Do You Remember Woodstock?

It’s that time of year when some of us look back on August 13-18, 1969 and wish we’d had the presence of mind to head to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, NY that weekend.

It would have been so easy to stick my thumb out on the Mass Pike. Maybe with “Woodstock or Bust” on a piece of cardboard. But, no, it was almost time to go back to college in Amherst. I couldn’t bail on my waitress job—I needed the money for school.

I only know one person who was there, and all I seem to remember about his recollection is mud and more mud. I guess you had to be there.

Since I wasn’t there, I’m not going to rattle on about it except to say that this weekend The New Yorker has reprinted Ellen Willis’ August 29, 1969 coverage of “The Not-So-Groovy Side of Woodstock.”  (RIP Ellen Willis.)

It’s a very good read, and, to be fair, I’d rather you read it at the source.

To whet your appetite:

Willis told of Abbie Hoffman interrupting The Who’s set to berate the crowd re: listening to music when a Michigan activist had just been sentenced to a long prison term.

She said “Peter Townshend hit Hoffman with his guitar.”

(Yay, Pete!)

And for the list of performers, thank you, Wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_performances_and_events_at_Woodstock_Festival

Can you dig it?

The Peace Train

Yesterday, in honor of International Peace Day, Yosef/Cat Stevens and Playing for Change, assembled a cast of musicians and singers from around the world.

If you haven’t watched it yet, prepare to be moved with Love and Hope.

  International Peace Day – Peace Train 2021

The Easy Way Out?

This summer, I’m taking a series of twelve tap dancing classes for adults at our local arts center. It was a last minute decision. I saw an ad in the local newspaper that triggered one my childhood desires.

Remember Shirley Temple and Bojangles tap dancing up and down that steep flight of stairs? Shirley’s banana curls bobbed up and down while the tails of Bojangles’ morning coat fluttered with the movement of his feet.

When I was five, I had the banana curls, but I never got the tap dancing lessons, so I thought, “Why not?”

The concentration required for tap dancing might be a good exercise for my brain, especially since I’m somewhat rhythm-challenged. Anyway, that was my excuse, and it turns out that tap dancing is a good brain exercise. Like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time.

As soon as I registered for the class, I ordered my black tap dancing shoes. Amazon Prime.

And before the UPS man was even out of the driveway, I was lacing them on in the front hall. I walked across the tile floor. Click, clack, click, clack. Then across the hardwood. Click, clack, click, clack. Out the back door. Click, clack, click, clack. Across the wooden deck…

Suddenly I knew why those boys in junior high had cleats attached to the heels of their shoes. What a cool sound!

Our dance instructor says that tap dancing is making music with your feet.

I never thought of it that way, but now walking to the refrigerator for a handful of cherries has taken on new meaning. Suddenly it’s fun, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Toe, toe, heel, heel. Stomp, step, brush, step.

As our instructor introduces new combinations of steps, I’m willing my feet to follow my brain, and soon I’m tapping a little faster, and faster still, as the lessons progress. I’m even managing to keep up with the midriff-baring, college-age females in the class. Just barely.

Our teacher says we’re doing really great and so she’s pushing ahead of the lesson plans.

That doesn’t stop me from having my doubts. I practice indoors and out with my tap dancing cheat sheet in one hand and my other hand extended  for balance. Toe, toe, heel, heel. Dig, spank, step, heel.

At home, without the distractions of ten other pairs of feet clacking next to me, and without the rafter-raising volume of Billie Jean pulsing to my core, I’m doing quite well. I’m surprising myself.

Then I set out for class and—like clockwork—about half way through the session, I get a wave of self doubt and my smile fades.

Am I ever going to be able to connect the movements on my own without someone calling out the steps? Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for this. It was a dumb idea. How do four-year-olds even do this?

I’m going to tell the instructor that the tap dancing is stirring up an old knee injury. Or maybe I’m getting shin splints. I have a stomach ache. I have to be somewhere else. That’s it. I have an appointment that I forgot about.

Just as suddenly as the hesitation appears—every single week—I figuratively slap myself and carry on. I put the smile back, and concentrate harder. The music is fun, after all, and the clickity-clack feels good. And the sweat! The back of my neck doesn’t feel too pretty. Hot now. Summer in the city.

I realize that maybe it’s because tap dancing is not easy for me. I’m not in the habit of selecting really challenging activities as recreation. I know the things that I’m good at, and those are the things that have become my hobbies.  Isn’t the point of recreation to have fun?

This tap dancing thing is a good lesson for me. I’m showing myself that if I stick with something that’s not easy, maybe I’ll be better prepared mentally when I need to hang in there through a challenging life experience.

Clickety-clack. Brush, spank, hop, step. Dig, spank, step, heel.

And repeat.

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Dawn on the 4th of July

The 4th of July dawns on Vashon Island with the sunrise race of the hydros (hydroplane boats, see wiki). 52 years running— a race to circumnavigate the island at sunrise.

People love it. Or Hate it. It’s a noisy tradition that I haven’t been here long enough to love, and certainly how could I “hate” someone else’s tradition? Let them be.

Yesterday, as I listened to the screamy high-pitched voices of a neighbor’s grandchildren echoing across the water, I thought: “Ahh, yes. This is fair enough retaliation for the sound of music that I periodically bounce off the wall behind me as I melt into my steamer lounge chair.”

The space created by a house with a bank of fir trees to the left and tall hedges to the right produces a pretty awesome surround sound simulation for someone sitting in its midst. I know for a fact that neighbors to the left and right are oblivious to it because I’ve gone behind the hedge to check. They hear nothing.

Those across the water, au contraire, are in the path of the volume. I’m more careful if I see anyone on a deck in the distance, but I do love the sound of music over water.

