Woodstock Revisited

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There's something you don't see every day....this link is to one of the alternative posters for Woodstock, the original Woodstock that is.

So many people have claimed through the years to have been there; I went through a phase of it too, back in the day...but never claimed to be there physically, just spiritually.  So I wasn't exactly lying.

These days more people are apt to condemn the festival; citing the sex, mud and drugs as the primary reasons for this gathering....but they are wrong. So very wrong.

At that time, we were revolutionaries in the truest sense.  Many of us were standing on the front lines getting ourselves fire hosed or billy clubbed or attacked by dogs.  Mind you, I can only imagine the fear that must have permeated those hallowed city halls and college regents meetings as the nation's youth converged, full of righteous indignation.

The part I played in all of that was small by comparison...mainly helping with the going away parties for the freshly haircutted recruits at the coffeehouse, participating in peace marches and civil rights marches, silence strikes and fasts and making sandwiches for the folks who were heading out on the road to Canada....I stopped short of the SDS stuff.  I just couldn't wrap my head around using violence to protest war.

On a whole, the sixties seem to be looked on these days as nothing more than a bunch of spoiled, drug crazed, lazy kids making a lot of noise.  But if anyone cares to look a little deeper, they'll see just how much these hippie bums helped bring about some very important, very good changes to our nation and to our world.

I won't deny that there were, and remain, influences in the movement with desires to bring about a New World Order....some of their ideas are okay, but not all of them.  Humans need to maintain a sense of autonomy as well as community or they become resentful.  Socialism, as it has been practiced thus far, doesn't work.   There's always somebody in the mix who takes advantage of opportunity, becomes dictator and turns everything upside down.  We don't need that kind of crap.

So for today, 8/17/2010, Fifty Five Is The New Woodstock Revisited....because there was more than pot smoke in the air back then, there was purpose, too.