Happy 40th Anniversary of Woodstock!
And no less of import, Happy Birthday, Bill! I am having cake to celebrate as we speak. Lucky you, to be living in New York City for your birthday. I hope you have a wonderful day and night.
About Woodstock, I feel almost deprived because I wasn't old enough to attend. I was only thirteen in 1969. I do remember, however, going to the Atlantic Thrift store on Rt. 30 in Malvern and buying a lime green and magenta, paisly-print, three-piece suit, with a skirt, Nehru-collared jacket and bell bottomed pants, the height of Early Poverty fashion, topped off with a hot pink ribbed shell. It was tres magnifique, especially to a painfully introverted "tween" like me. I was styling. And I am absolutely sure that I bought that suit because of Woodstock—well, okay, maybe I'm not absolutely sure, but I bet it was bought because of the kind of world it was when Woodstock happened. The whole hippie movement suited me just fine.
I am so thankful to God that I lived in the era that I did (I was born in 1955—woo hoo Baby Boomers!). What a fantastically vibrant, exciting, shitty, scary world it was then. We had the Vietnam War every night on the news, all those horrible videos and pictures of napalm and helicopters being shot out of the sky and men bleeding and bandaged on a stretcher, crying for their mother and looking right into the camera. Then we would see a press conference with Richard ("I'm not a crook!") Nixon, and one look at that long, sad, drooping face and we knew the end was near. Skinny, homeless guys in big cities even carried around signs that said "The End is Near." And it probably was. The Cold War was heating up. "Four dead in Ohio." Segregation was still in its infancy. I had a friend named Bonnie, but she was kind of a novelty. Blacks still weren't totally accepted in white society.
Then there was the music, the whole "tune in, turn on, drop out thing." Peace and love and getting high. You were the odd one out if you didn't get high. It was a different world.
America has a contradictory history. Here we have this absolutely awe-inspiring Declaration of Independence, this magical, mystical document with ideals higher than the throne of God, yet we enslaved a large group of our citizens for over 400 years. All men are created equal, but they really aren't, you see? I love this country, this whole boiling, swirling contradiction of a society, I really do. There is nothing else on earth like it. It's the Great Experiment and I hope it lasts forever. I just hate to see us get all "holier-than-thou." That's what we tried to rebel against back in 1969, preaching to the powers that be that it's not going to be like this when we are in charge. It's gonna be a different world. I guess it's up to the rest of you whether we achieved it or not.
Below are photos from the Woodstock museum in Bethel, New York, the site of the original festival. Enjoy!
