It's too late baby

I know it’s not really a ton of money, but the news from upstate New York this week was that the $100 million Woodstock museum was now open.

Woodstock, for those not around in 1969, was a rock ‘n’ roll music festival that drew perhaps the best of rock talent in the world and a whole lot more people than festival promoters expected-about 400,000 — and ended up being something like 50 Pine Knob concerts on steroids, both figuratively and, I suppose, maybe, literally.

It was, as I recall, not what it was billed: three days of peace and music. There was a lot of great music, and people got along well enough. I didn’t see one fight, and with the rain and the mud and the long lines to use the port-a-johns and buy food, you could have expected poorer behavior, but peace?

But let’s get back to that $100 million - again not a lot of money if you place it in perspective. Even if we had it locally it would only cover the operating $42.7 million budget of the Davison Schools for a little more than two years.

So given that it’s aimed at a slightly larger audience, maybe $100 million is just a drop in the bucket.

Now I can understand a rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame - they’ve got one of them already in Cleveland. I stopped by for a couple of hours once on the way to somewhere else. Nice place. And I love rock ‘n’ roll.

But a museum focused on a three-day fluke?

They’ve already done the movie. Saw it. Looked hard, but didn’t see myself. Other documentaries and books have been offered. Looked at some, skipped others.

Nostalgia run amok in the hands of someone with money (fortunately the museum was privately financed) is still nostalgia run amok.

Like most of my generation who survived the ‘60s quite well, thank you, I don’t think we need to be told how we felt or what we thought nearly 40 years ago.

And if there was a message or deeper meaning to be passed on from Woodstock, it’s way too late to suddenly start talking about it now.