Those who don't know me may be concerned if I may be violent or suicidal... absolutely not. I have never attacked or harmed anyone... I am strictly opposed to any violence and wish no harm on anyone. I am into love and peaceful healthy conflict resolution and always have been. My aggression has always towards myself.

I will never ever attempt to commit suicide again because my life now belongs to God, through Jesus Christ. I have given my life for whatever it is, to Christ, may His Will be done. God gave me life, new life, and may He take it away.

And I thank and praise God for delivering me from the torture and despair, and given me a new life, new reality, and large new family of friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ who are loving and nurturing inspirations to me.

May my life be an honor to Him for His glory... for God's Holy Love and Word will deliver you from your deepest darkest despair and can be a comfort to you. Life can be dark and dirty at times... but life need not be that way.

Death, despair, and suicide may be such taboo topics in some cultures, but let it not be because it is real and there is Hope and New Life in Christ Jesus, and the example of His Words and Life. May my life be a testimony of overcoming growing up around hate, as an outcast, and being tortured... and the help of some wonderful caring friends.

I need to acknowledge that overall my family members are fine upstanding people who want to mean well... just using dysfuntional skills in failing in achieving God's will for individual family strength, prosperity, and healthy functioning.

My training and experience in crisis intervention and as a counselort dealing with sometimes violent people has taught me different skills in responding and dealing in violent situations.

I walk away and leave when folks get violent or try and provoke me to violence.  I walked away when my beloved daughter-in-law shrugged me when I went to hug her goodbye the last time my mother and I saw her.   I called my son once after Christmas last year and have not talked to him since.  I have let go to God for ever having relationships with him, his wife, or my beloved grandchildren.  I enjoy the type of realtionship I would love to have with my daughter-in-law with my friend Katie.   I look forard to being Godmother to Katie's children when she has them.  I walked away when my mother shoved me after she admitted to hanging my beloved cat... to see if I would fight back.  I walked away when Eugenie pinched me at the reunion dinner honoring my mother just before she died, when my brother smashed my hand in Norway. I avoid such violent people and people who have an agenda to make me appear violent or dangerous.    It ain't my cup of tea.  

It is such a shameful loss of those who insist on choosing to relate on such a destructive level and agenda... I don't understand why. I do not relate on such a level. Any revenge is God's and their loss because I am a darn nice, decent, honest, caring, generous, loving, and likeable regular imperfect person who tries hard to do the right thing, and love God and His Miracles.  

I am not a violent person and I am not and I have never been into violence. Violence appalls me and triggers my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of the violence and torture I witnessed and experienced as a child growing up. Violence and abuse makes me ill.

The incident 3 years ago of taking unrelated family emails about my use of the funny expression “rip a new asshole” regarding my daughter-in-law's disrespectful treatment and refusal to honor my mother dying of cancer wanting a photograph of my granddaughters, and my sisters encourage she have a senseless restraining order served to me on Christmas is an example. and it makes such a mockery of God and His commandments about honoring parents.      

Let the truth be known that I have never ever gone anywhere near my beloved daughter-in-laws  asshole. I have never felt tempted to go near her asshole... the thought is repulsive, bizarre, and ridiculous.   It's a non-issue to me.   Her asshole is safe in my vicinity.   Let the truth be know that I would protect her ass in a heartbeat no matter what she did because she is my sons wife, a very good wife, and the mother of my grandchildren.  

I admit and am remorseful that I used a poor choice of words, that have been taken way out of preportion and context... however God and his commandments will not be mocked.    The impact of so much dysfunctional communication it has had on my son's and his family's inheritance is devastating...   and my sisters have used the incident to manipulate control of the Norway estate and falsely, unfairly manipulate fear in others.

It seems so nonsensical of the tremendous issue that I wrote "rip a new asshole" has become with my family, in view of how it has been used to cause such harm, alienation, and division it has caused my entire family and to discredit and harm me personally.   But it is a prime example of how my family hate club ritual of how it will grab any straw to fit me in the violent, dangerous or psychopath profile.  

I love and cheriah my violence free life.  I pray that everyone be blessed to relate on such a level.

All my sisters and younger brother have been into experimenting with satanism and witchcraft. When we were very young my mother at times would conduct seances in the dark, do the Ouija board, denied any God, told witch stories, and stories of the nuns calling on satan in seances in the convent schools where she grew up, etc. (I might do a blog on the dark side of the real story of Madeline of childrens stories fame, and my mother and her sister living in private boarding schools run by nuns in Paris in the 1930's and 1940's.) There were also times we sat around the table and prayed. My mother did what she had learned. I praise and thank God that she transformed and enlightened her mind and let go of and realeased so much emotional pain shortly before she died, and that we were able to briefly experience such a much more enlightened relationship.

