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The Hippie Serving Peace and Breakfast
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: May 28th, 2013
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/movies/08saint.html
A portly, bearded, 74-year-old hippie clown, born Hugh Nanton Romney but better known as Wavy Gravy, he has been sending ripples of good will that have gently lapped around the fringes of American culture for more than 50 years. The subject of Michelle Esricks doting documentary portrait, Saint Misbehavin: The Wavy Gravy Movie, he is first seen practicing his morning prayers at his home in the Berkeley branch of the rural California commune known as the Hog Farm. May all beings have shelter; may all beings have food, he intones before an altar crowded with iconography, both holy and comical. Bless this day as it transpires and help me be the best Wavy Gravy I can muster. Given his nickname by B. B. King at the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969, Wavy Gravy, who physically resembles an older, shaggier Robin Williams, is the real thing: an authentic unreconstructed hippie idealist living the communal life, doing good works and advocating peace, love, and laughter, in the guise of a clown. The movie looks back to his roots as a Greenwich Village poet, traveling monologuist and, among numerous projects, organizer of the Phantom Cabaret with Tiny Tim and Moondog. Along the way he forged connections with everyone who was anyone in the 1960s counterculture, including Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead. The person who emerges is a man who has long transcended rancorous political debate by embodying a holy fool. The Hog Farm became a touring hippie caravan invited to provide security at the first Woodstock festival, where the group ran a free kitchen that provided breakfast for thousands.
Note: For an engaging interview with this inspiring man, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
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