The Black Swan

The story is set in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, the playground for all the rich and poor “Flower Children” who flocked to San Francisco during the summer of love. They came to advocate Peace-and-Love as an antidote to the violent backdrop of the Viet Nam War raging into the 1960s and beyond. This epoch of social revolution stormed around the world from India’s Gandhi, assassinated in 1948, to others who fell like dominos along the way in the name of freedom: notably Medgar Evers (1963), the Kennedy brothers, J.F.K. (1963) and R.F.K. (1968), and then the great leader, M.L.K. (1968).

This story is not so much about war as it is about the silent revolution that was taking place in the home, the family, the workplace, and the highest institutions of learning. By the 1980s, the revolution had transformed America–forever. For one thing, women wanted to escape the stultifying morality of the 1950s. Movies and TV portrayed a love scenes with never-before-shown explicit sexuality. Most women now craved money, power, and sex–just like men....

Men sought money by climbing the corporate ladder, succeeding at all costs, no matter the risk. Some started giant corporations that grew like Jack’s beanstalk, up, up, and away. Does Apple Computer come to mind? At home, women left abusive situations, slammed the door on the past, and went out to seek their fortune. Where did they go? Back to school, of course. Many of them wanted to show someone, somewhere, that they were as good as men were.

And this is where our Black Swan enters the story….