Estate documentaion shows how the destructive false witness, deception, hatred and lies go back another generation between my mother and her sister and the boarding schools days as children in Paris. It is trans generational sisterly hate, false witness and lies and the same damage now being carried forward another 4 generations. This will be the in “real” Madeline blog...  if I ever write it cuz I'd rather focus on lhe lighter side of things.      It is fascinating that many nuns were the fallen women, ex-convicts, outcasts, overaged prostitutes, etc.  seeking asylm in the safety of convents along with the inspired nuns

The scar on my oldest sister Eugenie Pedersen's face is from playing “witch” running through a glass storm door as a young girl of elementary school age chasing me to catch me and “torture and kill” me, take me prisoner to be kept in a bedroom closet... until I paid, was hurt, had to obey her whims, subjugate, etc.

There was a period of time that I wanted to be a witch and was interested in the occult too, but I have turned far away and repented from all that by the Holy Blood of Jesus because the Holy Spirit is the Best Spirit, the Almighty Spirit. Why mess with the rest when ya got the best?

My sister Tamara (Keiper), has still remained great lifelong friends with her childhood Westport neighbor friend whose mother was a major witchcraft practitioner.

The rhetoric and head games of the recent hateful and satanic websites utilizing the identity theft of my name implying I am a violent harm to others and an insect, demanding I give my sisters and brothers what they want sounds s exactly like my sister Tamara Keiper and especially Eugenie Pedersen's family ritualized Pedersen Hate club rhetoric word for word like a broken record repeating the same things for 50 years. Thier claims against me are not true.   That my step-sister Kimberly Johnson plays along with all the false witness and lies fits right in the family as she harrassees me.

The recent “satanic websites and emails”, it is obvious how  today my family stillhas ritually, ruthlessly, and indiscriminately uses my illness of depression, to exploit me by preying on others stigma, ignorance, and fear of mental illness and ignorance of my illness. My siblings and family will fabricate stories and lies and mislead others to deliberately provoke or deceive others about my depression and to decieve others to intentionally create fear; and to falsely cause others to think that I am violent or into violence. Let me assure you I am not violent... and as an abuse victim I leave and stay away from those who relate on levels of violence.

I am not an insect, satanist, violent, etc... I am a beloved child of God. Praise God!

When we were very young and my older brother would be home visiting from the children's home or foster care we were ordered by my mother to call him “Fathead” whenever she was dissatisfied with anything he did. He was forced to wear a wool skull cap in the house to keep his “big” ears next to his head, and he was forced to eat ketchup on all breakfasts, including oatmeal because he asked for ketchup for his scrambled eggs one time. He was punished for not standing at ready alongside the road after Boy Scouts because he would play in the yard with the rest of the boys.... write rules repeatedly hundreds and hundreds of time... we were made to stand in a circle around him to call him “Fathead” and take turns spanking him with Mr. Stick.     Someone was to be blamed far any problems that occured, and it was group abuse to the scapegoat.

Discipline was to be punitive, cruel, abusive, and severe; never instructive, consistent, or corrective. There was never any accountability for the abuse.  The verbal and emotional abuse was relentless.     I read my sisters and family emails and it still continues.

As young elementary school children, my mother had us so terrorized she instilled having an orgainzed plan of how to subdue and kill our father, sleeping with weapons under our pillows, in the event of waking up to fights, etc... I had frequent nightmares and difficulty sleeping as a child.    Though I still sometimes have nightmares, now I awake to the sound of birds singing every morning.

We were forced to refer to and call our father the non-entity name of “Mr.” whenever he visited, which was rare because of all the evasive moving my mother did. I remember him leaving crying when he would come to visit and my sisters and youngest brother would be brutally and needlessly cruel to him in how they turned him away. (By the time I graduated high school I had been to 13 schools.) With my brother and father out of the picture the majority of the time, the family rage and dysfunction was vented on me... especially for speaking out against the abuse, and being suicidal.... for portraying anything less than a perfectly happy family.

To anyone raised as a child in such a way, I say that when you grow up you can choose with hope and faith that God has given us ways out of the despair, to heal and to experience a new life through believing and practicing God's word and you will start encountering people who do not tend to steal, kill, bear false witness, lie, etc. Know that Jesus died on the cross for this... you can pour out all the pain and tears on Him... know that there ARE people who do love and do care.

