…back to the garden

I live about twelve miles north of the Woodstock Music Festival site, now known as Bethel Woods in Bethel , NY.  Our county is packed with folks this weekend reconnecting to that magical mud fest that unfolded forty years ago.

Stories surrounding that gathering of some 400,000 people still shape the culture of our place for the locals and those who came for the music and never left.  The youngest people I’ve met that attended are now in their mid-fifties.  Each time I hear eye witness accounts, the stories are tinged with a first person awareness that they knew they were making history, that the event was a singular expression of many conflicts which had gripped the nation at that juncture.  Often the story being told is clearly the seminal story of that particular life.

Max Yasgur, the farmer that lent his alfalfa field to the festival had the unique experience of addressing the gathering on the third morning.  A t-shirt that fell into my possession has a view of the crowd from behind Yasgur as he was talking.  He’s quoted as saying:

“Look past the labels – see the person.”

Not bad for a farmer from Sullivan County… but do we?  Insider/outsider, liberal/conservative, black/white.  The categorical action of our minds in sorting out the complexity of society performs an often unspoken form of violence by abstracting and oversimplifying the breathing reality of the individual.

The only category that has validity:  you/me.  So, what’s up?