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?
Reading Screwed Up: My life by Allie Van Wagoner is difficult, for it pulls the covers on a world many of us prefer not to engage with. That being said, story is in many ways our best collective vehicle for healing. It gives pain a structure and an outlet. Bringing what is hidden into the light transforms the suffering that can remain locked in repression, in the unconscious.
The most amazing thing for me while reading this dark tale was to simultaneously be following Allie’s blog. Regardless of the difficult scenes playing out across the pages, in the background I had this moving image of Allie today, a mother preparing outrageously sweet treats for her boys, going on nature walks, celebrating her relationship with her husband and making the most out of each day.
Many choose to bury the dark passages of their lives, to pretend they never happened. Underground, it creates a cunning type of havoc that baffles us. Seeing one like Allie claim her story, to exhibit the courage to make it public regardless of obstacles and opposition, provides for all of us a living answer to the question “why bother?”
(Note: I’m fortunate to work at a therapuetic boarding school that does what it can to help troubled teen girls. Stories like Allie’s are happening all around us.)
Peter Folger was Ben Franklin’s grandfather, and he was my great (say great ten times) grandfather. I find him in many ways more interesting than Franklin, because of how he lived in remoteness effectively. It guides me as I work into my rural posture. He wasn’t the center of attention, but he had the ear’s he needed to get his message out. He was quite effective denouncing the hanging of Quaker’s in Boston during the second half of the seventeenth century.
On Nantucket, where he settled, Folger was well known by the Nantucket Indians. He took the time to learn their language. They called him “white chief’s old-young man,” the idea that he was wise for his age.
The story of Phillips Run goes like this. Metacomet, also known as King Philip, visited Nantucket before launching his King Phillip’s War to recruit the tribe there to join him. He also had a score to settle. Apparently a young Indian who was becoming a clergy member had broken an Indian Law. He mentioned King’s Phillip’s deceased father’s name in public. The punishment was death, and King Philip planed to carry this out.
Word of his arrival traveled from the tribe into the village of Nantucket quickly and only Folger responded to the plea for help. He went to meet the King Phillip and his band of warriors. To the warriors surprise, Folger spoke their tongue. Folger continued to engage King Philip for nearly an hour about his demands for the clergyman head. Finally King Philip said that only money could spare the man. Folger then tossed a few coins to King Philip’s feet, the insult intended. He continued to say that’s all you’ll get and you better be getting…because as we speak fifty men in arms have been circling around behind you to cut you off from your boats. If you want to live another day, you need to leave now.
It’s said that King Philip didn’t believe Folger, but that the warriors who had listened to the entire dialouge did. They turned and ran for the shore…King Philip had no choice but to retreat. Today the stream in the Southeast corner of the island is called Philip’s Run.
Now that’s a bluff…
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