I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.
j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.
Category: Uncategorised
It is not surprising the 50th anniversary of Woodstock was cancelled late last week. The venue, and the line-up of performers, had changed several times and there seemed to be little enthusiasm over the event.
Woodstock 50 was to be a celebration of the original event held August 15-18, 1969 on farmland in upstate New York. Billed as An Aquarian Exposition; 3 Days of Peace & Music, an audience of more than 400,000 converged on the site and took in acts like Santana, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and Jimi Hendrix.
It was a pivotal moment in world history — less than a month after the U.S put a man on the Moon — that forged a new attitude among a generation seeking change.
But the world has changed too much to allow an event like that to ever happen again.
Financial backers pulled out of Woodstock 50. Among other things, I suspect nobody was willing to accept the liability for that many people attending a single event.
In light of the epidemic of mass shootings over the past few years, cancelling Woodstock 50 was the right thing to. It doesn’t take much to remember the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. committed by an individual happened at a music festival. On October 1, 2017, a heavily-armed lone shooter killed 58 people, and wounded more than 400, in Las Vegas.
A mass shooting tales place every single day in the U.S.; you cannot even go to WalMart for groceries without fear of being gunned down. Really, who would want to take a chance on going to a multi-day concert with hundreds of thousands of people?
In the United States of America this year, there have been more mass shootings than days. There were 323 mass shootings in 2018, and 343 in 2017. There is a debate between sources as to whether a “mass shooting” constitutes 3 or more, or 4 or more, people shot and killed in one incident. The statistics are alarming.
Mass shootings are an American crisis. The country leads the developed world in gun violence, and no other nation has these types of shootings to this degree.
As much as America could use some sort of celebration of peace and love, it obviously doesn’t deserve it. There is too much violence and political posturing, and the top-down hatred spills out across gender, race and party lines.
When will the president face the music?
© 2019 j.g. lewis
