NOVEMBER 5, 2009 ISSUE
Roskind’s One-Man Play Based on Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie Saturday
Local author Robert Roskind will present his one-man play based on his book Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie: Seven Years in the Counterculture this Saturday, November 7, from 7:30 to 9:15 p.m. at Dancing Moon Bookstore in downtown Boone. Admission is free.
The play, set to songs of that era, covers not only an overview of the counterculture but also Roskind's personal seven-year odyssey within it.
After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1968, Roskind, like many of his generation, hit the road for destinations west. For seven years, in a converted schoolbus, he traveled the counterculture circuits, including communes in Oregon and California, Esalen Institute in Big Sur, the Zen Center at Tassajara Hot Springs, The Altamont Festival and many other blossoming destinations. In 1975, he got off the road to found The Owner Builder Center, a nonprofit institute in Berkeley, Calif., that taught energy-efficient house building and solar energy.
“The play and book reveals much of this unique period in American history—both the profane and the profound,” said Roskind. “We were young, without any real guidance, but from that era we birthed much that is now being recognized as valuable. Natural, organic foods; natural childbirth and hospice care; the environmental, women’s and peace movements; meditation; yoga; the self-help movements; holistic health—all these were either birthed or advanced by the counterculture.”
Roskind, along with his wife Julia, has also organized more than 90 One Love Events in Jamaica and the U.S., including their Gatherings of the Peacemakers every summer at Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain. They moved to the High Country in 1998 with their daughter, Alicia, a graduate of Watauga High School.
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