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permission from the photographer.

In the summer of 1971, Bob and Jane loaded their infant son Robert and a few of their possessions in their beat-up Pontiac Tempest convertible and headed to California. Along the way, people accused Bob of being a hippie. This confused him: “I wore Birkenstocks. I’d been to communes. I had long hair. Did that mean I was a hippie?” “Real” hippies said he wasn’t, because he didn’t smoke marijuana; instead, he preferred Lone Star beer and Boone’s Farm apple wine. Later, living in and around San Francisco, Bob discovered that there were a lot of those “tweeners” that hung out with the Haight-Ashbury crowd. -("Pax Cultura" Winter 2006 Edition-Author Dennis Thompson)

BOB: "I remember things differently each time I look back to the 60's and 70's....Memories are fading....Robert Junior was a very smart kid and had friends of all shapes and colors from Cleveland to the rural backroads of Ohio and even into Berkeley where he learned that there is no difference in the color of ones skin. Whether he was in rural Ohio where kids stayed cool in the summer by putting their feet into the puddles down by the railroad tracks....to the small blind black boy in Berkeley who went around his neighborhood just saying hi, and letting us know he was there and happy...and sometimes invited us to neighborhood gatherings in North Oakland which was only two blocks away....home of the Black Panther Party which was very active in those days."

Bob and his family lived for a time on the border between Oakland and Berkeley. It was there he got to meet many of the beat writers and philosophers, but also the people working in their shadow. He met people like Sammy Tenenbaum (Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s lawyer), Tom Hand (Zen guru and lesser-known architect of the beat movement), and Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle who coined the terms “hippie” and “beatnik.” -("Pax Cultura" Winter 2006 Edition-Author Dennis Thompson)

BOB: I was actually a hermit, border lining on agoraphobia in Mendocino County until I met Kay Rudin through of series of curious accidents. Turned out that Kay was born and raised not far from my doorstep in Cleveland at about the same time I was. Kay worked together with Robert Crumb at American Greetings in Cleveland. It was through Kay the I learned much of my right wing politics, as she videographed the life of Judi Bari, co-founder of EARTH FIRST! , hung with such notables as she could meet and I grabbed onto her coattail once in a while to expand my mind. The drawing by her, above, is of singer songwriter Antonia Lamb. My picture of Kay, above, caught her off guard a bit...on one her her frequent visits to the Software Store in Mendo County, where I had a desk to write programs when I wasn't busy gallivanting around the coastal ocean area taking scenic shots...

Kay sent me a newer pic of herself after
seeing our online work....as per below is Kay
2006, the videographer.

Shot below Kay Series is one I took of singer-songwriter, actress and photographer, Antonia Lamb. She is the one with the camera to the eye. Nikon F1...holding the "back-up" cameras is Antonia's DAUGHTER, Johanna

Words by Nicholas Wilson
Nicholas Wilson Photography
The little Pacific Coast town of Mendocino, California, has long been a hotbed of activism for various causes. Thirty years ago, in 1976, the cause was saving the remaining great whales from slaughter by Russian and Japanese commercial whaling fleets.

In June, 1975, a Greenpeace Foundation patrol boat located a Russian whaling fleet killing sperm whales off Cape Mendocino. The Greenpeacers used the then novel tactic of launching a high-speed Zodiac inflatable and maneuvering themselves between the Russian harpooners and the whales. They captured dramatic film footage of a cannon-fired explosive harpoon flying over their heads and striking a whale. When the film was broadcast on national TV news, some Mendocino locals were inspired to get involved in stopping the whale slaughter off our shores.

Byrd Baker, a local wood sculptor, was probably the one who came up with the name "Mendocino Whale War," and it was war in contrast to the peace in Greenpeace. (At the time, Greenpeace was a small nonprofit foundation based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, before it grew into the big international environmental organization that is now known the world over.) Byrd and friends began campaigning to save the whales, and many other locals joined the effort. California Gray Whales swim past Mendocino twice a year on their migration between the Bering Sea where they feed and Baja California lagoons where they breed and give birth. Whale watching from the rocky headlands of Mendocino has long been a popular pastime, and people are very fond of the whales.

BOB: My own familiarity with Byrd Baker came shortly after moving to the Mendocino Coast. Byrd was a large boned huge man with a bellowing voice and he loved to pick up on strange stories and myths in a humorous way and have fun while doing it.

