Word: bethell
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What took place at Bethel, ostensibly, was the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which was billed by its youthful Manhattan promoters as "An Aquarian Exposition" of music and peace. It was that and more?much more. The festival turned out to be history's largest happening. As the moment when the special culture of U.S. youth of the '60s openly displayed its strength, appeal and power, it may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events...
...showed up for the Woodstock festival. Thousands more would have come if police had not blocked off access roads, which had become ribbonlike parking lots choked with stalled cars. Had the festival lasted much longer, as many as one million youths might have made the pilgrimage to Bethel. The lure of the festival was an all-star cast of top rock artists, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane. But the good vibrations of good groups turned out to be the least of it. What the youth of America?and their observing elders?saw at Bethel...
From a strictly rational viewpoint, which may be a dangerous and misleading way of looking at it, Bethel was a neatly symbolic choice for the festival?the Biblical town of that name was a center of idolatry denounced by the prophets Amos and Hosea. To many adults, the festival was a squalid freakout, a monstrous Dionysian revel, where a mob of crazies gathered to drop acid and groove to hours of amplified cacophony. In a classic example of its good gray mannerisms, the New York Times in an editorial compared the Bethel pilgrimage to a march of lemmings toward...
There were, of course, certain things to deplore about Bethel. Three people died?one from an overdose of drugs, and hundreds of youths were freaked out on bad trips caused by low-grade LSD, which was being openly peddled at $6 per capsule. On the other hand, there were no rapes, no assaults, no robberies and, as far as anyone can recall, not one single fight, which is more than can be said for most sporting events held in New York City...
...thing, the Bethel scene demonstrated more clearly than ever before the pervasiveness of a national subculture of drugs. At least 90% of those present at the festival were smoking marijuana. In addition, narcotics of any and all description, from hash to acid to speed to horse, were freely available. Perhaps out of fear of rousing the crowd to hostility, police made fewer than 100 arrests on narcotics charges. By and large, the U.S. has accepted the oversimplification that all narcotics are dangerous and thus should be outlawed. The all but universal acceptance of marijuana, at least among the young, raises...