Endless Love
by Fern Marcya Edison

I was fifty. Half a century. And I STILL HADN'T FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKIN' FOR. Born in Brooklyn. Before it was cool. Non-happy household. Parents always bickering. Mother, oft complaining. Father had temper. Escaped into pornography. Loved his pornography. Paperback books then. Way before internet. I was precocious. Read his pornography. Started around 10. Didn't bode well. For future relationships. Daddy, I wondered: Is sex love? Do ya' love me? Am I sexy? I am confused. Shaped my worldview. Not a romantic. No SILLY LOVES SONGS - puh-lease!

It's Woodstock '69. Lost my virginity. No emotional connection. SHE'S NOT THERE. But, he's cute! Then, my twenties. The sexual revolution. Free love era. LOVE THE ONE...THAT YOU'RE WITH. Count me in! I shoulda' charged. Mighta' been rich. Few emotional connections. Those few - unhealthy. Damaged boy-men. WITH BROKEN WINGS. YOU'RE THE ONES...THAT I WANT!

Then met Richard. DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE. Affectionate, adoring, attentive. No sexual predator. But, ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

I hate father. He hates mother. So-much-in-common! It feels right. We get married. Soon I learn. He's damaged, too. Non-drinking alchoholic. Rocky marital road. He leaves twice. DO YOU REALLY WANNA HURT ME? I hate him. We legally separate. For 18 months. Ran into him. On Village street. We weren't finished. REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD. Dated my husband. He moves in. Seven more years. We become yuppies. He travels extensively. I complain indefatigably. Sex therapy unhelpful. Couple therapy dubious. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER (but) TWO CAN BE AS BAD AS ONE. My 40th birthday. We plan celebration. Going to London. 11th hour cancellation. Divorce lawyer scheduled.

Soon met David. The dashing Englishman. George Harrison type. HE'S SO FINE. Revisit sexual intrigue. LET'S GET PHYSICAL. OH, WHAT A NIGHT! SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS. Ah yes, David... My dream man. Careful what you wish for! EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN. Eight year obsession. Mostly one-sided affair. WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? (On his side.)

PART -TIME LOVER: WHEN I WANT YOU, ALL I NEED TO DO IS DREAM. YOU REALLY GOT ME. CRAZY FOR YOU. You're KILLING ME SOFTLY. YOU JUST KEEP ME HANGIN' ON. DON'T YOU WANT ME? I CAN'T MAKE YOU LOVE ME. Excruciating, exquisite suffering. But - I GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE. I finally did. ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY.

Then, after David. ADDICTED TO "LOVE." First date frenzy. Dozens, no scores. Mostly internet generated. Much as ever - I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS! Match dot com. Stale, murky waters of Plenty of Fish. Nothing felt right. No one's a match. My ambivalence ruled. (ALL BY MYSELF.)

L-o-o-o-o-o--ve, ENDLESS LOVE. It's not for everyone.

BUT...by the time I got to Woodstock - while I STILL HADN'T FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKIN' FOR - I was thinkin' : Don't worry about all of this inconsequential-to-the-universe stuff that spawned when you drank the cultural Kool-Aid. Ya' know, the American post-modern age's 'enduring romantic love/lust' mythology cultural Kool-Aid - ?

Just LET IT BE. And, DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY. J

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Three Days Of Pee, Love and Music
by Lindsay Suchow

In 1999, bathing was not my top priority. I failed nearly all my classes in middle school, yet the only time I got called into the guidance office was to discuss my hygiene. A music festival seemed a fitting place for me: No pressure to be clean and dainty. But little did I know, I was about to hit rock bottom.

I already hadn't showered for days by the time I got to Woodstock - you remember, the one where peace, love and music were replaced by rape, alcoholism and pyromania. I came with the clothes on my back and nothing else. Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York was like a dust bowl. The sea of 200,000 people invoked images of migrant workers on bread lines in the Great Depression, their faces and fingertips caked with filth.

It became apparent by day two that there weren't nearly enough port-a-potties. Toilets overflowed with urine and feces. Lines were 45 minutes long. During one bathroom trip I noticed one of the port-a-potties wasn't being used and was slowing up the line. I opened the door to find the walls, ceiling and floor covered in human waste. I saw a girl on the line throw up at the sight of it.

The grounds were flat, concrete and natureless. I'm not above peeing in the woods or behind a bush, but I'm certainly too modest to pop a squat in the middle of a circle pit or behind a tractor trailer with seven dudes sleeping underneath it. As a result, I tried to use the bathroom as little as possible, which was difficult since I was chugging copious amounts of water throughout the day to fight the unrelenting sun.

