It’s Woodstock, fifty years later—the convergence of 60, 70 and some 80-year-olds onto an iconic bowl-shaped venue as they try to buck themselves out of skin that’s liver spotted and crepey in order to make the wry prick of time not feel so poignant or so permanent.
It rains.
Cold rain and hot earth create a sauna effect in which old hippies sweat out their today in favor of a wistful yesterday. And when the steam rids them of their cell phones and tablets. Their outrageous Medicare bills and unfairly taxed social security. Their Facebook-feed envy and partisan news wars, that same steam reaches inside and puffs them up like adders, but without the serpent and sting, just light, love and letting go.
I got tickets…my 70-year-old mother in tow. We can barely see the stage from our lawn seats—seats, a pretty fast-and-loose term. Our blanket, soon drenched—more so by spilled twenty-two-dollar cups of unidentifiable daiquiri than rain—is abandoned as we walk away, feigning...
