This tiny sheet may refer to Emmett Grogan’s return from New Mexico in early May 1967. In Ringolevio, Emmett leaves the Haight with Larry Little Bird after the unsettling episode of the anonymous pistol and note left in the Free Food truck, and later describes hitchhiking back to San Francisco after a month away. Seen in that light, “Emmett Grogan / is / Back!” is immediately undercut by the Digger answer: “so what.” The point is not that Emmett’s return was unimportant, but that the Diggers were not Emmett, and the work had not waited for him. The sheet is a small but pointed anti-celebrity gesture, insisting that the Diggers remained collective, anonymous, and in motion. |