[sweet] Iconic Woodstock lovers, 40 years later

re-posted from NY Daily News

Woodstock concert's undercover lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 years after summer of love
By Jim Farber, 06/07/09



Of all the images snapped during the original Woodstock weekend, one stands above all: a young couple huddled together in a blanket, standing alone in a sea of people lying on wet ground.

It's an enduring image of love, care and protection that earned iconic status through its placement on the cover of the original "Woodstock" album in 1970, as well as on the movie poster.

Forty years later, the couple in the photo - Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60 - remain together. They married two summers after the fabled weekend, and they still live less than an hour's drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up.

Nick Ercoline works for the Orange County, N.Y., Department of Housing. Bobbi is a resident nurse at the elementary school in their hometown of Pine Bush.

The 40th anniversary of the ultimate hippie be-in, this Aug. 15-17, has thrown the Ercolines into the spotlight again - something they never expected or sought.

They say they remember nothing of the original shot, taken by Burk Uzzle. "We weren't striking a pose," Nick says. "We were as surprised as everybody to see that photo on the album cover."

They discovered it while at a friend's house listening to the album and passing around the gatefold jacket. First, Nick recognized the famous yellow butterfly staff in the left corner. "It belonged to this guy Herbie," Nick says. "We latched on to him that day because he was having a very bad experience. He was tripping pretty heavily and he had lost his friends. After I saw that staff I said, 'Hey that's our blanket.' Then I said, 'Hey, that's us.'"

Bobbi, then 20, wasn't overly impressed. "Woodstock was over and done with at that time," she says. "It didn't seem like a big deal. The only thing was that then I had to tell my mother I had gone. She didn't know. But by then, she didn't mind."

The two had arrived in the middle of the weekend, a rare feat given that all main roads were closed by then. "We were local kids, so we knew the back roads," Nick says. "About 5 miles away we abandoned this big white 1965 Chevrolet Impala station wagon."

The two didn't realize the impact their photo had until Woodstock's 20th anniversary, when the world's media began seeking them out. In fact, their memories of the original event have more to do with the scene than the music, because they were too far away to hear or see much.

"I remember the rain, the lack of toilets and the body odor," Bobbi says.

"I also remember an orange haze from the glowing lights of the stage. It was everywhere, lighting up the sky."

The pair had met only three months earlier, over Memorial Day weekend, at the bar where Nick worked. "This waiter brought this beautiful blond in one day and said, 'This is my girlfriend; keep an eye on her,'" Nick explains. "Every night she stood in front of me and we got friendlier and friendlier. Then one weekend he made the mistake of leaving her home while he went to the shore with the guys and he never told her. That was the end of that. And the beginning of this."

Despite all the time gone by, Nick says they still get recognized. "We were in Germany, and right when we walked into the hotel they knew who we were."

As to why their photo was chosen, Nick has a theory. "It's peaceful, which is what the event was about," he says. "And it's an honest representation of a generation. When we look at that photo I don't see Bobbi and me. I see our generation."

[Athens] A letter to students occupying their schools

*A letter from workers in Athens to the students occupying their schools*

suggested by Javier, re-posted from facebook

A letter to students, December 2008

An open letter to students by workers in Athens, against the background of the social upheaval following the police shooting of a young boy.

A letter to students

Our age difference and the general estrangement make it difficult for us to discuss with you in the streets; this is why we send you this letter.

Most of us have not (yet) been bald or big-bellied. We are part of the 1990-91 movement. You must have heard of it. Back then, and while we had occupied our schools for 30-35 days, fascists killed a teacher because he had gone beyond his natural role (that of being our guard) and crossed the line to the opposite side; he had come with us, into our struggle. Then, even the toughest of us got to the streets and riot. However, we didn't even think of doing what you easily do today: attack police stations (although we sang "burn police stations…").

So, you're gone beyond us, as always happens in history. Conditions are different of course. During '90s they passed us off the prospect of personal success and some of us swallowed it. Now people cannot believe this fairy tale. Your older brothers showed us this during the 2006-07 students' movement; you now spit their fairy tale to their faces.

So far so good.

Now the good and difficult matters begin.

We'll tell you what we've learned from our struggles and our defeats (because as long as world is not ours we'll always be the defeated ones) and you can use what we've learned as you wish:

Don't stay alone. Call us; call as many people as possible. We don't know how you can do that, you will find the way. You've already occupied your schools and you tell us that the most important reason is that you don't like your schools. Nice. Since you've already occupied them change their role. Share your occupations with other people. Let your schools become the first buildings to house our new relations. Their most powerful weapon is dividing us. Just like you are not afraid of attacking their police stations because you are together, don't be afraid to call us to change our life all together.

Don't listen to any political organization (either anarchists or anyone). Do what you need to. Trust people, not abstract schemes and ideas. Trust your direct relations with people. Trust your friends; make as many people as possible in your struggle your people. Don't listen to them when they're saying that your struggle doesn't have a political content and must seemingly obtain. Your struggle is the content. You only have your struggle and it's in your hands to preserve its advance. It's only your struggle that can change your life, namely you and the real relations with your fellowmen.

