themselves.)
Ocelot II
(115,281 posts)and with no transfer of cat spit to the fork. I look at it kind of like the five-second rule anyhow because it happens so fast.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)chowder66
(9,011 posts)TomWilm
(1,832 posts)At our huge outdoor hippie parties with some hundreds of participants, it is a big no-no to:
- be serving yourself before the common chanting and Om is done.
- put a persons place above the common pot, since the dirt from it could be washed down.
- take tea likewise by dipping your personal cup in the tea bowl.
- serve yourself, since food should be given by our servers, who has cleaned hands.
- put the lid in the grass without doing this upside down.
- disturb the full Circle while they are enjoying eating and talking together.
- start a big speech to the Circle before the Magic Hat has collected donations.
- talk to the full circle without waiting for the Talking Stick to allow you.
- and so on...
These are all very practical rules, to ensure quality time together. Just as complicated for newcomers as the ones from 1945, but made to ensure a fine experience. By doing this, in our more than forty years of practice, we have never had a full blown emergency situation by sharing food together.
Eating inside with a small bunch of the same people, rules are a lot more relaxed. Here there are no risk of dirt on the plates, though other hygienic rules should still be respected. But at my very own smallish communal table, we already share the same diseases, and could dip our spoons .
Warpy
(110,913 posts)Floor space is free, but if you want to eat, contribute.
I was a political hippie, not a peace-love hippie, and anarchy suited us better.. The jobs got done and nobody got sick.
TomWilm
(1,832 posts)... separately they get boring very fast. As an example we also did a two weeks full blockade of some misplaced industrial project, making it the biggest media story of that summer. All while doing the planning in our anarchistic popup community style. We are not waiting for a f*cking revolution, but are trying to live as if it has already happened .
wnylib
(21,146 posts)but our every day family meals were pretty informal, in the kitchen.
Holidays, though, were something else. We always had guests, either relatives or friends of the family. Dinner was in the dining room, with the "good china," crystal glasses, linen tablecloth, linen napkins, candles, relish dish, various serving dishes, etc., including after dinner mints. No hired help to do the serving. (Wore my mother out. I helped when I was older.)
That was in the 1950s and early 1960s. When my family moved to a new suburban housing development, we had informal cookouts more often than indoor dinners. Holidays were still in the dining room, but more relaxed - linen tablecloth, but paper napkins instead of linen. Separate table in the kitchen with plastic cups and plates for my nephews, whose parents did not give a damn about them learning formal etiquette at a young age.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)and a grand aunt would turn up in silk and Swarovsky but I hadn't seen the dizzying array of Victorian serving pieces since I was little, my mother gave up fast. You know, no soup, no appetizers, just the main event followed by pie. She only did that green beans in mushroom soup thing once, having my dad say "Should I or did I?" cured that.
This film shows them giving each other the side eye, either finding fault or looking for cues. They'd have been a lot happier with paper plates in the back yard. The thing is that I knew people who did that shit, all of them turned into Republicans.
wnylib
(21,146 posts)She was my grandmother's sister, and raised my mother after my grandmother died.
Aunt Emma was a stuffy, prim and proper German-born woman full of 19th century views of propriety. She was born in 1883, was 6 years old when her family came to America, but held onto the old ways that she grew up with. She fussed about doing things "correctly."
I wish that I had known my grandmother. In pictures, she looks like she was the opposite of her sister - laughing, fun loving, and easy going.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)She and her sisters had been features of the summer cottage and cotillion circuit in NY-New England during the gay 90s up through 1910. This particular aunt had gone on the stage (gasp!) and when she was done with that, designed costumes and gall gowns (in trade, gasp!). She didn't cuss, but she didn't go around criticizing anyone else, she'd had to endure enough of it, herself.
She lived with us for a few months while she and my mother looked around for a more independent situation for her.