During KoRn's set on Friday night - my favorite band at the time - my decision to hold in my pee all day reared its ugly head. Halfway through "my song," I was ready to burst. We were deep in the crowd. We'd made our way right next to the stage. And the port-a-potties seemed as if they were on the other side of the universe.

I had three options: 1) Pull down my pants and publicly urinate in front of KoRn and thousands of drunken fratboys. 2) Embark on a Jesus walk to the bathrooms, stand on line for an hour and hover over a mountain of shit in the dark without a flashlight or toilet paper. Or 3) Endure a little discomfort in the name of rock & roll.

I turned to my friend Gabe, to whom I'd been complaining the entire day about how badly I needed to pee. "I think I'm just gonna go, dude." He looked back, unflinchingly. "Then just go, dude." His approval implied that he knew I was taking one for the team, that he'd do the same if it were him. At least that's how I chose to justify my decision.

I surrendered to my bladder and just went. In my pants. On purpose. It was the only time of my life I can remember feeling such extreme relief and disgust at the same time. It ran down my leg, soaked my pants and pooled on the earth beneath me. Gabe laughed; I winced. As I walked back to my campsite that night, bull legged and ashamed, I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to shower for two more days. Back at the tent, I eagerly changed into a pair of my dad's gym shorts - he was equally disappointed and amused at the situation - and left my pissy pants out in the scorching hot sun for the rest of the trip.

If it redeems me at all, I haven't peed in my pants since that night, and when I started high school, I ditched the smelly girl motif. Though I have to admit, if there is a next time I urinate all over myself, I hope it's under the same circumstances. And I hope it's for a cooler band than KoRn.

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A Woodstock State of Time
by Dawn Marlena Hopper

There were two things my friends counted on when they called me on Saturday evening at 5:04 -- that I would make it to the restaurant -- despite the last minute reservation and that I would be on time.

"6 sharp," she said. "They won't seat us unless the entire party is there."

"No problem," I replied.

Time is something I've managed--expertly--for years. I've juggled it, passed it, stretched it, and all my friends know --Dawn Hopper rarely lets it slip by. Oh, I've been well trained--I'm a psychologist. We're the experts of the hour; in one of them we can unravel 20 years. Oh, your hour's up!

"See you at 6," I told her, but just as I spoke 5:06 had to have its say, "You're cutting it close," but I assured 5:07 we could definitely do it and I pushed 8 minutes into the shower with me and got out 5:15, drying myself between sliding hangers in my closet, looking for the perfect thing to wear until 5:20 snapped, "You're wasting us! Just throw on the wrap-around sweater and the stretch jeans, the ones that take away that saggy ass we've given you."

"You're right," I told 5:21. Then I ran to the mirror to do my hair and make-up, but just as I started cranky 5:25 began poking me and whining, "Just leave it!"

"Are you kidding," I shot back. "Five minutes can take back years of what you assholes have done to my face. You're not going to win when it comes to this."

So with 30 of those entitled bastards left, 5:30 and I began driving west on 212, the road to Woodstock. I relaxed. You do know that relaxation is the nemesis of time, right? And just as the rush of tension left my mouth with a sigh, we were forced to a stop, behind a line of cars--in both directions.

"Oh Shit," I thought as 5:35 began chanting, "Told you so, told you so."

"Shut up," I said, "maybe there's an accident."

But the laughter I heard told us otherwise. And then I saw her, a middle-aged brunette, hunched over, picking up change on the pavement while a man blocked the traffic. 5:36 began fuming and counted out every torturous second.

Then a desperate 5:37 said, "throw her a five and tell her to get off the road," while 5:38 reminded me, "we don't wait for anyone" And there I sat watching three minutes fly and 5:39 bid me farewell by screaming, "try to catch up . . . ."

"Shit, catch up? Everyone knows it's impossible to make-time once we hit the village; it crawls on every street through every door and every crosswalk.

And right before I opened the door to see what kind of fiasco had taken my time, I heard it. A horn. In concert a mismatched vibration of tones began conveying our common dilemma; "you are fucking with our time. So I drowned out 5:40's shriek and joined the chorus with a Mercedes-sized whelp. The message got through. I sighed.

The best made plans might have been realized that evening--but just as I crept past, 5:41 coiled itself around me and hissed, "just keep going and whatever you do--don't look." Well, as much as Dawn Hopper obeys time, Dawn Hopper truly despises being ruled by it. It simply has to be my choice--so I looked.

The middle-aged brunette, was standing under that sign, the Woodstock sign on 212, the one that announces that you are here, the place of peace and love--you know--where we were told us that time was ours to manage. Someone was aiming a camera and she smiled broadly, the kind of smile that cracks the crow's feet and fills the hollows and defies the creases time gives us. I knew that smile. And just as I passed that wisp of happiness that rejected time, that bitch, 5:42 had the nerve to berate me, "Oh my God! Here she goes again."

