I'm not a big fan of Woodstock music or hippie-ism, but Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, NY where the original Woodstock festival was held, is only 30 minutes from my summer house and is a beautiful drive where you can see some of the best parts of Sullivan County.
Billed as "3 Days of Peace and Music", Woodstock was a fairly good concept, but it is well documented that Sullivan County was not prepared for this kind of overtaking. Rather than the 40,000 attendees per day expected, there were half a million. The town did not want this festival to take place at all and it seemed that Max was in the minority by offering his farmland for use.
As excerpted from the Yasgur Farm website, "Yasgur asked each official if there were any legal stipulations within their respective departments that hadn't been met to accommodate the expected 40,000 people per day. When no reservations were raised, he addressed the entire meeting: "So the only objection to having a festival here is to keep longhairs out of town?" A murmur of dissent swept through the heavily conservative Republican crowd, and Yasgur bellowed: "Well, you can all go pound salt up your ass, because come Aug. 15, we're going to have a festival!" He stormed out of the room, and the rest became rock history."
My step-brother, just a teenager at the time, went to the festival and is now a little part of that history. He remembers it like it was yesterday and still talks about it with excitement and awe in his voice. I guess the people of that time just took things a lot easier. They didn't seem to have a care in the world and they let people just be who they wanted to be.
I was talking to a friend of mine tonight about this very thing; people just being who they are. If you want to deal with them, even if you don't like what they stand for or what they're about or even how they treat you, if they have something you want or need, you just have to do what is best for you and let them be who they are. And I think the best way to do that is to work around them.
Since this is the New Year, I guess that's what I'm going to try. Working around them. Getting what I want in a way that lets them be who they are yet still maintaining the peace, love and happiness - just like at Woodstock.
"Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, and time to die.
Take it easy baby. Take it as it comes."
- Jim Morrison