Woodstock

Despite the fact that I was 19 years old and an hour away from the 1969 Woodstock Festival, I did not attend.  My excuse has always been "I had to work that weekend."  And that is true.  But the real reason that I did not attend is that my parents would have killed me.  Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.  At 19, I was still afraid of their wrath, still wanting to win their approval.  In hindsight, I wonder what might really have happened if I'd defied them and gone to Woodstock?  Well, here's another truth:  I lacked the courage to be that adventurous.

I had company today.  Jessie and Matt are the daughter and son-in-law of old friends.  They recently relocated from California to New Jersey, and drove up here from their city apartment to spend a day with me.  I drove them up to Bethel Woods, the site of Max Yasgur's farm and home to the Woodstock Museum.  I've visited the museum several times and always enjoy it.  Jessie and Matt, musicians themselves, were happy to experience it.  We first went to the site of the festival where we picnicked, overlooking what would have been the stage and the heavily populated field.  Then we explored the museum.

Although the museum's main focus is the festival, it also serves as a testimony to the times.  Through its photographs, films, quotes and collections, it is a history lesson on the Sixties.  Whenever I go there, I am transported back to a time that I, like many, have romanticized.  Our message of peace and justice should not be confined to any one era of human history, but sadly, it seems that the message went the way of bell bottom pants and beaded fringed vests.

 

Jessie and Matt are too young to have experienced that period in time, but they are old souls, and our conversation about how far the world has moved since that time of idealism was thoughtful and nostalgic.  We teased ourselves for being full of doom and gloom, but there is nothing remotely humorous about our perception that the current state of the world is not a good one, and there seems to be no way to walk it back to a time when change seemed possible.

So what am I in love with?  A memory, I suppose.  A proud moment in time when young people were optimistic, full of possibility, and dedicated to peace on the planet.  I wish it were a current reality instead of a memory, but I just have not seen enough evidence of that.  Another school shooting yesterday points in the opposite direction.

But Woodstock?  As Michael Lang, co-creator of the festival said, At Woodstock, we would focus our energy on peace, setting aside the onstage discussion of political issues to just groove on what might be possible. It was a chance to see if we could create the kind of world for which we’d been striving throughout the sixties: That would be our political statement—proving that peace and understanding were possible and creating a testament to the value of the counterculture. It would be three days of peace and music.”

Amen.