Oh HI, pot smokers.

4/20. National Pot Appreciation Day. I'm dressed for the occasion, although my celebration won't be nearly as exhilarating as some. Mostly, with Earth Day following on its heels, I feel like 4/20 is a day to celebrate the social and cultural atmosphere of America in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Kids, if your parents were living in America during this era, ask them about it. Due to my academic interests and my collegiate infatuation with everything associated with that age, my parents have told me loads of tidbits about what it was like to be alive during that very special period in American History. I think that a passage from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas does an excellent job of painting a picture of the collected stories, books, classes, and first-hand accounts I've come across:

The Scene: Late night (or early morning, it's not so clear), Raoul Duke is sitting in his Las Vegas hotel room, readying himself to write. He puts his hands to the keys of his typewriter, and a memory washes over him, engulfing him in flashbacks of his experiences over the past few years. . .
"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime, the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

So - that is what I'm celebrating today. A time in the history of the United States where so many great ideas were born. Equality for all races. Increased personal freedom in the face of backwards-thinking preservationists. The recognition (and increased toleration) of our many different schemes of religion, philosophy, morality. The birth of Rock and Roll. The loosening of formalisms. The rise of Kerouac's "mad ones." It really was a time unlike any before, and as of now, unlike any after.

Cheers, America.