Living On The Earth, A Hippie Bible Review

A coworker, aware of my hippie tendencies, brought in a copy of her hippie bible - bought in Vermont back in the day. I was instantly transported to my childhood - this is surely what all of my and my friend's parents were reading when we were babies! I immediately did a search and was shocked to find out it's available on Amazon!!!???

In original and revised editions even! I must have it of course.

In her own hand, written script, Alicia Bay Laurel ("not my parent's name, but my favorite tree") covers wide ranging topics from tie-dying to butchering meat to bathing in low-water situations (I haven't met many hippies that made very good work of this!)

There's a lot of nakedness in the book, authentic to the time, and lots of hippie style lingo about staying stoned and making due on land that has been raped. It's great. Seriously, reading it, I feel like I'm three again. I took some pics of a few pages that were particularly near and dear, including

Homebirth

Homegrown "stuff"..um, I mean, that HAS to be what this is right:

complete with recommendations for repeating a mantra such as Aum to the growing plant, as we all know "they respond to love".

Canning:

I just love love love the hand drawings, and the recipes sound pretty amazing. I'm completely sold. I found another blogger as surprised and charmed by this book as I am, he covered more of it here, and included more pictures, quotes, and history of the book - I've only just skimmed it, but I'm sure I'll have more to talk about once I get it - I can't wait!

Here are a couple of links to the books on amazon if you're interested (left with the yellow sun is the updated version)