That was it.

I whipped that car around and pulled behind the van and left them all screaming -something about the reservation, the outside terrace, the food . . . . "Shut the fuck up," I yelled flipping 4:43 upside down on the seat.

They drove from Indiana. It was a lifelong dream. Her pocketbook flung open on the road. "Embarrassing," she told me.

"Let me take your pictures--all of you in one shot."

"Get in the picture with us," she said as her arm found its way across my shoulder and she leaned her head towards mine. I leaned back, letting moments define me rather than numbers. To tell you truth, I was simply tired of overdue, tardy, too long, and prompt. And I realized at that moment I hated that word "time".

"Do you live here?" she asked.

"Yeah, I do."

"Is I true--what they say about this place. . . about being . . . free?

I looked into her face that had journeyed to find that Woodstock state of mind.

"Yeah, it's true."

I was driving when I got the Facebook picture. Ping! Time didn't dare say shit to me as a pulled over. I bypassed its irritable spasmodic flashing colon--between the hour and the minutes and savored that moment--me, smiling and cracking the lines I'd spent a lot of time chasing away, and filling my hollows with laughter.

And by the time I got to Woodstock, I remembered why I really came.

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Reflections On Uncoventional Golfing
by Isaac Sorensen

200 or more of us are gathered in a tight circle for evening meeting. My bare muddy feet swinging nervously from the wooden chair, hands twisting and untwisting, my suspender straps snapping against my chest.

Barbara, sobbing, lifts the microphone from her side and wipes her face, smearing the tears onto her long plaid handmade excuse for a piece of modest clothing. "It was all just all so Evil" she concludes before returning to her seat as I press back the smirk threatening to spread across my face.

So little to say about such an exciting thrill of an experience? And why the hell did she volunteer if she thought it was all so wrong?

WPDH has been announcing the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival in Saugerties. Those of us resisters who secretly monitored the outside world from our bedrooms during the evening meeting, knew we would never be allowed to go to the concert, and the worst thing about it? Metallica was playing.

My brother and I had gotten the radio to work with the help of a butter knife, a soldering iron and a Phillips head screwdriver. No stereo made it into a household in the community unless the Radio was locked tight with super glue.

Those leaning towards super liberal might be heard with a Peter, Paul and Mary tape, but for the most part anything that strayed beyond simple folk or classical music was deemed "of the evil spirit." Metallica was especially thrilling as it was probably the furthest thing from what was deemed acceptable music.

The Bruderhof are always eager to show face lending their support to the local community, and when asked to spare some EMT's for the concert they were sent with earplugs and instructions to pay attention only to the godly task of caring for the sick and injured.

I have been waiting patiently for first hand accounts of this momentous event but so far Barbara has supplied us with nothing more than a disappointing round of sobs and snorts and I am thoroughly unsatisfied, however amused.

At the awkward close to the meeting, I am out of my mind excited when it's announced that I will be joining a work crew to scrap the concert site of all of the plywood that remained.

We arrive, screwdrivers and pressure washers in hand, at an overwhelming landfill of garbage. Inmates in orange jumpsuits roam the hillside filling trash bags, guards closely behind them with rifles. I have a different kind of guard watching over me, and I know to keep my head down and work hard for fear of not being able to return tomorrow.

With a crow bar from the truck and a bloated bottle of ice tea branded with the Woodstock label, I tee off, focusing all of my "damn I missed the concert energy" into one powerful swing. The pressurized bottle flies satisfyingly far, the dove end over ending through the air, I imagine it plowing into an unappreciative sniffling EMT in a plaid skirt and polka dotted head covering --metallica playing from the stage. "Off to Never Never land...."

By the time I get to Woodstock, the show's long over, I'm happily living with the love of my life. Her father opened the first festival, and I wonder if his music would be permitted by the cult my parents joined.

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Confessions
by Julie Evans

I had recently broken my back in a riding accident in Central Park and asked my new boyfriend to take me somewhere where I could get well or die. At the time I had just divorced my second husband because two psychics, one deaf, one East Indian, had separately come to the conclusion that he was a warlock. I was also a recovering cocaine addict, a macrobiotic, an orphan, an actress, a writer and the baby of what used to be my family. It was 1982; I was twenty-six years old and all alone in the world.

By the time Richard deposited me at 224 Meads Mountain Road he had already read my journal. We were talking on the phone and he said, " I have a confession to make. When you were in Scotland with Andrew I was lying on your bed in that little room I had you live in and I saw your journal and I just wanted to be with you, to know you better and I know I shouldn't have read it, but I did." My heart raced as I tried to remember which journal and what it said.

