It Is Time For A Little Break This August 15th, 16th & 17th. I’ll Be Back On Niagara At Large Next Week & I Hope That You & All Your Friends Are There
Meanwhile –
“I’m gonna camp out on the land
I’m gonna try an’ get my soul free”
– Lyrics by Joni Mitchell, from the song Woodstock
A Brief Note from Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted August 14th, 2025
I find myself needing a little escape from all the news because, to be quite honest about it, I am on the verge of burn-out – and I am not just talking about the extreme heat we have been suffering through lately.
So in my mind, I am going to journey back to a sprawling farm pasture in a rural community called Bethel, New York where on August 15th, 16th &17th 1969 the musicians who provided the soundtrack for the counter-culture of the 1960s gathered for that era’s high-water mark at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival.
What unfolded on that pasture land in the Catskills of New York in the summer of ’69 was, in so many ways, a fantasy, and a very fleeting one at that. After those three days of “peace and music,” as they were called at the time, it mostly all went downhill from there.
And the generation of young people who experience that time, myself included, went on collectively (that doesn’t mean all of us, I’m generalizing here) to shape the world of chaos, conflict and corruption, of high costs for everything from food to housing and, last but not least, of climate crisis that young peopl are burdened with today.
So much for all of those righteous words about peace and love, communal living and sharing and flower power from the Woodstock generation.
But it was a very seductive dream at the time, wasn’t it? And the music was so damn good.
As one of the announcers at the Woodstock Festival put it at the time to the audience of some 400,000 who stayed on listening to the music even when heavy rains turned the pasture to mud and the food was running out; “We must be in heaven man! There is always a little heaven in a disaster area.”
If only that were true.
Here is the trailer for the film documentary on the Woodstock Festival with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performing the title song –
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Let’s Continue to Stand Together & Stand Strong for the Health & Welfare Of Our Communities and Our Country Of Canada, Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
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