Wednesday 16th September

Sorry for the interruption to the normal broadcast, put it down to internet connections, a faulty realtek internet adapter, and just a general what’s the use attitude after dealing or trying to deal with Forestry for the past week.

The good news is that we’re still in the Botanic Gardens, the bad news is that Forestry are really annoyed with us now. The article in the Solomon Star yesterday was a bit like poking a stick into a hornets nest, with pretty much the same result. They answered this morning with a ½ page of denials about everything, that they have never heard of Solo Enviro Beautification, that they only deal with Honiara Beautification Committee. There I was at work reading it, with all the letters and meeting minutes on my desk with SEB on the address line of the letters, names of the Forestry Head and Permanent Secretary as being present at every meeting we have held to discuss all of this, and they go public denying that they have ever had any knowledge of what we are doing.

Welcome to the bizarre world of Solomon Island Politics.

I’m keeping out of it now, Keithie can handle it from now on, I’m not in a position to be arguing with Government Ministers who can revoke my work permit if I get them upset.

I found out earlier this week that the couple who featured on the Woodstock Album cover many years ago have been found, alive and well. One of those odd little feel good stories you stumble across.

I’ve got a facebook page finally, it would probably work better for me if it loaded quicker, Telekom isn’t the best for stuff with a lot of applications. It can take an hour to load the home page, without going into any of the applications. Apologies to Maryanne and Marye if I take too long to get back to you on there. For anyone interested in adding me I’m under Warren Dennis, my usual internet paranoia won’t let me use too many real life details. I think I’ve been involved with www.scamwarners.com and www.419eater.com too long.

As an aside to that, I read a report this week that the IRS in America are using facebook to track people for unpaid IRS dues. Be careful what you post about, they have been tracking businesses, and self employed people using what they post in facebook about how well they are doing etc.

It’s always been a problem with any of the social network sites, you post about the huge new stereo/flat screen tv etc, and it gets ripped off if you have too many details allowing people to know where you are.

Our little truck is back on the road again, for how long I’m not sure. It went into the garage last week to have the battery and/or alternator checked and changed. They took the starter motor out and stripped it down, alternator the same, then finally checked the battery and found it was beyond saving and wouldn’t hold a charge anymore. It only took a week for them to figure that out.

The brakes still haven’t been fixed, the truck does a sharp nosedive and swings left if you hit the brakes too quickly, so driving is still an interesting experience. Add in the ever increasing potholes, other traffic, people walking across the road and driving here is more like a demolition derby than anything.

My Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop is becoming a bugbear. The sound card driver keeps dropping out every few weeks, it repairs easily enough, usually uninstall/reboot/add new hardware, but it is still annoying. Especially when the net connection card starts doing the same thing now.

If I manage to get online with it tomorrow I’ll check the bitch and moan Toshiba Help Site.

We’ve had a lot of supportive comments since yesterday from the article, which is good, even the Police Commissioner had a few words with me this morning at Rove Prison. I’m doing another garden there this week, well, the prisoners are, stage 2 of the landscaping. In 4 hours we had the ground dug over, 100 duranta planted as a border, 10 hibiscus and 25 bouganvillea planted, and 3 large holes dug for 3 x 10’ Carillia trees which the work crew bought down this afternoon and planted. Hopefully if we can keep the water going into the Carillia they will survive, the success rate for large ones isn’t too good here.


I know I should post more often in here, the last week has been a bit of a bummer, and I haven’t felt like turning this into a bitch/gripe and moan serial. Still, I can only write about what is, not what I’d like it to be. And the final use for this is any other VSA people coming here. Eric gave me a list of stuff similar to what I’ve covered in more detail before I left Wellington, so I didn’t come here totally unprepared for everything. I’ve just fleshed it out a bit more.

The people I work with are still really good, I’d employ all of them if I had a nursery or landscaping business in New Zealand or Australia. And the other people I meet and see on the street in the mornings walking to work are always ready with a smile and “Hello, Good Morning”. My street paper seller down by the Post office gives me credit, if he hasn’t enough change, or remembers if I give him $10 or $20 and pick up the paper for the next few days without any arguments. I’ve finally got the girl in the corner shop to smile, been hard work getting more than a look from her, but she’s remembered my name and I get a smile and hello now.

All I need now is a reliable person to go fishing with and it will be heaven.