Don't be afraid to proceed when confronting new things. Each one of us, as we're getting older, has things planted in their brains. You too, although you are young. Don't forget the importance of this fact. Back in 1991, we confronted the smell of the new world and, trust us, we found it difficult. We learned that there must always be limits. Don't be scared by the destruction of commodities. Don't be scared by people looting stores. We make all these, they are ours. You (just like we in the past) are raised to get up every morning in order to make things that they will later not be yours. Let's get them back all together and share them. Just like we share our friends and the love among us.

We apologize for writing this letter quickly, but we do it swinging the lead from our work, secretly from our boss. We are imprisoned in work, just like you are imprisoned in school.

We'll now lie to our boss and leave work: we'll come to meet you in Syntagma sq with stones in our hands.

Proletarians

[film review] "Music Within"

This is a review for the 2007 film "Music Within" which is about the author of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Richard Pimentel. As with many successful movements, the spotlight often falls on one person while the labor of the countless many who came before and fought the good fight are retired to relative obscurity. Ebert's reflections are eye-opening and informative. The film is definitely still worth seeing. If anyone knows of any other movies about Ability activists, please post the titles in the comment section, thanks! --Ianna


re-posted from rogerebert.com

by Roger Ebert in 2007

I have good things to write about "Music Within," but I have some troubles with it, too. First, the good stuff: This is an entertaining, sometimes inspiring film about a man named Richard Pimental (Ron Livingston), who serves in Vietnam and is almost completely deafened when a shell lands near him in battle. Returning to America, he receives not exactly expert treatment for his disability and is cast out into the world to find himself all but unemployable. Among the friends he makes in the disabled community is Art Honeyman (Michael Sheen), who has cerebral palsy but is a powerhouse of intelligence and wit.

The two of them experience first-hand the discrimination, sometimes unconscious, that the world inflicts on those who look, sound or act differently. In one of the movie's most infuriating scenes, they are asked to leave a restaurant, "because you're disturbing the other customers." How are they disturbing them? By being there. By existing. By Honeyman being twisted and in a wheelchair and talking awkwardly.

Pimental's own experiences and what he sees happening to his friends inspire him to become a disability rights activist, and although the movie doesn't quite say so, he must have been the driving force behind the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990), because no one else is mentioned. Taken just on these terms, the movie works, it's effective, and I believe audiences will respond to it.

My own feelings are a little more complex. They began forming in early childhood. Growing up in Urbana, I was unknowingly at the center of a rehabilitation movement that formed after World War II. Thousands of returning vets were in wheelchairs. Unlike Pimental, who is told in the film that he doesn't qualify for veterans' college funds because he is deaf, many of them attended universities on the G.I. Bill.

The University of Illinois sits on a landscape flat as a pancake. Ideal for wheelchairs. The Urbana-Champaign community, starting in 1946, began to build ramps into buildings, adapt elevators and washrooms, make curb cuts and equip buses with chair lifts. This was not done overnight, but the town became known as wheelchair-friendly. Our local TV sportscaster, Tom Jones, was in a wheelchair. Our wheelchair athletes, organized in a program by Dr. Tim Nugent, helped launch wheelchair sports. During Vietnam, the loudest anti-war protester on campus was an SDS member named Rudy Frank who walked with so many braces he looked like RoboCop. My photo chief at The Daily Illini was Ken Viste, who was in a chair, but that didn't keep him from working the sidelines at sporting events. Disabled people were no big deal.

Things like that were happening all over the country, and I learned a little about them in 1962 when I went along as an aide on a tour of Southern Africa with 18 wheelchair athletes, who demonstrated that life did not end with forms of paralysis. All of this came before Pimental went to Vietnam.

The national disability rights movement had many parents. Such men as Robert Burgdorf, Justin Whitlock Dart Jr. and Sen. Bob Dole were instrumental. Remember Ron Kovic, who was born on the Fourth of July? Here in Chicago, my friend Marca Bristo founded Access Living to support the disabled who wanted to live independently. She lobbied relentlessly in City Hall and Springfield. She was appointed chair of the National Council on Disability. No, she didn't create the Americans With Disabilities Act. But Google both her and Pimentel, and decide for yourself who played a larger role in the movement.

What bothers me is that "Music Within" takes an individual story, an inspiring one, yes, and then thinks that's all there is to be told. It wasn't one guy who got mad. It was decades of struggle, decades of rejection, decades of streets that couldn't be crossed, stairs that couldn't be climbed, houses that couldn't be lived in and customers who couldn't be bothered. Richard Pimentel was more of a beneficiary of the disability rights movement than a pioneer. So why do I give the movie 2½ stars? Because what it does, it does sincerely and fairly well. Just remember that its hero stands for countless others.