My siblings would not acknowledge or speak to me because I was considered an insect beneath being spoken to (unless they wanted something) and was generally and ritually excluded from family discussions and activities. I still experience tremendous anxiety and difficulty as they do.   I experience tremendous anxiety speaking at times.

The hatred, pain, dysfunction and alienation has become so entrenched for so long, my family experiences such distress that it feels like torture for them to include and consider me today in any family discussions and decisions involving our inheritance... They have not learned how to do it! It goes against everything they have always been conditioned to consider me as an insect, and have yet to repent from or transcend that kind of delusional thinking.

To communicate with me and include me as another equal human rarely occurred among my siblings... they just don't know how to do it because they never learned, nor have overcome and transcended the dysfunction. It can be extremely difficult for folks to see the Child of God within others when an ego prevails in putting yourself superior to others.

The best psychiatrists at the Yale-New Haven hospital attempted some early family therapy in getting my family members to engage emotionally with me and each other, but in denial my family refused to continue after a few brief sessions. I still believe that a few sessions of family therapy with someone like Dr. Phil could do miracles. Hey Dr. Phil, are you listening?

Being a voracious reader, at age 13 I began reading Sigmund Freud, and other psychology books my mother would bring home in her seaches for profiles and definitions of psychopaths. I had a yearning to understand why things were as painful and crazy as they were, and to understand the human mind. I had no concept of self-esteem. I had no idea what having my boundaries respected was like.

Fascinated with psychological theory and behaviorism, I enjoyed analytical discussions with therapists, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatirists I encountered.

I see this familial exclusion and alienation is still an issue today as I have been excluded from the dealings with my Norway inheritance, and as my siblings have committed identity theft by fraudulently used my proxy as administrator of my father's estate in fraudulent land transactions without my knowledge, agreement, or authority... unfortunately to make so many ignorant decisions that has dwindeled the value of a family inheritance and heritage recorded going back 500 years.

I pray this generational hatred stops now and that if my beloved grandchildren ever read this (as adults) and recognize any similar patterns that they repent to better ways of relating, so that God will bless them and their families. No one is better than another. We all have our unique gifts and talents that God has blessed us with.

This is where spiritual Holy Spirit intervention and breakthough needs to come, and may this blog and my life and family help bring healing to my family and me and be an example of answer to our prayers and healing to others in similar family circumstances.

May my family be a real living example of how the dysfunctional communication, false witness, lies, envy, and coveting that which belongs to others will rob an entire family and all its branches of God's transgenerational blessing.

During the hippie days growing up in Westport, there was no heat living as an insect in the basement under the house during the freezing Connecticut winters and my sisters and brother would take my blankets away from me to keep themselves warm. The furnace in the basement only pumped warm air upstairs into the house. My siblings would lock me out of the house upstairs as they all slept upstairs in their beds in their bedrooms on the second floor. I would be up, awake all night freezing.

I was rarely welcomed upstairs but to use the bathroom, to be exploited, provide entertainment, or when my friends who could be exploited, would come to visit me. My friends who could not be exploited were not welcomed. It got to a point that my mother set a house rule expected that any friends who came to visit, should bring money, booze, drugs, or food from raiding their parents freezers My siblings helped themselves first to the food that was cooked. To this day my older sister (who would be left in charge by my mother when she was at work) is an outstanding cook... demanding and using the best of ingredients for herself.

Through the help of a social worker, I received my own blanket on my 17^th birthday as a present that my sisters and brother were not allowed to steal from me.   I treasured my first blanket of my own, because then I would be warm when I slept at night and I kept it until it wore out and fell apart.

In Norway 2006 my youngest brother assaulted me and badly bruised my hand because I put a heater in my bedroom and afterwards joked with their property manager Lill Tony Ramvik Larsen and her family about it. In my 2007 business trip to Norway my sibling had their property manager Lill Tony Ramvik Larsen remove all the blankets from our house and joked about my being cold without blankets... the same sick sadistic and immature rituals and dysfunctional games still occur today 50 years later.   It is amazing how the Bible says memories can come back when you need them... I had forgotten all about how I would try to fall sleep in the freezing basement storage room without heat or blankets... and the cruel game my siblings played by taking my blankets away.    I slept under a coat.

