Woodstock Anniversary

We are reminded that the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is upon us. I
was in highschool for the 20th and college for the 25th, and back then, the Woodstock anniversaries were a very big deal. But this year its snuck up on us.


Are we finally past the 60's nostaligia? Will the Balding Boomers for once just shut the hell up about the 60's?

One of the caharacters of my novel, A Line Through the Desert, is a girzled tank platoon leader who can't shut up about his time in Vietnam:

“You sure you should be eating this stuff?” Grady asked Jake. “It bein’ Christmas an all? Prod B?” The man crammed a forkful of turkey into his mouth.

Jake swatted a fly off his tray. “Shut up,” Jake irritably replied. “It’s better than MREs.”

“You should try K- rations,” said Sergeant Snyder.

The other Sergeants glared at Jake, Grady looked like he wanted to rip Jake’s head off. Oh Christ, Jake thought to himself, here we go. Sergeant Snyder spent the next few minutes talking about K- rations, not how they measured up to MREs, just about them, the food, the gum, the cigarettes and aspirin…Ever since they arrived in the Gulf, he refused to shut up about Vietnam. At first, Jake found it interesting. Sgt. Snyder never talked about Vietnam before. But he just wouldn’t stop. If an M-1 got stuck in the sand, Sergeant Snyder talked about getting M-48’s out of Vietnamese mud. If the bugs were getting to everyone, he’d reminisce about fighting off gigantic red Vietnamese fire ants. When Jake complained about not being able to shower, Sergeant Snyder talked about how during the monsoon season, he used to shower in the rain...

So why not the Balding Boomer self regarding, self congradulatory love fest this time around? Have they forgotten about their precious Summer of Love? Is the market for this sort of thing finally saturated? Who can say?

I remember a few years ago watching a Balding Boomer pundit (Mark Shields) on TV being asked about what it would take to 'end' the battle for Iraq. Shields said it would take a Republican stalwort to rise in the senate and join the opposition, like Mike Mansfield did during the Vietnam War.

I didn't know who Mike Mansfield was, I had to look him up. What's funny is that Shields brought up Mike Mansfield without realizing that he had just lost everyone in the audience under 50.

Eunice Kennedy Shrive died yesterday. She was President Kennedy's sister. But who cares? Why is Kennedy's sister dying news? Why not the death of Chester A Arther's grand newphew? As iexplained to a Balding Boomer once (my father), when start droning on to an 18 year old aabout Kennedy and the Vietnam War, that's like some gilded age geezer pestering you about President McKinley and the Philippine counter-inusrgency.

As a historian - published and everything - I can assure you, that the technical term for all this is anceint F!@#@$&! history.