Woodstock, the reprise, under way in 2011 at Oregon Country Fair
by Dave Masko, huliq.com
July 9th 2011
VENETA, Ore. –Even before the music began yesterday at the opening of the 42nd
annual “Oregon Country Fair” there were “flashbacks” to Woodstock and calls for
love, peace and “compassion for all beings,” said modern day hippie couple Lee
and Pam who are part of the Dalai Lama’s 2011 “Kalachakra for World Peace”
movement that’s also going on this weekend in Washington. D.C.
You can’t help but notice the modern day hippie couple Lee and Pam as they
strolled through the massive crowds at the “Oregon Country Fair” here outside
of Eugene, Oregon, on a plot of land that’s as big as New York’s Central Park
and just as wooded and interesting. “We feel at peace. We’re here now, and we
enjoy feeling the love that’s around us. It’s a tonic for our spirits, our
souls. Let’s face it, the world sucks right now with pain, suffering, war and
millions starving,” explained Pam in what sounded like tears and laughter in
her voice.
Meanwhile, Lee noted that “although we can’t be with the Dalai Lama – whose
spoke about peace and love in Washington, D.C., today – we know that the 2011
Kalachakra for World Peace movement will help wake people up to the need to
stop the madness is our world.”
Oregon Country Fair features no alcohol, no drugs but lots of love
“Enjoy!” “Welcome home.” “Oregon Country Fair friends, this isn’t a pause for
world peace and love, it’s a lifestyle,” noted some of the public comments as
more than 20,000 Fairgoers convened here in Woodstock looking fields where the
only gridlock was young and old hugging and kissing each other along the
elaborate network of trails and medieval looking structures specially built on
this 100 plus acre site to provide access to the stages, campsites and
concession stands for over 1,000 artists and crafters for what the Fair
organizers call “a celebration of creativity in all its many forms.”
Throughout this first day of the “Fair” – as it’s known to locals here in the
Eugene area – local police noted that “it was peaceful” and the main Highway
126 lead to the site was “also relatively clear,” added the cops who reported
no busts for drugs or trouble.
“We want to send a message to the world that we can have peace and love just
like the Dalai Lama is advocating. Funny, but where are our lawmakers when it
comes to peace and love. Does it hurt so much to ask that we love one another,
or that the U.S. wants peace in the world? We’re saying it here today, and
we’re saying it loud,” says Nick a “Baby Boomer” who says he “served in Nam,”
and “doesn’t remember too much of the Sixties,” but notes with a big laugh, “I
was there.”
Fair is an homage to hippies and the Sixties now in 2011
Groping for a sense of the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) that was the Sixties,
modern day “hippies” -- and those who survived that period of American culture
when one would tune-in, turn-on and drop-out – now return to this ancient plot
of land in Western Oregon for another “gathering of the tribes” for this year’s
42nd anniversary of the “Oregon Country Fair,” July 8 – 10.
“We are entering the time of the tribal dance, as we do to live in tepees,
celebrate our joys together and learn to survive. We go to a virgin forest with
no need for the previously expensive media of electronic technology. The energy
we perceive within ourselves is beyond electric: it is atomic, it is cosmic, it
is bliss,” write one member of the “Family” back in 1969 when preparing for the
first “Oregon Country Fair” that, at the time, was another “gathering of the
hippie tribes” after the successful Woodstock concert.
“It was a sort of non-descript post-Woodstock in Nov. 1 and 2, 1969, because we
were more interested in keeping those good vibrations going than naming what
was to become our beloved Oregon Country Fair,” explains Johnny, a former
hippie and member of the “Family Commune” that thrived in this region of Oregon
back in the Sixties.
Oregon Country Fair all about Sixties lore
Yea, Bob Dylan dropped by, and so did John Lennon. Grace Slick of the
"Jefferson Airplane" was a big Fair fan and locals remember her dancing and
singing in the long train of hippies that form a human train and move
throughout the Fairgrounds each day. The famed local Sixties writer Ken Kesey
has his own stage at the Fair, and the famed anthropologist and “Don Juan”
author Carlos Castaneda said he liked to “walk the fair to be with humanity
again,” during the early 1970s.
In fact, a University of Oregon (in nearby Eugene) cultural history notes that
the current site – in a deep wooded area of Veneta – was first used in August
1972 after the fields here were used for concerts produced by the Grateful
Dead. The concerts were dubbed “Field Trips,” and the first concert benefitted
the local “Springfield Creamery,” which is still owned by members of Kesey’s
family. Soon after, the “Oregon Country Fair” as it is today – some 42 years
later – begins each Friday on the second weekend in July.
The site of the annual three-day “Fair” – as the locals call it – is in the
Eugene suburb of Veneta, located about 15 miles west of Eugene along the “Long
Tom River” that has ancient roots dating back nearly 10,000 years, and based on
some 30 plus archaeological digs that’s now made this plot of hippie land a
protected and even honored site of the “Kalapuya” Native American tribe.
“The Kalapuya lived in what’s now the site of the Oregon Country Fair while
also migrating throughout the Willamette Valley of Oregon,” writes J.P.