It wasn't hard running into Byrd. He seemed to be everywhere in the County at the same time, riding in his whale mobile which had a large carved whale on top of it. His home which looks un down, has been painted since his death many years ago. It was in his front yard in downtown Mendocino where he used a chainsaw to carve all sorts of decorations, some larger than life....just the same as Byrd was...larger than life...

BOB: I am not at all sure where I would be or have gone in this world without my lifelong friend and wife. Although we came from different cultural settings, we adapted to each other so well as friends which is better than the marriage vows we took.

Jane was a singer and musician. Her voice was a natural and she adapted with me to photography quickly learning to use settings and see things I missed. Jane also worked the darkroom when I came home from assignments and managed 3 kids while we crossed the country on little money in an old car.

It has been said they broke the mold in some cases, but in Jane's life there never were any boundaries...She still loves her memories and looks forward to tomorrow being a better day.

The Whole Earth Festival was born when an art class taught by Jose Arguelles had an Art Happening on the University of California, Davis campus in 1969. The students used art to involve those that attended in an educational process that dared to transcend the typical system of standardized tests and impersonal lectures. Following the United Nations declaration of Earth Day in 1970, the second Art Happening (1971) was renamed Whole Earth.- Associated Students' UCD

BOB: I found the Whole Earth Festival to be sort of a hybrid between Rainbow Gatherings, Barter Faires, Healing Gatherings and the general populace of Northern California. Folks came from far and wide in ever form of dress and attire. Some rode bikes, some wore ties and others just dropped in. There was a genuine feeling of peace on the campus quad at UC Davis, and it was there that Jane and I got to meet Hugh Romney (aka Wavy Gravy), Lisa Law and Stephen Gaskin for the first time. The whole idea of the festival was to bring people together and maybe if they saw each other from this different perspective, there would come a common understanding of the others philosophy and how it really wasn't as different as their own.

"Kidron was never incorporated. It's just a crossroads. It's a stoplight."
There is no official population. Likely, she says, there are a little more than 600 people who live here.
"It is a very Mennonite-Amish community. Everything is closed on Sunday. In town, everything is locally owned and operated except the bank and post office."
Dressed in long dark dresses and wearing bonnets, a few Amish women, with children in tow, join their husbands in the barn to watch the auction. Outside the barn, small groups of men and women gather to talk. -Gayle Lehman Ervin, Kidron Hardware

BOB: God. Now I'm slipping back to Ohio and some of my poorer days in photography. I had the best cameras for what a man living on disability could have. I think it was a Asahi Pentax with maybe one telephoto and one normal lens....

Even in our early days, when we felt stuck close to the security of our parents, Jane and I ventured all through Ohio on the 50 dollars a month we received as custodians....and the few dollars each month from Food Stamps. Somehow we found a few pennies for gas and a couple bucks for film. Our travels took us all over but one particular place just south of Kidron Ohio intrigue us the most. There were Amish folks all over parts of eastern Ohio farming country and they didn't like being photographed which put me in a dilemma so I used a telephoto lens and usually shot from inside my car. It made me feel a bit guilty in one way but it built my courage for taking newspaper pictures which were pretty gruesome later on.

Meanwhile, the war was heating up in Vietnam, and Bob was starting to feel the pressure of Uncle Sam’s “I Want You” poster. In the fall of 1962, the footloose seventeen year old enlisted. He quickly found out that the army wasn’t a good match. He went absent without leave three months into Advanced Instructional Training, and then went AWOL as many as five times in the next three years. It wasn’t that he hated his country–he just had a problem with authority. -("Pax Cultura" Winter 2006 Edition-Author Dennis Thompson)

BOB: Was I proud of my AWOLS? Of course not but I was a young and very naive kid who had been raised in an upper class family and when I signed the papers to join up, I had absolutely no idea of what I had done. I reckon I just figured if it didn't work out I would simply quit. Of course as all know these modern days of news and information, nobody is allowed to do that. What hit me with a turnip. I was young and silly and funny and skinny and thought the word revolved around me. I reckon I had a lot to learn.
I was a survivor though and my Boy Scout skills came through as I trekked as a 17 year old across the country more than 10 times. I feel very close to the movie Forrest Gump when he decided to run from coast to coast. Well I didn't run...I did manage to walk all across the state of Colorado and over the Divide on foot with a small backpack....all the time AWOL and telling tales to anyone who asked. This particular picture was a lie...The picture was taken by Tony Haden who 43 years later became a cyber-friend.