Back to the garden

August 13, 2009 - 10:00 AM by Jessica

woodstock2 I’ve been reading various accounts of Woodstock memories, and came across a great one today, by New York Times op-ed page columnist Gail Collins. She reviewed two books about that life-altering summer rock festival, and in doing so talks about bringing her 19-year-old brother to the rained-out weekend, an act for which her mother has never quite forgiven her.

I was just turning one when Woodstock took place, and missed our own anniversary celebration here in Jerusalem. (For an account of that event, scroll down to David Brinn’s entry.) But I was turning 21 in 1989, when the town of Woodstock celebrated twenty years since the concert, and spending the summer at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, where I was running the camp radio station, WCRP. I had just returned from a year at Hebrew University, and couldn’t bear to miss a summer at camp, even though I was ‘too old’ to be a counselor and hadn’t quite yet reached the age of being a rosh edah, a division head.

Being the camp DJ, as it were, turned out to be an inspired decision. It was before the era of discs, much less iPods and MP3 players, and I had to learn to work the turntable and the rest of the equipment. I also had a $100 budget to use on augmenting the radio station’s music collection, and after decorating the ‘station’ with my Israeli concert poster collection pilfered from the bulletin boards of Hebrew University, my friends and I set out for the local record store to add the albums we deemed necessary for the campers’ musical education.

While it was twenty years since Woodstock and at least fifteen since the heyday of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, the preferred music at camp was timeless and specific. Counselors played a lot of Grateful Dead, much of CSNY, James Taylor, Jethro Tull (his August 10 birthday was a campwide celebration) and a few choice others. Counselors’ days off were often spent schlepping to Dead shows or CSN concerts at area arenas, as shown by the concert tee-shirts worn around camp the next day.

So it was clear that since it was 20 years since Woodstock, one of the albums purchased was a Woodstock concert album. That also meant a day off spent at the reunion concert, and while I have no memory of who played at the concert, I can assure you that it wasn’t the Dead or CSN. But tee-shirts were purchased and it didn’t rain, although it was cloudy. And hey, we felt like we’d been there.

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