"It didn't stop there," he went on, "I read everything, every journal you ever wrote, I read about your trip to Europe as a teenager when you made love to an older man on the airplane next to your sleeping mother. It was disgusting. You wrote about sex and men and drugs and your curiosity about all of it. I couldn't deal with it, I couldn't stop reading but I started to hate you...."

I somehow found the strength to hang up the phone.

Now I really was on my own. Richard couldn't stand me, I didn't own anything and with nowhere to go, I had no choice but to step out of my macrobiotic cocoon. By then I was dying for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I hadn't had either one for over a year, so I looked all through the house for abandoned and forgotten change in the cushions and along the baseboards--quarters turned the color of pewter, pennies black with grime, dimes green with age--and eventually found $11.03.

After the fall off the horse I didn't have sensation in my legs but I could use them. So I used my legs to walk down that steep mountain road into the funky town of Woodstock. Walking down the mountain road I wondered if this could be how a hibernating animal feels when they first awaken. My body was groggy but it wasn't all that bad. Numb legs and momentum work okay together.

Rounding the first bend in the road I spotted an attractive young man with a long braid down his bare back getting the mail out of his mailbox. I froze in place trying to be invisible. I had lived alone in the cabin for six months and I was not ready for this. I was not ready to be seen by a man. He turned to go back into his house and I hurried by before he could see me.

About ten minutes later I heard "Women In Love is playing at Tinker tonight, do you want to go?" I looked over and there he was, the same guy with the braid, now wearing white shorts and a white T-shirt jogging in place and asking me out. I stared at him, speechless.

"I'll let you think about it and ask you again on my run home." And off he went, all muscular legs and thick swinging braid. I stopped one step short of falling into a deep ravine, pulled myself together and smiled.

After what seemed like an eternity I had walked the last stretch of Rock City Road. By the time I got to Woodstock a town had never looked so good.

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The Love Story of Dan and Sonia: Their Song Rocks on While Angels Laugh
by Ann Hutton

I met them at a cigar dinner. Saw them sitting primly at a table in a darkened restaurant--smiling, waiting. As if we were meant to connect, I sat down and introduced myself. We talked through dinner in the haze of sweet smoke, and they said me, "You're the one. You tell it for us."

We spent weeks recording their tale of meeting just out of high school, when they each landed in the Big Apple as mere teenagers. They flew home on holidays as husband and wife to save on airfare. The idea was comfortable, exciting. They married, toured and lived abroad on his Fulbright. After more than one plane crash, he decided ocean liners would do. He paid for one crossing by writing a musical, performed out in the middle of the Atlantic. By the time I got to Woodstock, this couple had come and gone, left for awhile to cruise the eastern seaboard and thrive again in NYC. Then they'd come back after that great tragedy scared them into retreat.

They are a talented pair, living artfully. He stands on one leg. She balances on her head. They're generous with their friends. Their long life together has not been without trauma and infidelities and times a'changin' so radically that even the hardiest balladeers among us might have given it all up for good. So I wonder, how do you tell a love story? How do you write a love song?

You could say: They fell in love under youthful pretenses, didn't know how to make it stick--and it didn't. After 11 years, divorce meant freedom to discover who you are and who you're not, so you can meet again almost two decades later and reunite. He was playing at Carnegie. She was in the audience. "Our souls will take flight," she said, wanting nothing more than to adopt him.

He wrote her a symphony and concurred that fate would have it no other way.

Destiny insists. They persist. Now, their delicate dance slowly winding down, their story abides in the yoga of passion and the long, sweet hours of practicing their chops. And their song, like a gentle breeze coming down off Overlook, rocks on. And their music rolls like stoned angels laughing.

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Dawning
by Rachel Marco-Havens

In the wake of the 60's finest hour. It's dawn in late August, 1969, the "60's" are pretty much over. The concert is definitely over. Freedom will ring, and perhaps it already has -- the lives of everyone involved, and many more than that have been changed forever. It's the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

The sixties was a selfish time. Many of you who were there will argue. You'll go on to tell us that you changed the world, you laid the groundwork, YOU made the change that brought us the freedom WE now get to live.

I will give you the Civil Rights Movement. I don't really buy it and I'm not sure you do either; collective conscience ready to put a smiley face on the indiscretions you were living.

Call your drug use experimental expansion.

Call you fear of going to war a freedom movement,

Call your sexual indiscretion a revolution.

But think for a moment, about the mess you will leave us.

After all those drugs... what might remain could be a whole lot of unaccountable "adults." Many of you will drop the ball on the peace movement. Leave STD's, Broken women and unattended children in the wake of your sexual revolution.

