"... there'll always be someone with the same button on as you ..."

Sorry to break the mood here, because you're about to watch one of the most beautiful songs and singers (I hope you haven't seen this before, so you can experience Melanie for the first time), but I have to rant for a minute, because I just watched this for the first time in decades and I was struck by the loss of our innocence. Fuck the Republicans and the businessmen and the 'serious' volk everywhere who have tried to tell us for the last forty years that the sixties and hippiedom and love and peace and beads and buttons and Woodstock were anything other than a high point in American civilization. We've been on a long slide from that zenith into a nadir of materialism and militarism and an endless parade of men in dark suits (their lapel-pin flags do NOT count as "buttons".)

Enough ranting. Please watch, and be transported back to 1971:

Beautiful people
You look like friends of mine
And it's about time
That someone said it here and now
I make a vow that some time, somehow
I'll have a meeting
Invite everyone you know
I'll pass out buttons for the ones who come to show
Beautiful people never have to be alone
'Cause there'll always be someone
With the same button on as you

This is the best thing about the Occupy movement. It has nothing to do with policies and politics. It has to do with the drum circles and the new sense of community and the beautiful people recognizing each other by the buttons they're wearing. Moving back to a beautiful time we've seen belittled for most of our adult lives.

I hope Melanie's song is stuck in your head.

It's stuck in mine (that may be all you really need to know about me).

Peace.