While researching information about Woodstock, I hit upon a video of the Jefferson Airplane performing their song
Volunteers. Like any good earworm chorus, the ‘
Volunteers of America’ got stuck in my head. One thing led to another and the constant recycling of the lyric started touching off random memories connected with the word ‘volunteer’. The Airplane were specifically singing about the political and social turmoil of the 1960s (‘
Look what’s happening in the streets, counter-revolution, up the revolution’), thus the song was a call to arms for the younger generation. To be a volunteer, one can make a difference without necessarily becoming (my apologies to Jefferson Airplane) a counter-revolutionary.