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August 16, 2007
Another Woodstock anniversary: My '89 story lives on in a college textbook and on the Web
On this 38th anniversary of Woodstock, my 1989 series, based on interviews with 50 Rhode Islanders who were at that '69 festival with me, is now part of a college textbook.
It's one of 25 27 chapters in Time It Was: American Stories from the Sixties, published by Prentice Hall in April.
I wrote here last year how this all came about.
Mine is the only chapter that was not written specifically for the book. Indeed, you can read that entire Woodstock series on the Web, plus some followups, since I get hauled out to write about it again on every big anniversary. I don't own my own stories -- they were written when I was the paper's lifestyles editor during three weeks off staff but on the payroll. The Providence Journal owns them, and wouldn't let the editors cut it or change a word.
Other authors, including co-editors Tim Koster and Karen Manners Smith, write of their experiences in Vietnam, draft resistance, Kent State, psychedelics, feminism, civil rights, communes, a cult, Richard Nixon's campaign, undercover in the DEA, alongside Cesar Chavez, as a Red Cross "Donut Dollie" and more.
(Update: I've posted the table of contents.)
Karen Smith and Tim Koster made a point of traveling to meet the authors, and when she came to Providence last summer, I asked, "What's everybody else doing now?" Contributors were asked to write a synopsis of our lives since then, and these little bios at the back of the book are compelling.
...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up," February, 1936
CNN Money: 'Woodstock' farm expected to fetch $8M: "Part of Max Yasgur's dairy farm, near the site of the original music festival, has seen a boost in value and could be a target for casino developers."
Posted by Sheila Lennon 
at 8:04 AM | Permalink
Sheila,
38 years ago, sitting on that scaffold on Friday afternoon.
I finally went back recently for the first time, and checked out the field as well as the Church yard off 17B where we parked and set up our canvas lean-to. The place still has a special feel to it. It might sound corny, but to me the ghosts of the crowd & the music seem to still hang in the air. In the Church of Rock and Roll, it's the main cathedral, and the hill is the temple. Is it really that important? Nah, 'cause it's only Rock & Roll but...
For one brief, wonderful moment, we created a "state of mind" that a lot of us can still go back to anytime. They say if you can remember the 60's, you weren't there. But for me, so much is still vivid, from the toll booths along the Connecticut Turnpike getting crazier & crazier as we neared NY Thursday night, to the ride home Monday with 7 people crashing from the weekend in a cramped Ford Falcon trying to make it back to Bristol.
In my travels over the years, anybody from the Northeast between the ages of 50 & 60 has a Woodstock story. It's about either when they went or why they didn't.
P.S. I still have my ticket.
(I moved this from the 1985 post where Rico posted it today.) -s
Posted by: Rico T. on August 16, 2007 7:41 PM
Rico, it's good to see you (not) aging gracefully. Maybe we'll all meet down the road at the old folks' rock and roll rest home.
Posted by: Sheila on August 17, 2007 12:18 PM