Maybe twenty years ago, friends had just picked us up from our dock on the lake in Arkansas. The dock juts from a peninsula into a narrow cove with steep-sided hills. The Corps of Engineers plan shows an elevation gain of fifty-five feet on the switchback path over a distance of maybe twenty feet on the map.

King—yes, that really was the name on his birth certificate— put the inboard in reverse, and the boat slowly—very slowly—came about. He had these high dollar speakers in the boat, and unexpectedly, he and I exchanged a recognition of the music and the hills and the magnification. I felt a massive rush of goosebumps. Full body music magic.

It was a wordless exchange. We were perfectly still. I watched as King reached to put the engine in neutral and I know that we both twitched our ears—figuratively—like a deer does when you surprise it on a path in the woods. Roger and Grace were in the bow chattering about some silly something. King and I, the introverts in the stern, were content to say nothing as we listened.

Heart of Gold (Neil Young) was playing—its lyrics of growing old were lifting to the hills around us with vivid clarity.

The boat—and the moment—froze in time, barely moving on the just-before-sunset stillness of the glassy water. Clouds were caught in the reflection on the surface.

For me, it was a flashback to the first time I felt a massive disconnect with life. 1971. No need to go there now. Those feelings. Old Man hit on it too. I suppose I thought it odd that Neil Young, at such a young age, was so simultaneously tuned in to the brevity and sweetness of life.

Recently I read an anecdote about Neil Young playing this exact music over water that made me laugh out loud. LOLOL out loud out loud. Partly because our only boat at the time was a little rowboat.

I want to get it right, so here’s the story—word for word from Graham Nash, as he told it to Terry Gross on NPR in 2013.

I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, “Harvest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.

I said get into the rowboat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a little cassette player with him or a little, you know, early digital format player. So I’m thinking I’m going to wear headphones and listen in the relative peace in the middle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard “Harvest” coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced “Harvest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shouted back: More barn!

Who would have guessed that King, not too many years later, would crash his private plane while hurrying home one evening after work?

We just don’t know when the music is going to stop, so we just have to keep playing.

Go there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE

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The Playlist of My Memoir

My memoir has a musical current running through it that begins with the energetic rhythms of the Charleston and ends with a sentimental Van Morrison tune.

Blog posts on this page frequently have their beginnings in my musical memories, and many of them are gathered during my aerobic dance class.

I’m used to writing with a playlist at home. Often I’m optimistic for the future, sometimes moody for the present—and contemplative of the past. I get up periodically to move across the floor, yoga dance style, so it’s only natural that I should find myself developing writing themes during grapevines and curls.

memoir

Today was one of those days. Our newest routine involved a combination of  The Charleston and The Jitterbug—the dance steps of my grandmother Mémère and my mother.

I had never actually tried either of these moves but as soon as my feet fell into the snazzy jazzy steps of the Charleston with my arms swinging back and forth, I was drawn back in time to a few days before Memorial Day in 1929. It was Thursday, May 23, five months before the Stock Market crash. Could life have been any more optimistic? The two who would become my grandparents were whooping it up in the rumble seat of their best friends’ Buick after a night out on the town.

Mémère personified the quintessential Roaring Twenties gal with her auburn boop-boop-bee-doo curls cut in a stylish bob. Her fashion was glitzy and glamorous, her Prohibition beverage of choice was brandy and she loved to dance and sing at every opportunity.

Mémère was also six months pregnant with my mother that night.

Her water broke with the impact of a pothole off Main. Her shrieks cut the cool night air as the warm amniotic fluid seeped onto the seat and soaked the hem of her dress.

“Gerrrrald! The baby! The baby’s coming!!”
My grandmother always tended to shriek when she was excited.

That night, the amniotic fluid and the brandy combined in a potent mix.

Mémère and Pépère hastened back to the triple-decker in the Buick. Pépère helped her down onto the running board and then carefully up the three flights of stairs to their walk-up apartment. He could hear my grandmother moaning on the bed as he shut the door and flew down the stairs to fetch the doctor two streets away.

Pépère and the doctor arrived barely in time to deliver my mother. The young doctor shook his head nervously. Mummy weighed a mere two pounds.

There weren’t a lot of options back then for a premature home birth. He washed and dried his instruments at the kitchen sink, placed them in the black leather bag and snapped it shut. As he unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned his cuffs, the doctor gave careful thought to the situation.

He returned to the bedroom, where Mummy lay at Mémère’s breast and Pépère sat nervously on a straight back chair. He asked Pépère to find a shoebox.

Dr. Favreau proceeded to swaddle Mummy with a diaper folded over multiple times, and then he nestled her in the shoebox like a robin chick found beneath an apple tree in April. His instructions were simple. “Keep her in the oven with the door open.”

It was a gas oven.

The doctor tapped his bowler onto his head while Pépère accompanied him to the door. “Best of luck to you,” said the doctor as they shook hands. He retraced his steps down the stairs to the street level, slower this time. The milkman looked up from the bottles he was setting in the delivery box on the porch.

Mummy thrived in the warmth of the gas oven on Moon Street. She’s never been sick a day in her life, with the exception of that gallstone operation back in ’74. She’ll be 87 when the lilacs bloom.

The story that blossomed on the notes of the Charleston had been in development for a while, but it took experiencing the dance itself, eighty-seven years after the event, to bring it to life.

I continued to stretch and move and dance, finally coming back to reality with Stevie Nicks’ Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.

And Tom Petty…”I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol’ days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn.”

By the time we were positioned on our mats in plank, Van Morrison was echoing off the rafters.

Hamstring stretch, seated twist.

I pulled back to child’s pose for a few minutes, then rolled onto my side with my eyes shut.

I made believe the drops sliding down my cheek were sweat.

 

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