What I Learned at the World Economic Crisis

[Edward E Skiba]

Michael Pugliese wrote:
>
>   From the New Republican. Other stories are excerpts of a hagiography of
>Al Gore. Pg. 100 talks of his pot-smoking in the 70's at The Farm in
>Tenessee, the Emmett Grogran commune. Was the farm where Tracy Nelson and
>Mother Earth communed near there? Anyone have the run down on Emmett, have a
>vague sense of his notoriety in hippie lore. There is a long out of print
>book from either Ramparts Press or Straight Arrow, the RS imprint, entitled,
>"Mindfuckers, " on those characters, no?
>                                                                  Michael
>Pugliese
>

I don't know if Emmett Grogran ever wrote a book entitled "Mindfuckers" but
he certainly wrote "Ringolevio" published, I think, by Avon Press and which
is indeed long out of print.  I read it in the early 1970's when I was very
young and it was my first exposure to radical ideas.  At that time my BS
detector was not so finely tuned and I remember reading with amazement how
this dude from the ghetto became a master jewel thief and safecracker, went
to an exclusive NY prep school and screwed all the rich women, became
addicted to heroin, went cold turkey, went to Northern Ireland to hang with
the IRA, then wound up in California where he founded the Diggers and
screwed all the hippy chicks. I don't recall anything about the Farm so I am
thinking this is from a later period.  I am indeed interested in what ever
happened to him.  I do seem to remember reading somewhere about a falling
out with some of the left's luminaries of the time (Jerry Reubin perhaps??).