#76 – Dick Bernard: "Taking Woodstock" (and "zipping to Zap")

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UPDATE ON THE ZIP TO ZAP:  Subsequent to the September 6 update I received two most interesting items:  my brother, who had been involved in the event sent a research piece that was most interesting #mce_temp_url#   .  Then I ordered the 1991 documentary on the event, an equally fascinating summary of what happened during those interesting few days in rural North Dakota in 1969, a few months before Woodstock.  I’d recommend the 53 minute video to anyone with an interest in the topic.   It can be ordered through #mce_temp_url#
UPDATE September 6: see comment re Zip to Zap, as well as link references at end of this post.
Original Post:
Yesterday we went down the street to see the just released “Taking Woodstock”, a film I thought would give me a retro look at Woodstock 1969.  Maybe it would be a temporary release from the bizarre country we seem to be living in today:  A country where some people are terrified that the President of the country might have some unsupervised time with unsuspecting school children when school begins this week (more on that on Tuesday morning.)  A country where health care for all is somehow un-American.  One wonders where we’re headed, and my concern is not our President; my concern is the collective us.
“Taking Woodstock”  turned out to be a very good choice of movie.  It had a comedy aspect to it, and was not a documentary, but in the over two hours in the theatre it gave a pretty decent picture of how Woodstock impacted on small town New York state and the participants in the drama.  I wouldn’t call it an exciting movie – for a while I wondered where it was going – but it was interesting, and gave lots of food for thought.
In the end, it seems, Woodstock 1969 was an unintended very major event that was simply allowed to happen.  One wonders how such an event would play out today, with “cowboys” wandering the streets, armed and dangerous; moralists tut-tutting about immoral behavior, and all the rest.
The 1969 bottom line, or so it seems: in an atmosphere that could well have been chaotic and violent, Woodstock participants did their thing, peacefully, and the area recovered.  Even in the midst of a disastrous Vietnam War, there was a sense of sanity and civility that we seem to have lost today.
(There’s plenty of information available about Woodstock: a good source seems to be http://www.woodstock.com/1969-festival; for more about the film, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Woodstock )
For the record, I totally missed out on Woodstock in 1969.  I don’t remember a thing about it “back in the day”.  I remember hearing about the famous “Zip to Zap” in the spring of 1969 (my kid brother almost scored with Life magazine with photos he took there, in western ND); and about the moon-landing in the summer, but nothing about Woodstock.  Had I known about Woodstock, I would not have been interested. Wasn’t my thing.  Plus I was going to graduate school, building a new house, getting ready for a child who arrived August 25, 1969, etc.  On my priority list, Woodstock wasn’t….
Still, Woodstock has been an object of fascination for me over the years.  
I could grant that lots of the folks who hung out at Woodstock in the summer of 1969 – perhaps even most of them – engaged in one or another kind of dangerous or even self-destructive behavior.  But best as I know, their only potential victims were themselves.  They were surrounded by a genuine ad hoc community of sorts that cared whether the neighbors lived or died.  The atmosphere was live and let live.
Today the moralists would be out there with their National Guard troops and their blazing news releases raging moralism and hell-fire and damnation, and doing their best to quiet other voices.
The Woodstock.com site (URL above) gives a pretty decent summation of what seems to have been Woodstock 1969: “…a community of a half million people who managed to peacefully co-exist over three days of consistent rain, food shortages, and a lack of creature comforts. “Woodstock is a reminder that inside each of us is the instinct for building a decent, loving community, the kind we all wish for,” according to Joel Rosenman. “Over the decades, the history of that weekend has served as a beacon of hope that a beautiful spirit in each of us ultimately will triumph.”
If you can, see the film….
Note:  The person posting the comment on “Zip to Zap” has an interesting website #mce_temp_url#, which includes an astonishingly beautiful piece of music by San Franciscan Matt Venuti.  Do visit and share.

#75 – Dick Bernard: "Faith-based", as in Fraud and Politics

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These comments need a disclaimer: I am a lifelong Catholic, and active in my faith life.  Anyone who knows me would so attest.  This would make me a “Christian”, at least it would in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s election as President in 1960, though I would guess that there are still plenty of “Christians” out there that would consider me otherwise.  So be it.  
“Faith” and “authority” are not always a good combination.  It is not hard to find examples of abuse.
1.  The Sunday, August 30, 2009, Minneapolis Star Tribune, a paper with a circulation of over 600,000, carried a major front page story with the banner headline “False Prophet, False Profits?” about a local alleged swindler who “told listeners to a Christian radio network he could protect their wealth.”  He “called his worldwide radio audience [on more than 250 stations nationwide] “Truth Seekers”. ”  His pitch preyed on their fear and their greed.
The truth finally outed, and hundreds of his trusting flock lost millions through his network of lies.  He was not the first man of the cloth to have feet of clay in my part of the world, recently.  He joins an all-star gallery of higher profile slick pitch preachers who prey on people’s faith to make a fast buck.  His story is likely repeated everywhere.  An aberration?  Certainly.  But should one be cautious?  You betcha. The Bible in the hands of someone unscrupulous can be a dangerous thing indeed. (The entire story is likely available for a limited time at  www.startribune.com.)  
The shameless radio preacher damaged individual lives, but there are, in my opinion, even worse examples, where innocent bystanders are recruited to spread lies. 
At about the same time the swindler was exposed, two other unrelated stories surfaced about what I would consider misuse of authority to make unwitting church people agents of church people with a less than holy agenda.
2.  The September 1, 2009, Washington Spectator (www.washingtonspectator.com) carried a most interesting two page commentary entitled “Preying on Fear and Predicting the Final Solution”.  
The reporter had spent some time traveling rural Oregon with a Congressman who was holding town hall meetings in many counties in his Congressional District. This is, of course, the time of controversy over certain alleged aspects of Health Care Reform (demonstrable myths), and predictably at each location some nice (or not so nice) person would ask about things like euthanasia (“death panels”), legislated abortion and the like, issues which have been shown to be false indictments of the proposed legislation.    
The reporter talked in person with some of those raising the allegations, and it came to be clear that they were talking points provided by an outfit connected to a major “Christian” university, and disseminated through the website of someone who bills himself as “the pastor on the Internet”.   
The so-called “pastor” admitted there were errors in the talking points and promised they’d be fixed, but that is like admitting the barn door needs fixing after the horses have escaped.  The damage was done, and, I think, it was done deliberately – to make foot-soldiers of people whose fear (and trust) was exploited for ignoble ends.
3.  At about the same time I received the preceding items, the local Archdiocese (Catholic) newspaper came (we’re on the subscription list).  The Catholic Church I know is historically a pillar of social justice, and should be four-square in favor of health-care reform, and is, mostly.
But the local Archbishop, in a front page column headlined “Approach to health care reform speaks volumes about our values” really emphasized only limited value “Abortion, euthanasia…” to his own flock.  Indeed, the Archbishop went beyond the formal statement of his brother Bishops in the United States by adding to their list of concerns the long debunked “euthanasia” word.    (It should be mentioned that “Catholics” themselves basically reflect the general body-politic on these issues.  The Archbishop reflects a relatively small minority of zealots but is considered an authority figure nonetheless.)
When it comes to Authority, some authority figures abuse theirs, regularly, with not always pleasant consequences.  
Be cautious.