Hopefully raising ourselves will instill a strength to survive, one that will give us the tools to raise an even stronger generation...

And so on...

The dawning of the Age of Aquarius? When the Sun comes up, your children, the fallout of your follies will be left to clean up your mess like janitors in a xxx theatre. And there is a good chance that when it is really time to clean it up we will look to your efforts for the tools- pre-occupied with resistance rather than solution.

By the time I get to Woodstock, the debris and wreckage is looming over the hill and down into the valley back in Bethel. The streets here in our little town are empty, the hills quiet.

A few of the locals are kicking around -some wishing they had made it to the fair, and some glad they hadn't. Three days have passed since the epic festival, and nobody really knows what kind of impact it will have on the community. No one really knows what Woodstock is to become because of this epic event.

It's Dawn, in late August, 1969. Though the gram of hash didn't make it any harder... I come out fast and easy, as my mother tells it. I give thanks she was never fully vested in the 60's lifestyle -taking the esoterics and leaving the rest behind. Triple Fire, Leo Leo Rising, Moon in Sagitarius. She's going to be a star!

Okay, If you say so, somebody tell me when's curtain call.

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Wailers To Woodstock
by Audrey Rapoport

In kindergarten I am obsessed with Herman's Hermits. By fifth grade, I am obsessed with the Stones, and by 8th grade, I have become obsessed with reggae. Of the three obsessions, only Bob Marley & the Wailers announce a Poughkeepsie stop on their tour. I-rie! I've got to get to this show! This is all I can talk about, but no one else at my high school seems to be at all excited about I and I making an exodus to Poughkeepsie.

Except for Matthew Toratelli. Matthew has a crush on me, a driver's license and a car. He corners me in front of the guidance counselor's office, and flashes two tickets to the show. I am completely ambivalent about Matthew Toratelli, so my answer is YES!

He picks me up in his beat-to-hell Ford Galaxie and forty-five minutes of awkward teenage silence later, we're at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center. But in the middle of the parking lot, Matthew suddenly stops walking, grabs my wrists, and announces he has a confession to make. Oh god, please. I don't have time for you to tell me you love me. The show's about to start! Matthew sheepishly admits he's never heard of Bob Marley and the Wailers. He's never heard of reggae. Poor Matthew. Blessed with good taste in girls, and cursed with a complete lack of musical knowledge.

"Oh, phew, you're not in love with me!" I say cluelessly, and I drag the confused boy inside.

Matthew seems slightly terrified by all the Dutchess County Rastas, with their enormous heads of dreadlocks. He makes some remark about hoping we don't get stabbed. I tell him we'll be fine if he just stops with the nutty comments.

We find our assigned folding chairs. Matthew is to my right. And my rock n' roll reggae concert neighbor to my left turns out to be Ronnie Wood! Not THE Ronnie Wood of the Stones.... But some skinny guy with weird teeth, an English accent, and spiky black hair. Close enough! We all say hello and Ronnie Wood is as friendly as I imagine Mick or Keith would be if they got lucky enough to sit next to me. Even Ronnie's beautiful blond girlfriend is nice to me. Not that I posed any kind of threat, what with my sporty, oversized plastic frame eyeglasses, mouthful of braces, and whatever heinous corduroy outfit I had chosen for the occasion.

Amazing show. The crowd is on its feet. Hundreds of people singing along, clouds of smoke emanating from the stage. Matthew does his best to enjoy himself, despite his obvious dislike for the music and the crowd. He even manages a fairly herky-jerky white guy dance for one song. He's a good sport.

Now, if I know one thing at age fifteen, it's that it's a woman's job to save a man from himself. So on the way home, I begin my lecture. I figure if Matthew knows more about music, he'll be a better person. And less likely to get stabbed. I proceed to tell him way more than he wants to hear about rhythm and blues, doo-wop, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Stones, the Dead, Dylan. By the time I got to Woodstock, Altamont, and the 70's, we have reached my driveway and Matthew has reached his limit.

"OK, g'night, that was fun, see you Monday," he mumbles, eyes down, hands gripping the wheel, engine still idling.

That was our first concert, and our last date. I still have my t-shirt from the show. To the best of my knowledge, Matthew remains free of stab wounds.

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Memories of Jerry Garcia
by Pat Horner

The morning Jerry Garcia died I had a dream of him floating in the sky with 3 female figures. He had a smile on his face while kissing the clouds on his way upwards. A few hours later I did something I never did. I picked up a hitchhiker. He turned out to be a Dead Head and said he had just lost his best friend. I knew this was another message from Jerry.

