Love: Forever Changes

ONE OF the most persistent canards about the mid-'60 – propagated by baby boomer marketing and right-wing journalism – is that the hippies were hopelessly idealistic, stoned-out peace-and-loveniks: proponents of the flowah powah that wilted on its first exposure to external reality (whatever that is). It's as though the effects of Ecstasy – basically interpreted, accidents aside, as soma – have been retrospectively applied to LSD.