Publishing Insider

Life is a Highway

Just back from family road trip and finally saw Cars...which featured the Rascal Flatts' version of Life is a Highway. Wracked by brains to think of who wrote it/did the original...and I knew he also did Lunatic Fringe. Tom Cochrane!! Going to put his cd's on my La La cd sharing list!

By the time I got to Woodstock

This coming Sunday, August 13, a few days shy of a thirty-seventh anniversary, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young return to a stage at Woodstock, albeit a brand-new one. The four of them, the audience, and all of us are older - and some of us wiser - than we were in’69.

I drove to the location of the original festival earlier this year, a mile down Hurd Road, a right turn off of Route 17B in Bethel, New York. This place calls me back every ten years or so, even if I didn’t make it that 1969 weekend - or because I didn’t get there then. I feel like I missed out on something momentous, and I like to go and see if there’s anything I can soak up, anything I can hear on the wind. It’s just a pretty field to look out over, one of thousands in upstate New York, but something dramatic happened here, and one wants to imagine the sights and sounds of so many people in one place.

But change is in the air. You can no longer just park by the sculpture where previous pilgrims have placed flowers, photos and guitar picks. It’s cordoned off, and just over the first ridge, condos are being built. Just up the road, the pristine new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts promises a slate of classical, jazz, country and pop performances, all with comfortable seating and easy parking, both a distinct change from 1969. (The parking issue is such a marketing obstacle these many years later that the Bethel Woods website lists as one of its five essential qualities: “parking in close proximity to the main entrance.”)

I was one of thousands of Long Island kids who did not make the journey to Sullivan County in ‘69, either because our parents didn’t approve or we couldn’t marshal a car full. I don’t think anyone from Southold went. Too far? Too scared?

We were in good company, us no-shows. The names of the musicians who declined the invitation to play are now as legion as those who did. Bob Dylan, The Doors, Jeff Beck, and Led Zeppelin all said no. Joni Mitchell either got stuck on the Thruway with all the others or withdrew to appear on the Dick Cavett Show, depending on whose version you believe. Still, she got a great song out of it, one of the few songs that sound good both as a slow dirge and an electric anthem. According to Wikipedia, Tommy James and the Shondells were just told that a farmer wanted them to play in a field. They said no -- then saw in the news a few days later what they had missed, just as we did.

That farm is now gone, as is the way in America now, going under the bulldozer and hammer for new homes, and I am both saddened and realistic. It isn’t as if Woodstock is like Gettysburg or Valley Forge, truly historical places that are also under siege by developers. And any nameless wetland or forest is more vital to the quality of life today than where 500,000 kids smoked and drank for four days.

It is incredibly sad that, on August 13, 2006, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young will once again have to, need to, want to comment on an overseas war. The difference from 1969, however, is that all who attend this year’s performance will go back to dry, clean beds, with friends or family around them. That, too, is what our soldiers deserve.

Peace, soon.

Eriely beautful

Just got back from walk along Lake Erie along the edge of SUNY Oswego campus. Sublime and peaceful, and a bit of nostalgia to see that good ol' signature NY State campus construction. (I'm a SUNY Stony Brook alum.) But highlight of day was a visit to the BEAUTIFUL River's End Bookstore in downtown Oswego. An oasis, a little slice of heaven. Got to run; it's wine thirty. NAIBA show report tk.

DC united

Alas, off to BEA early. Store visits and a stop at the Smithsonian. As with my Southern swing, I’m not lugging the laptop. Oh, it’s tempting to log dispatches from DC, but others do it MUCH better (Cullen, Mutter, Cader, Abbott et al).

I am really looking forward to the joys of bringing authors and booksellers together, of talking up favorite books, and, yes, some vino at the end of a long day. The other joy is ABA’s Education Day on Thursday, when booksellers share knowledge with each other; a beautiful, generous thing.

Meantime, I hope you’ll re-read my rave of Lizzie’ War, a novel that I really hope you’ll read in the coming weeks. It’s about war, peace, love and faith, and then some.