In February of 1978, I was in Graduate School, taking photography and filmmaking. It was a brutal program and the weekend ahead was put aside for editing, reviewing and shooting film.

My ex boyfriend, Carter called and said, "We're going to Madison, Wisconsin to the Dead show and we'll pick you up at 10AM tomorrow."

"I have too much work to do." I said.

"Bring it along." he ordered.

I had gone to a Grateful Dead concert with Carter the summer before and taken a third of a hit of acid, spending the entire evening high up in the bleachers, sitting alone watching the different colored steps floating up and down, solving the problems of the universe but without a pen or pencil I wasn't able to write them down. Round and around, the rocking and rolling would not fade away. I hoped the weekend would be a repeat of those fond memories.

The night before leaving I dreamt of a salt and pepper haired Santa Claus with a guitar. At the concert in Madison, I watched Carter put his arm around his new girlfriend. They were a few feet ahead of me and knowing they would move up as close as they could, I went to the front of the crowd, preventing myself from seeing them again, diverting my jealousy. My eyes caught Jerry Garcia's eyes, fifty feet away, on stage right. We locked into each other and while I moved to left of stage, he followed. It seemed as if he knew me and was playing the song "Eyes of the World" or "Brown Eyed Woman" to me alone. I was enthralled.

Back at the hotel where we all were staying, the phone in my room rang. Carter said, "Jerry's down here at the bar." He later claimed that I got off the elevator before he hung up the phone. Eager to meet Jerry, I went over to him straight away and introduced myself. One of the guys gave me his seat next to Jerry and that started a three day fantasy.

The following morning, I agreed to go with Jerry to Iowa for the next two concerts. We got to the airport and there was a small Cessna that the guys had arranged for Jerry and I to have some privacy. The flight was short but beautifully sunny and smooth.

Over the frozen fields of ice in Iowa, I had thoughts of Buddy Holly, yet nothing would have prevented me from this trip. We spent three magical days and nights together. It was church with fire on the mountain for this hippie.

Hour-long phone calls followed and a few months later we spent another 3 days together in Chicago, then St. Paul. Going down the road feeling bad, the day's in-between seeing each other were difficult. He had found himself through art, music and drugs, and surrounded by a waft of marijuana in his light I was a fallen angel with ruffled feathers on her wings.

In Egypt, we rode camels past the pyramids in a state of drug induced heightened consciousness. The days were a lucid mystical tour of words, childlike play and delight; the nights energetically expanded through chords and sexual energy, a long strange trip.

By the time I got to Woodstock, we had both given up drugs and alcohol (he, several times). I went to Dead concerts when I could. Back stage, standing in a light with faint shadows, Jerry happily told me, "Yeah, I'm clean. The guys leaned on me and I quit all that stuff." He was drinking a glass of red wine and smoking a joint. Dressed in his usual black T-shirt and brown corduroy pants, he looked like a relaxed Santa Claus with a touch of grey.

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Rockin' In Woodstock
by Judy Lechner

By the time I got to Woodstock, the festival had been over for two years. It was 1971 and I was madly in love with a hippie left-wing guy named Peter. Shortly before I met Peter, I had been dumped by my current boyfriend. Back to my shrink, I signed on for a weekend marathon group therapy session. It would mean spending Saturday all day and night and Sunday morning in never-ending therapy with about a dozen people and two shrinks.

By Saturday night, I was completely enthralled with Peter, a co-marathoner, who with his dark beard and flowing hair and soulful brown eyes, was a John Lennon look-alike. Peter was gorgeous, as we used to say, and full of charm and wit. Unfortunately, he was also crazy and unemployed. But, sleeping in his arms that Saturday night of the marathon, I fell in love. Yes, all the marathoners slept together on the rug in the shrink's office, not necessarily touching. I don't remember where the shrinks slept, probably in their Lazy-Boy chairs. Everyone cooed that Peter and I looked so sweet sleeping together: what a cute couple we made. I believed it, too. He and I stood viewing our reflections in the huge hall mirror and decided that we looked like a rock album cover.

Rock 'n Roll was the best part of my relationship with Peter. He had all the best rock n' roll records. I was mesmerized as he played his scruffy piano, even though he could barely play and crooned Carol King love songs off-key. Nothing could turn me off this guy. During the months we were together, he never held a job for longer than a few weeks. He lived in a depressing apartment in a weird neighborhood in Brooklyn. His dog pooped on his kitchen floor regularly, sometimes right after we walked her. He did own a car but most of the time, I paid for the gas. He even told me once that he felt like a woman trapped in a man's body. He told me that right after we made love! I told myself he was just being dramatic. My best friend had a rock n' roll description for him: "Scorpio and ragged too!"

