Mendocino County Museum
400 East Commercial Street, Willits, CA  95490
707-459-2736

"WONDERFUL WAYS TO BE"

featuring artifacts of Andrée Connors and other New Settlers

Andrée Connor's highly decorated van represents the counter-culture movement of the 1960s in Mendocino County. Other lasting aspects of Mendocino County's blending of cultures include publications like New Settler Interview.

About the 60s Counter Culture in Mendocino County

"What happened on the coast then... was a wonderful experiment, and I'm quite nostalgic about it."

-- Bruce Levene, Willits, 2001

Andrée's Van - Breast cancer awareness tour

A Rose Rising Out of Cancer A ghostly rose sets its face Against the lies of silicone And fake normalcy. The rose whispers The metamorphosis occurred. Breast to rose Death to life The new beauty is truth. -- Andrée Connors

"I lived in that van for 6 or 7 yrs. Daily, strangers would ask to see inside. I gave guided tours like the impoverished nobility in Europe's castles. It was a moveable feast I was giving the public. Adults loved it. Kids went nuts. They saw that lifestyle's only limited by lack of imagination-there are many wonderful ways to be in this world. I witnessed a lot of peoples' Aha! experiences, due to that van."

--Letter to Charles Peterson From Andrée O'Connor, Mendocino, July 17, 1995

Mendocino County- back to the land

"I was the part-time-coast-ad person-reporter for the Mendocino Grapevine, the alternative county press....we decide, Gary and I, to do this book about the old trucks and the new people who drive them. And we chose to companion the photographs with distilled interviews... to complement the essence of a snapshot.... we became aware that these vehicles were not only transportation, tool and shelter... but also a way of conveying the short term shifts of our contemporary history....More or less, everyone of us who has re-inhabited this community- no matter how or why we got here- have been here every since we arrived."

--Beth Robinson Bosk, from Mendocino Rust by Beth Robinson Bosk and Gary Thompson-Moraga

"I live on my land. I work on my land. I'm here a lot. In that way, I'm very much like that old settler. In the beginning, my bottom line was I did not want to work in town to pay for my land. That's why I do what I do: I make shakuhachis because I can do it here... It is the shakuhachi that evolved out of the hill culture or Mendocino County, California."

--Monty Levenson, from The New Settler Interviews Volume 1: Boogie at the Brink, Edited by Beth Robinson Bosk

Links

Mendocino Grapevine Cover from the Crumb Museum
The Mendocino Grapevine was Mendocino County's alternative newspaper from the 1970's through the 1990's.

Celebrating Hippie Past by Mike Geniella from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 25, 2002
This article discusses MCM's exhibit, Wonderful Ways to Be the impact of the Back to the Land Movement on Mendocino County.