Woodstock cover couple still together 40 years later
By TOM KEYSER
ALBANY TIMES UNION

Poto courtesy of Bobbi and Nick Ercoline
Bobbi and Nick Ercoline, both 60, of Pine Bush, N.Y., hold a photo of themselves at Woodstock 40 years ago. The photo graced the album cover of the Woodstock soundtrack and became an iconic image of the festival.
Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline were girlfriend and boyfriend, 20 years old. Bobbi lived in Pine Bush, N.Y., and worked at a bank. Nick lived in Middletown, N.Y., and worked two jobs while going to college.
They had heard so much on the radio about an approaching festival called Woodstock that "we just had to go," Bobbi says. They took back roads to Bethel, N.Y., parked their car when they couldn't drive farther and walked the final two miles.
They stayed only one night. They never saw the stage because they were so far away. But at some point, and they have no idea when, a photographer took their picture hugging, draped in a quilt, on a muddy hillside.

Rhino Records
Bobbi and Nick Ercoline appear on the soundtrack album that immortalized them at the legendary festival.
The photo appeared on the cover of the Woodstock soundtrack. And Bobbi and Nick became part of the legend.
"Woodstock was a sign of the times," says Bobbi, now Bobbi Ercoline. "So many things were churning around in our world at that time: civil rights, the Vietnam War, women's rights. It was our generation.
"I know some people say Woodstock changed their life. But I don't think it contributed to who I am or who Nick is. I think we became the people we would have become anyway."
An estimated half-million young people like Bobbi and Nick descended upon Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y., for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Aug. 15-18, 1969. A documentary film and soundtrack of the music lifted the event into legend.
And the legend -- or at least the merchandising of it -- continues. For the 40th anniversary, we're getting more than a dozen books; the Taking Woodstock film by Academy-Award-winning director Ang Lee; the original Woodstock movie, expanded and in high definition; and a six-CD box set featuring, for the first time, music from every performer at the festival.
The Heroes of Woodstock tour, featuring some of those performers, will visit the original site in Bethel four decades after the legend began.
'Things were pretty grim'
With 40 years of hindsight, does Woodstock hold any meaning today? Or is it merely a sign of times gone by?
"It was a time when things were pretty grim both in America and around the world," says Michael Lang, who produced the original festival as well as anniversary festivals in 1994 and 1999.
"We were in a horrible war in Vietnam. We were engaged in many, many civil rights struggles. There was this huge generation gap between the youth and their parents.
"And then along comes Woodstock, this miraculously peaceful gathering of half a million people. I think it just took everybody by surprise. It was this moment of hope and light in the midst of this very dark period."
Woodstock remains a badge of identity, says Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. Those who were there were truly part of the Sixties, he says.
A defining moment?
"Woodstock became the symbol, really late in that decade, of so many of the things that were swirling around," Thompson says. "It was one of the real last gasps of still a relatively innocent interpretation, and to some extent unambiguous interpretation, of that whole counterculture and youth movement.
"In '69 there still seemed to be a grip on some kind of revolutionary vision for the nation. In a very short period thereafter, we would lose the war in Vietnam. Watergate would kick in. All those things that kind of broke the spirit of that American identity, in very significant ways, were just around the corner. But we hadn't quite turned that corner.
"I don't know that we can say: 'Thanks to Woodstock, this happened, or that happened,' " Thompson says. "But that doesn't mean it wasn't important. …
"When the war ended, and the draft went away, there was the extent to which it -- I wouldn't want to use the word 'fizzled' -- but it certainly … lost a lot of that energy that was aimed at getting us out of the war."
Was it that generation's defining moment?
"First of all, when we're talking about that generation, we're really only talking about the white, middle-class part of the generation," says Joel Makower, a veteran writer and speaker who compiled the book Woodstock: The Oral History, by interviewing 75 organizers, musicians and participants. "That said, it was a defining moment. … nothing more or nothing less than a symbolic moment."
Rebellious kids no more
The love generation, the so-called Woodstock nation, matured and, for the most part, joined the culture it had rebelled against.
"Sure, everybody's older," Makower says, "and everybody has kids and grandkids and mortgages, and so, eventually, like most rebellious kids, you end up maturing and moderating your craziness and becoming part of the system by choice or necessity. But that doesn't detract from that particular moment."
And the moment remains as vivid to Bobbi and Nick as it does to anybody.
Married two years after Woodstock, they now have children ages 28 and 30. They live in Pine Bush.
They've always been community-minded, and would have been so whether or not they had gone to Woodstock, Bobbi says. She's a school nurse who started a food pantry out of her office. Nick inspects houses of poor people about to be renovated by the government.
"I think the further we get from the original event the more meaningful it becomes, the more we realize how phenomenal it was: all those people coming together with no violence, just peace, love and sharing," Bobbi says. "Forty years later it's just remarkable that it could have occurred."