Nothing, I mean, nothing seemed to turn me off this man. My shrink warned me. Never mind MY friends--HIS friends warned me. But only one thing was able to break the spell.

That one thing was Woodstock. Peter talked me into renting a room in a communal house in Woodstock for my July vacation. This was his big mistake. Woodstock changed my life. I fell even more in love with Woodstock than with Peter.

When my vacation was over, I couldn't go back to the city, even for him. I quit my teaching job and stayed in Woodstock for the next three years. During the first few months, Peter came to see me a few times, but his visits petered out (pun intended). I figured he had a new girlfriend because his sister told me he was never without a girlfriend. In his 28 years, he had already been married twice. He was separated from his second wife Julie, a fact which hadn't kept me from dating him, although his sister warned me that they would probably get back together someday.

One afternoon in May of 1972, I answered a knock on the door of my little rented cottage on Library Lane. Peter's friend Gerry stood silently, a haunted look in his eyes. I knew immediately, before he said the words, that Peter was dead. Gerry told me that Peter had gone to help Lisa, a friend he had known from childhood. She was being threatened by her former lover, a violent woman who refused to let her go. Peter had gone to Lisa's apartment to help her change the locks. The rejected lover came back before they had a chance to install the lock. The lover stabbed Peter in the neck and shot Lisa. Peter bled to death in a Brooklyn hallway. Lisa survived but was disabled for life.

Still numb from the news, I went to Peter's funeral. I expected his wife to be there. What I didn't expect were two more "widows" that Peter had accumulated while I was living in Woodstock. I joined the chorus of Peter's widows as we all cried our hearts out for our lost love.

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Linked Again To Home
by Sharon Rousseau

By the time I got to Woodstock, I'd driven miles of tobacco roads through dust fields and hidden stills, our Blue Ridge Valley held tight by mountains and broken ballads of Appalachia. Freebird was the modern anthem, but not mine.

My mother in the kitchen high on show tunes, Dad turning up the dial on the car radio--again, the dreaded Lightfoot. "Listen kids," words tossed over the seat like Mom tossed carrots into the salad bowl while soprano-ing out a chorus of "My Fair Lady." My brother's Zeppelin and full-costume backyard Kiss concerts drew crowds, earned him some at-the-door cash before supper.

From my room, disco and "Rumors' whenever the radio wasn't reaching for miles-away WLS-Chicago. Over our black top two-lanes, Rick Ross was spinning on 3WC from a toy-sized studio on Main Street. Time stalled and Patti Smith lingered on our local stations, as if by some magic, as if there was a voice determined to help me get on with it all. Sixteen and restless, the windows down, driving no where--everything was, "Because The Night."

The thing about college, about getting away to Chapel Hill, was the promise to never make that lazy exit back to the twang and foothills. I'd seen a lot of people do it, but not me. No way. So the 80's were no sleep "In The Name Of Love," U2 taking over the world, and REM blasting from ivy-covered buildings as we sat on brick walls late at night, the sweat of the bars glistening on our skin, like glitter in winter.

By the time I got to New York, I knew I was gone. Applauding my brother through every heavy-metal-dive on the Jersey shore, the Stone Pony and Rock Horse, bars up and down the hopelessness called Route 9 and finally into Manhattan showcases, I waited for the lights to come on. In the city, I saw who I wanted to see. CB's, Brownies, The Beacon, etc, etc, etc,. There was the Roger Daltrey kiss. Showcases and A&R-speak. Velvet ropes and stage doors. Earplugs in my handbag--until the need set in.

By the time I got to Woodstock, there were photographs I wanted to shoot in daylight. Poems to write in the morning. The mountains echoed back things I'd forgotten--like space between the words, the sound of my breath at sunrise. Trails of the familiar Blue Ridge met me, and I sat down for a minute, linked again to home.

Today I heard Patti Smith's new single. After all these years, all these miles, all the times I've seen her, read her, watched her, I sit outside on Ohayo, amazed at how close everything stays.

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It Felt Like The Upper West Side, But Better
by Robin Kramer

The first time I came to Woodstock was July, 1969 — the month before the Festival. My husband Mike and I were both 27 years old. Jill was three and Daisy was two months old.

We took a ride up for the day. The first thing I saw was a poster for a Happy and Artie Traum concert. I knew them. Artie was in the folk-singing club with us at Hunter College in the Bronx.

We had lunch on the outside porch of the Cafe Espresso. It felt like the Upper West Side, but better.

Someone directed us to Big Deep. There were naked hippies in the water and in the trees. I was way too shy to get naked.

The book, "The Greening of America" had just come out and everyone wanted to move to the country. We had just spent the summer in Far Rockaway and I loved how the kids could open a screen door and play.

