CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE: WOODSTOCK AND THE PRESIDENCY ON MY MIND

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE: WOODSTOCK AND THE PRESIDENCY ON MY MIND

It’s Saturday, September 7, and we’re tied up at the Rondout Yacht Basin in Connelly, New York. That’s right next to Kingston. And about an hour and a half’s drive from Max Yasgur’s farm. I know. I drove there on Thursday to visit my past. It was 1969 and I had just had my wisdom teeth pulled in Bethlehem, when my former husband asked: “Are you ready to go to Woodstock?” We knew that was the weekend for the 3 day concert. Many of our friends from law school had run away with the Hog Farm Commune to serve as “security” for the several thousand concertgoers who were expected. But as we watched and listened, we learned that everyone under 25 had pretty much dropped what they were doing and started driving to Bethel, New York for a long weekend. We also watched as the rain drenched the growing crowd and Richie Havens tried to keep them entertained for three hours, as other groups arrived. So who was I to say “no” to this once in a lifetime experience? What’s the worst that could happen? Oh yeah --I could get an infection where the teeth had been pulled. We stayed in Bethlehem until either the pain pills kicked in or the pain subsided. And then we wended our way up north to Bethel. When we got within about 10 miles of Yasgur’s farm, we saw thousands of cars, trucks and buses lining both sides of the two lane country roads in this rural neighborhood. We decided to drive as far as we could. By this time on Saturday, it was sunny, hot and muggy. And I was still recovering and not ready to take a 10 mile hike, no matter how historic the occasion.

As we slowly moved down the center of the road, we saw a truck coming in the opposite direction. And you’re not going to believe this. But it was a Hog Farm Commune truck on a milk run. Inside that truck was Mark Kierstead, one of our law school buddies, who had decided to join the Hog Farm. We spotted each other at the same time. He told us they were headed to get milk, and suggested we just follow them, first to get the milk, then to get back into the concert venue. At that moment I knew we were supposed to be there. Of the 400,000 people amassed at Yasgur’s Farm for Woodstock, we came upon Mark Kierstead, the one person who knew us and who could get us past the 10 miles of parked cars into the concert. Pain? What pain? Goodbye, dentist. Hello, Janis. We followed Mark’s truck to a wooded area and he told us to park anywhere. We parked high atop a flat hilltop. It turned out to be the place where all the helicopters landed with the musical groups. That’s how our electric blue Peugeot ended up in a lot of shots in Woodstock: The Movie.

There was plenty of work to do. The Hog Farm was dishing out food and drink to long lines of soggy members of the “audience.” It’s hard to call this tribal gathering an audience, because each person was so fully engaged in the music and the surroundings that they became part of the concert themselves. We helped with the food preparation, but there were so many volunteers that we weren’t needed. Mark sent us on our way to go find the main stage and enjoy the show. We went through some woods, where all kinds of drug and crafts people had set up tables to sell every manner of psychedelic pill, tie-dyed clothing, beads – nothing sensible like umbrellas or tarps or sunscreen. Just the stuff you would find in a head shop in the late ‘60’s or in Timothy Leary’s lab. I didn’t use psychedelic drugs, although they were certainly available. I remember one guy in Washington, D. C., 1966, summer internship, who told me about his bad acid trip while we were having hamburgers at a White Tower. And then he said he had a tab of acid – did I want to share it? Are you kidding me? He had just told me the most hair-raising tale of being totally out of control, acting like a complete jerk, fearing the loss of his sanity – oh yeah, sounds like fun. When you’re a Type A like me, you need to be in control of your senses. So, except for a few tokes on a joint, and being in places with a lot of secondhand marijuana smoke (Madison Square Garden Forum, The Band concert – totally fogged in), I did not use illegal, “recreational”, drugs – no acid, no cocaine, no heroin, no meth, no PCP, no Ecstasy, no nothing.

There were apparently not a lot of Type A’s at Woodstock, or the Type A’s were legally medicated like me, or better yet, everyone was just naturally high. And this is very possible, because the atmosphere was giddy. That’s not an adequate description, nor is “electric”, “stimulating”, “groovy”, “charged”. It’s just this: Everyone was happy to be there. We all smiled at each other and shared warm greetings, complete strangers enjoying each other’s company amid a crowd of half a million. It was not a religious experience, per se, but very spiritual. It was the flower child generation in full bloom. Joni Mitchell captured the essence of the love and harmony in her paean to Woodstock.
“We are stardust. We are golden. And we got to get ourselves back to the garden…. We’ve got to get ourselves back to the semblance of a garden.” It marked the birth of the environmental movement for me, not just the living off the land part which was so evident on a farm, but also the conservation part, which required big changes at our homes in the cities. I didn’t make a major life change at Woodstock. I didn’t become a vegan. I didn’t run away with the Hog Farm Commune. But for me, all things became possible. And for the rest of my law school years I fought for women’s equality fearlessly, first with Women vs. Connecticut (known in court as Abele v. Markle and then Roe v. Maher), then with the organization of the Connecticut Women’s Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF) soon after graduation. The Women’s Movement gave me a purpose, but Woodstock gave me the energy to achieve our lofty goals. I knew that our generation was destined to change the world.

Crash. Thud. That was the sound of our generation falling back to earth. Was Donald Rumsfeld really part of our generation? No, he was born in 1932, one of THEM. However, Bushie was for sure a part of our generation (birth year: 1946) – ouch. And he came after Clinton, our generation’s non-inhaling President with the loose zipper. Now, see, if Cathy Miller Berkley and I had fulfilled our promise to run against each other for President in 1984 – avoiding the Animal Farm future predicted for all of us – we would have indeed changed the world. The only things we were lacking were name recognition and money – and a country’s desire to have a woman in the Presidency. We had all the skills and talent needed for the job, plus more common sense than anyone who had ever been POTUS (save, perhaps, Abe Lincoln). You think the New Deal was something? You should have seen what we had planned for the country. If we were President (whoever got defeated would have still been in a position of power), by now we would have a wonderful railway system, both commuter and transcontinental, run with regenerating energy sources (wind, solar); we would have electric cars running everywhere (not hidden in the desert); we would have a “peace dividend” from years without draining wars in third world countries; we would have affordable health care for everyone; we would have a burgeoning middle class filled with wage earners with good-paying jobs; we would have big box stores and fast stop restaurants paying living wages and good benefits; we would have the best educational system in the world, training people for jobs now and in the future, while maintaining a robust liberal arts curriculum to create well-rounded graduates; we would have a balanced budget, a progressive tax structure, no loopholes, a cap on executive salaries and benefits. We would have a cabinet and a Supreme Court filled with men and women equally and a Congress equal parts men and women (maybe just a few more women to be representative of the population). Just think about the society you would have wanted to live in – that would have been possible with Cathy or me, or both of us, as President. Now it’s not too late, and if a certain Wellesley grad decides not to run in 2016, you can start a grass roots campaign for Cathy and/or me. We will serve with distinction. If you want everything you have ever dreamed of in a government (even you, Libertarians!), vote for us. You will be very, very happy that you did.

Geez, that visit to Woodstock brought back a lot of memories. And I was just going to tell you about seeing and hearing Santana on the main stage and being caught up in their relentless conga beat. And about seeing Joan Baez on the small stage, and Richie Havens, after his three hour tour de force to start the concert on the main stage. You know, what actually happened during my stay those 2 days at Yasgur’s farm back in August, 1969. But I have been drawn by what could have been, what could still be. In our lifetimes. We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. Vote for me or Cathy for President. We’ll get you there.