Claire Donald

Back when Haight was cool.

Well, exactly.

So everyone is saying this is the heart of the counterculture movement and

Free love.

And so Joan gets assigned to go do a piece there and she gets there and realizes quickly that this is not what that is.

This is not free love and like everything's all good.

These are kids who have lost faith in everything that they were supposed to believe in.

These are runaways.

These are children who are in like very dangerous situations.

And sometimes Joan would get an assignment for a magazine piece and she was like, I just feel like there's so much more that I need to write that's longer than a piece.

Like I need to write a book on what I am seeing here.

And so she starts thinking about doing a book and she starts working on a book of essays that will eventually be called

slouching towards Bethlehem wow and so slouching towards Bethlehem is this commentary of counterculture and hippies and everything that was going on and so she goes and she just emerges herself in the lives of these kids and she follows them around reporting on it she was with runaways teenagers on LSD girls who were 14 years old who were high in dirty apartments and then in the book she was introduced to this group and taken to where they live and here's a little part from the book

When I finally find Otto, he says, I got something at my place that will blow your mind.

And when I get there, I see a child on the living room floor wearing a reefer coat, reading a comic book.

She keeps licking her lips in concentration.

And the only off thing about her is that she's wearing white lipstick.

Five years old, Otto says, on acid.

Oh, that makes me like feel sick.

So sick.