Visited my wealthy son and his family spending the night in their golf course waterfront home, I was repeatedly refused blankets or bedding as I was left to sleep on the couch with only my sweater to keep warm. The other occaisions, only a blanket was offered. My sisters will not share family photographs either.... same ritualized abuse throughout my family.  I am so disappointed my son joined the family hate club rituals... I did not raise him that way

I praise and thank God for delivery from that cruel pettiness and for the feather and hand crocheted blankets that I have available to sleep under in my home.

From age 11 on, there were many times that I did not eat for days at a time.   Fearing that I was becoming too developed to be a model when I hit puberty, my mother had me started on prescriptions of Benzedrine and Dexedrine speed pills when I was @ 11 years old ... so I regualrly went without eating in my teenage years.    It was legal at the time.

In my journals from 1969 are entries of being in the little basement storage room, cold, so lonely, and going 3 and more days without food and sleep. At age 15 when I started becoming aware of drugs and realized that it was speed that I had been already taking for 4 years! I continued to use speed until years after I left home...  until when I started realizing the harmful toll it takes... I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I have been accepting my body for not being naturally thin but voluptuous, yet still stuggle with my aelf image.

I do not recommend that anyone experiment with or use speed.

I adored my oldest brother, because he was someone who I could sometimes talk to, who could sometimes relate to the pain of being the family scapegoat, and someone fun to party with. He became a successful NYC drug dealer as a teenager, but numerous times whenever I went to him for help and did not have money, he would try and pimp me. 

So I grew up with no one at home to count on for any love, understanding, empathy, protection, or acceptance, but around frequent persecution, worthlessness, and constant loneliness.    My friends became my lifeline.

When social workers from the Connecticut Department of Welfare started working with my mother in establishing reasonable limits and boundaries, my mother set a Saturday curfew for me at 5:30 “because I had to be controlled”. (My sisters had 10:30 curfews.) When she got mad at me for sitting on a Westport Library park bench eating pizza at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon, and I refused to go home until the 5:30 curfew that was established, my mother then insisted that the Westport Police arrest me as a juvenile for incorrigibility and insisted that the Westport Police incarcerate me for the weekend in the Bridgeport Youth Detention Facility .

Although I committed no crime, my mother used the 1968 Westport News newspaper picture of the teens hanging out in the Westport Library park to get me arrested because JH is in the picture. My mother insisted that he was a criminal and since he was in the picture, she insisted that the Westport Library park was a criminal hangout. (I have always known JH as someone who is an awesome, decent, nice, supercool guy, a wonderful friend, besides being a total hottie too. He wasn't even in the in park when my mother insisted that the Westport police arrest me and have me incarcerated.) I was so extremely touched and blown away that friends were concerned for me that weekend. The picture is stained with my tears.

My wonderful beloved friends of Westport in the summer of 1969 who accepted me, befriended me, welcomed me, and loved me saved my life. I was so shy, presecuted, rejected, and withdrawn and the kids who talked to me and liked me changed my world for me. I praise and thank God for them to bless them abundantly with His Almighty Amazing Miracles.

Home life in the Summer of 1969

Since none of my friends in Westport would assault me, my mother started bringing in grown adult men from out of town to act as thugs at parties and to “control” me. These guys were my sister's boyfriends from Norwalk and Stamford. They did not control me to protect me from suicide but to take whatever I had at whim. As I grew older and too big for my sisters to overpower me, they devised other methods.   My sisters had their boyfriends move into the house to do their bidding on me at their will and my mother encouraged and approved it. I had no privacy or rights as an insect.

Eugenie was dropping out of high school, had gotten arrested for malicious trespass and vandalism, suicidal behavior and walking in front of cars. Tamara (Tassinka) was suicidal and was picked up for laying on the train tracks trying to kill herself. My younger brother Ted was often truant, belligerent and defiant... he started stealing and smoking cigarettes at age 6, smoking marijuana @ 9 y o. My oldest brother was in and out of the home, on his own or sometimes in jail.

In the late spring of 1969, when I was committed to the Connecticut Valley State Mental Hospital at age 15 for 30 days for observation of depression and suicide, plans and arrangements were made to have my sister and youngest brother committed as well. They were not cooperating with out-patient treatment.

My mother used the mental hospital as a punishment instead of assistance of help. When I was raped of my virginity on the floor in a hospital hallway by an adult male patient, my mother said it was good that I wasn't any longer able to save myself, to save my virginity for a man because men where no good anyways!

The 30 days observation in the cuckoos nest was extended to 90 days... a school quarter. I was accepted, popular, and adjusted very well and was making A's and some B's in the school on the large hospital campus. Plans were being made for my attending private school at Devereaux School in PA where I would be assured a college education. My great report card from the Connecticut Valley Hospital is posted.

