The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom

By Wes “Scoop” Nisker

During the first few months of 1979, we lived in the hills above Milpitas, California, in the southeastern edge of the Bay Area. For news and music we listened to KSAN, the FM radio station from San Francisco that had pioneered underground or counterculture programming in the mid-1960s.

The logic of that statement was undeniable. Really, we are all responsible for making the news that builds the world we want to create. It made sense to me, and still does.

After we left the Bay Area to return to Idaho, I missed Scoop’s broadcasts and his reassuring reminders to make our own news. But now I have found his book, “The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom,” which was released this year by HarperCollins. This book mixes autobiographical rants, his quests along various mystical religious pathways, and heavy doses of wisecracking humor.

Scoop details his childhood as the only Jewish kid in Norfolk, Nebraska, explains the reasons he headed west to become a hippie, and relates the fun of interviewing everyone from Tim Leary to the Black Panthers as KSAN’s news director. He also explains his many trips to the Far East, seeking truth in all the out-of-the-way places. And he ends with his own brand of solution, a voluntary simplicity lifestyle he calls zen socialism.

His book is a synthesis of several of his earlier books, “Crazy Wisdom” and “If You Don’t Like the News, Go Out and Make Some of Your Own.” So, if you have time for only one Scoop Nisker tome, try this “Big Bang” book. It’s a good primer for understanding that revolutionary period known as the Sixties with its simultaneous expression of political radicalism and spiritual awakening.

Bill London edits this newsletter, and with some difficulty, can manage to remember some of his own life during the Sixties.