Rumberger Jr., in his “etholinguistic observations based on Kalapuya texts,”
that also reveal a link to today’s hippie counter-culture activities at the
Fair and back some 10,000 years when Kalapyuya Indians lived in this region of
Western Oregon. For instance, Rumberger said the Kalapuya texts point to a
“culture that valued dreams and the dream spirit-power that’s constantly
referred to in matters of living, power over natural phenomena and becoming a
shaman.”
In place of Kalapuya shaman, the Fair features musicians, magicians, jesters
and jugglers who perform on 12 stages situated throughout the site. Also, the
Fair features more than 700 artisans and more than 50 food booths to serve an
estimated 50,000 people who visit the Fair during its three day run this
weekend.
Also, Jerry Garcia may be missing from his usual “late set” – entertaining for
the thousands who stay after hours and camp out in the woods surrounding the
Fair site -- but with 18 stages featuring a wide variety of musical, comedic,
theatrical, juggling, daredevil and vaudeville performances, there’s much to
see and do at the Fair.
"It's just massive," says one Fair volunteer. "What I appreciate it no drinking
allowed, and mostly family members come to have fun. There's no dope 'cause
this is not the 1960's and, instead, there's people doing yoga, helping each
other, volunteering, talking to one another. And, there's no social media at
all. There's no laptops or laptop areas, there's none of that stuff because
it's a beautiful day and we're just into each other."
The main entertainment stages are: Kesey Stage, Main Stage, Daredevil Palace,
Shady Grove Stage, Gypsy Stage, Rabbit Hole and the ever popular “Front Porch”
which is, in fact, a real old 1930’s front porch that the likes of Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young used back in the day for both a Fair concert and as
inspiration for one of their record covers.
Spirit of the Sixties lives at the Oregon Country Fair
To understand the “Oregon Country Fair,” it’s best to reflect on what the famed
writer Arthur Miller said of the original Sixties movement.
“The Sixties radical opened his eyes to a system pouring its junk over
everybody, or nearly everybody, and the problem was to stop just that, to
escape being over-whelmed by a mindless, goalless flood which marooned each
individual on his little island of commodities,” said Miller of why so many
dropped out in the Sixties and did what people will be doing now in 2011 at the
Fair outside of Eugene.
In fact, that Sixties “radical” movement seems to be still alive and well in
the hearts and minds of Fair goers, say locals who look forward to this annual
event all year long.
“I can’t wait. It’s like breathing again. It’s seeing old friends again, and
it’s being young again,” says Ben, 58, who’s now moved from being a
self-proclaimed “old hippie,” to becoming a “Baby Boomer” who “still likes to
party.”
If you forgot: here’s what Sixties people thought and like
“There was talk in those days that the scraped interiors of banana skins, dried
and smoked, would get you high: “Mellow Yellow,” in the vernacular and the
Donovan song immortalizing it,” writes Todd Gitlin in his book “The Sixties:
Years of Home, Days of Rage.”
Gitlin also describes the Sixties as youth trying to become “enlightened” and
finding some “sociological truth.”
“Dope, hair, beads, easy sex, all that might have started as symbols of teenage
difference or deviance, were fast transformed into signs of cultural
dissidence. Meanwhile, as the styles spread, their secondhand versions seems to
swell into a whole cultural climate. Consider the outward looks, the wild and
various anti-uniforms that took on special meaning as the nation sent its armed
forces off to war in Vietnam. Boys with long and unkept hair, pony tails,
beards, old-timey mustaches and sideburns; girls unpermed, without rollers,
without curlers, string-haired, under arms and legs unshaven, free of makeup
and bras,” writes Gitlin.
Overall, there’s not much difference between 1969 and 2011, stays Mark a
long-time Fair volunteer from Eugene.
“We’re getting ready this week and when those old VW vans started rolling in
with the vendors with their camping stuff and that smell in the air… that smell
of grass that takes you back, then, yes, there’s little difference between ’69
and ’11 in terms of how our Fair folks look, dress and the medicine they use,”
explains Mark during a July 7 interview.
Moreover, the food from the first Fair in 1969 and what today’s chefs are
preparing for this weekend gathering is also much the same. For instance, Fair
goers “don’t do red meat,” or any of those popular high sugar products that
have a long shelf life. Instead, the Fair goers tend to like everything
“organic,” and simple ingredients that are from “live” foods and unrefined.
In turn, the view on what to wear to the Fair is still the same as it was 42
years ago. Beads and amulets, for both sexes, because they represent the
primitive and a shout out to the original Fair dwellers, called the “Kalapuya”
who – like today’s Fair goers – like do beat the drum for freedom, peace and
love.
This year’s “Fair” dates are July, 8, 9 and 10, with hours open to the public
from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Also, the Fair is not free, and costs about $25 per
ticket and parking. For more information, check out the Oregon Country Fair at
http://www.oregoncountryfair.org/
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http://www.huliq.com/10282/woodstock-reprise-under-way-2011-oregon-country-fair
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