I refused to return home from the mental hospital
I have posted an interesting letter in the Woodstock Album on my www.anaunum.com website which I sent home from the mental hospital, refusing to return home.  I was refusing to return home from the mental hospital because of Tamara's (Tassinka) boyfriend Stanley bullying me, to take and steal whatever drugs he thought I would cop away from me to use for himself, my sister Tamara, and Eugenie's boyfriend Monkey. I was not protected at home but exploited at whim, and my sisters Tamara and Eugenie manipulated control.   

I was almost becoming depressed in the mental hospital because I was being accepted as a person living in an environment without having to pay somehow, beg, kiss ass, take blame for family problems, or perform to be accepted... I was not being treated as an insect in the basement but as another human being and were nice to me.

The Stanley mentioned in the letter was Tamara's boyfriend, and Monkey was Eugenie's boyfriend and none of the people mentioned in the letter were from Westport but their friends bringing drugs from Norwalk, Stamford, and out of town.   Pretty much, anything besides prostitution that any of us did to make some money was okay with my mother. (After a short period of experimentaion, my mother eventually cleaned up the house. My sisters no longer abuse drugs and medications that I am aware of. No one in my family, including myself has been involved in any drug dealing since those days that I am aware of. My brother got busted a couple times and served some time. When I ran away from home for the last time after I graduated high school half a year early, I have never moved back home again.)  

My experiences in the mental hospital helped me through out my life in practice when I became a drug and suicide counselor at the Open-Line crisis hotline when I was 16; later on at Edmonds Community College in my studies and degree work as a rehabilitation specialist, and my degree work in seminary at Dominion College, in Ministry and Theology, Christian counseling.

Well, I never made it to Devereaux School. My mother refused to have me return to the mental hospital after a trial weekend home visit... I was forced to go AWOL... my mother refused to consider the Devereaux school or any treatment and risk lose any of the child support she received for me... so the summer of 1969 was an exciting and wild summer of running away from the suicidal depressing despair of home to any happening event or party I could find.

It has been falsely claimed by my family that my mother did not return me to the mental hospital because a lobotomy was going to be performed on me! LOL! This is totally untrue, but more harmful false witness and lies against me... as proven by the documents and letters that were sent to my concerned father by his lawyer and the social workers. Some of the false stories my family tells are devastating and horribly damaging... and have evolved into worse and worse outrageous configurations over the years with each well rehearsed telling.) It is time for me to speak out and speak up against this if it takes using the internet to do it.

My oldest 18 y o sister Eugenie went to Woodstock along with the Hog Farm hippie commune she was living with Monkey in Greenwich Village at the time. Eugenie stayed 2 weeks after Woodstock with the Hog Farm hippie commune cleaning up the huge muddy mess and garbage that remained after the famous concert was over.

My 17 y. o. older brother Thom was staying in NYC at the time and sailed up the St Lawrence seaway to Woodstock on the yacht ... never getting closer than the seaway.

My younger sister Tamara who was 14 y. o. at the time went to Woodstock with a Westport boyfriend and another guy, returning a day early like I did.

My youngest brother and mother stayed home.

I was 15 y. o. went to Woodstock arriving 2 days early, with a crazy nice guy DM. that I would hang out with and 4 other nice guys from Westport in DM's mothers car. We packed up clothes sleeping bags and 6-man tent into the car and headed for upstate New York. Some of us had gone to the incredible Atlantic City music festival together 2 weeks earlier, when Janis Joplin debuted her Kozmic Mama's Got the Blues album. People were already buzzing about the Woodstock concert that was planned for Woodstock, NY. I loved and identified with Janis Joplin. We planned to stay at Woodstock for the duration of the concert.

None of us had tickets to get into Woodstock.. so we started asking around for tickets on the way.

I had just sold some clothing I designed for Cribben Leather on Main Street in Westport and had some extra money to spend and those who had money, we pooled what money we had. We hit the liquor store once we hit the New York State border with the 18 y o drinking age, buying beer and alcohol.

With being a big-time wine drinker we got 3 gallons of rot-gut wine at $1 a gallon intended to last me the weekend... one gallon jugs each of cheap white, pink, and red wine. (I was a hard core drinker like Janis Joplin and the gal in Nepal in Harrison Ford's film Raiders of the Lost Ark who drinks everyone else under the table and still is standing after everyone else passes out.)

