A Drop City founder speaks
out
One of the founders of Drop City, the notorious "model hippie
commune" in Colorado, responded to our article (Lay of the
Land Spring 1996) on the site which was printed in the last newsletter.
Gene Bernofsky (whose dropper name was Curly Benson), wrote to
describe a Drop City that differed from the one that remains in
the public mind from the media coverage of years ago. According
to Mr. Bernofsky, Drop City's geodesic domes, which came to symbolize
alternative living in the late 60's, were, in retrospect, a mistake,
as they helped to attract the nationwide attention which lead
to the demise of the community. And he stresses "...we were
not models, hippies, or a commune. Those trademarks are strictly
the invention of establishment media".
A Correction to the previous
issue of The Lay of the Land
In our cover artcle (Lay of the Land Spring 1996) on the accident
involving the Mark 17 thermonuclear bomb near Albuquerque, it
was stated that plutonium was dispersed by the conventional explosive
detonation of the bomb. However, as researcher Peter Merlin pointed
out, the radioactivity at the site was caused by the dispersal
of other radioactive components of the bomb, as all the plutonium
elements had been removed for the shipment of the weapon.