After driving through other upstate towns, (New Paltz, Monticello, Middleburg) we felt the most at home in Woodstock.

Mike could get a job as a psychiatric social worker at Hudson River State Hospital, so by the following fall we decided to move to Woodstock. We found a house to rent behind the Woodstock Playhouse.

We "sold" our rental controlled apartment in Cobble Hill for $2,500, along with all our furniture. This was going to be our grubstake in our new life.

By the time we got to Woodstock the super had changed the locks and the people who bought the apartment were locked out. They called the Woodstock Police. At 8:00 it was pitch dark when the police knocked on our door to tell us that the tenants couldn't get into the apartment and wanted their $2,500 back.

That first October the weather was beautiful every day, clear with blue skies. The Band was at the Playhouse rehearsing their "Stage Fright" album. Music from Big Pink had been playing on our stereo every day when we lived in Brooklyn and now I got to hear them live every day

I'd sit on my front lawn and hear them playing. I felt like I had died and went to heaven. One day my dog Bezell, a West Highland Terrier, ran away to the lawn of the Playhouse. The Band was out there playing Frisbee. They made a big circle around Bezell so that I could catch him.

I thought, "I'll never forget this day." And I haven't.

The Band will always have a special place in my heart.

Years later it was Levon who always tried to save the Playhouse. He'd give two concerts there every year, with every cent going to the Playhouse.

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Everything I Needed To Know I Learned In West Hurley In 1972
by Marion Winik

Not long after my mother's death, I played backgammon with her lifelong friend Marilyn, a blond beauty I confused in my childhood with Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn attended sleepaway camp with my mother in the late 1930s and 40s, and shared recollections of Mom's career as alpha girl of Camp Nawita. She was the best at everything, Marilyn proclaimed, baseball, tennis, swimming, horseshoes. (Marilyn herself, now 85, remains exquisitely lovely -- and unbeatable at backgammon, which she took up when hearing loss ended her bridge career.)

For someone as athletic as my mother, who won a golf tournament a few months before she died of lung cancer, a traditional all-girl summer camp was paradise. When the time came, she could not wait to send her daughters. But for me, so uncoordinated as to be nearly special-needs, camp was a gauntlet of humiliations. During my incarceration, I would make lanyards, fail the lifesaving test, and try to conceal my urine-soaked bedsheets. I never went back to the same camp twice, until at 13, salvation appeared.

There in the classifieds of The New York Times Magazine, floating like a pristine lily among smeary images of leaping youth and archery equipment, was an ad with two lines of type in a plain white box.

for young people

interested in doing things

That, and the address, was it. I was sold.

Camp Greenfields was located in a fairytale meadow outside Woodstock, New York. It took 10 girls and 10 boys between the ages of 12 and 16, housed them in bungalows with flush toilets and hot showers (a freaking spa!) -- and was completely free of camp hierarchy, camp songs and camp traditions. No sports were required, activities consisted of classes with local craftspeople, and outings took us to rock concerts at Saratoga. My mother was dubious -- no baseball? -- but eager enough to get us out of the house that she ignored the naked babies, effeminate muralists, and high school refugees roaming the grounds.

Rudy Hopkins, the director of Greenfields for its five-year run in the 1970s, shepherded us campers through what might have been the cruelest summers of adolescence with good humor and tough love. He dealt with our Boone's Farm and marijuana experimentation, our melodramas, and our inexperience with chores. He dragged us up the side of Slide Mountain, into Devil's Kitchen and off the edge of the Spillway. And he was still there on the property when I peeked my head in 35 years later. His curly hair had grayed and his face had weathered but his sarong-wrapped, leonine appearance had lost none of its roar.

"How is your head?" were the first words out of his mouth when he saw me. I knew exactly what he was talking about. My last summer at camp I had nearly scalped myself in jewelry class, having brushed back my hair with a silver-polisher running in my hand. The tool caught up first one lock then another, wrapping them round and round, tighter and tighter, as I stood shrieking. Honestly, I was lucky to keep my eyebrows.

(Probably this accident comes as no surprise to regular readers of this column.)

My hair grew back, but my head was never the same. Just as my mom found herself at Nawita, I found myself at Greenfields. By the time I got to Woodstock, I knew so much about what I was bad at but little about where I fit in. Well here, of course, with the naked babies, effeminate muralists, and vegetarian philosophers. It was my job to pay close attention to everyone's personal business, sit in the library and write poems about it, then jump up at dinner and read them. Like my mother, I'll probably have to be dragged away from these pursuits when it's time to die.

Even when you are deaf, you can kill everybody at backgammon. It's really just a matter of finding your game.

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