We encountered hippies driving north from the time we left Connecticut. I bought my first Woodstock ticket for Friday's concert from a guy in the liquor store parking lot who wasn't going to be able to go on Friday.

About halfway up to Woodstock I bought my ticket for Saturday from a grocery store checker where we stopped to buy sandwich fixings and food to take with us. The grocery store checker was going to be unable to attend because he was being ordered to come in and work Saturday due to the crowds that were starting to form on their way to Woodstock. We hoped that with my Woodstock tickets that we could somehow all get in to the concert.

Traffic got thicker and thicker the closer we got to Max Yasgur's farm... with cars and hippie buses already parking alongside the highway. All the parking on site had already filled up. It was outside the farm by Wednesday afternoon that traffic in both directions had already come to a standstill. Some locals were charging hippies money for parking in front of their yards. Some locals were already selling hose water to drink at $1 a glass.

The weather was hot and wonderful. Guys were taking their shirts off, and women were stripping to halters and bikini tops, or rolling their t-shirts up to expose bellys and belly buttons. We had plenty of wine. By the time we left Woodstock 4 days later we were trading wine for water, and nobody wanted our warm cheap red wine! We were giving it away to whoever wanted to take a drink from the jug. There was still red wine left when we returned from Woodstock.

We found a place to park along a ditch, and gathered our gear to hike the rest of the way. By the time we got to Woodstock site the cyclone fence by the gates was already torn away from the posts to the ground and masses of people were walking over it to get in. Cops were stationed helping people walk over the cyclone fence so they wouldn't get hurt. I never needed the Woodstock tickets I bought after all.

We hiked past the concert stage area, past the Rainbow Family encampment and lake to the second little hill before Needle Hill to pitch our tent... not too far from the portable toilets. The portable toilets were already running out of toilet paper and were filling up before the concerts started. There were no adequate shower or washing facilities and water eventually was running out.

Folks started using the lake to cool off and get clean. The lake got dirtier and fouler day by day, with feces floating in the water. By Friday the toilet paper was gone and the toilets were overflowing, and the pump trucks were filled up and no longer able to pump the toilets, and unable to drive out to empty loads.

Despite some nudity by some hippies, stories told of naked hippies openly having sex, I never witnessed anyone balling at Woodstock. The 5 guys I was with were all totally cool guys, all gentlemen decent guys, and we all looked out for each other as came and went from our tent as our central meeting point.

We hung out, checked out all the groovy sights and partied that night and the next day until the music started. Night, day, LSD, mescaline, pot, wine, and music melded together. We crashed when we got tired, and then we partied some more! We staked out our place to sit for the concert about a third of the way off the left side of the stage with blankets. We eventually lost that spot when we got up to walk around and had to move our blankets about 2/3 of the way from the center stage as we would go back and forth to our tent to crash. When the rains started and the blankets got soaked and muddy, we left them on the ground. We would go to our tent to get out of the rain and crash, but by the third day the ground was so wet and muddy that everything inside our tent was getting wet and muddy as well.

Five of us had taken the same acid on the third day. One of us did not get off, two had really bad trips with one person getting sick all over himself, and another person and myself had beautiful trips. Without having clean dry clothes to change into, things were getting pretty miserable and smelly.

The highlight for me of course was seeing Janis Joplin perform live again. She was incredible.

So much of the music at Woodstock was incredible. The general loving karma of the crowd was wonderful. To be surrounded with so many other accepting hippie freaks was empowering.... it was a time that hippies and long-haired peace-niks were often picked on, harassed, and generally considered social outcasts and drop outs of society. To be in an environment where everyone was accepted and got along to groove on music was remarkable, unforgettable, revolutionary, and historic for its time.  It was life-changing for me to see so many people together for the music and peace in harmony. 

For a few days it was like a self-contained city of half a million hippies from all over the country.

Running out of food, running out of money, cold wet and miserable, no place to go to the toilet or get clean, more rain reported in the forecast, and rumors of panic we left Woodstock early Sunday morning and were back in Westport by afternoon. The wet muddy tent and sleeping bags were all left behind. I brought the wet muddy blanket I had taken back with me. While driving away from Woodstock, we became more aware of just how far back the traffic and highway had been blocked off by the sheer volumes of hippies hoping to hear the music. My sister Tamara also returned on Sunday. We both were exhausted and became very ill for about a week with some flu virus and had to be treated with antibiotics.

I have scraped some of the Woodstock mud off the jeans I wore to Woodstock, which is in a little vial packed away in one of my boxes of memorablia somewhere.

SAY NO TO DRUGS.