The Woodstock Mystery in Atlas Shrugged

Frank O'Connor Painting

On page 510 of Atlas Shrugged  (of the paperback Signet edition), Dagney Taggart decides to withdraw to a family lodge in Woodstock, which Rand describes as being in the Berkshires.  I checked Google Maps and could not find a Woodstock, Massachusetts, although there is a Woodstock, Connecticut and a Woodstock, Vermont.  

Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor, was an artist and a member of the Art Students League from 1955 to 1966.  The Art Students League opened the Woodstock, New York School of Art in 1906 and discontinued its Woodstock summer program in 1979. According to the Woodstock School of Art's website, a local not-for-profit corporation, the Woodstock School of Art, had taken over the building complex in 1968.  I recall when the Art Students League was housed in the Woodstock School of Art building back around 1970.   Ironically, the building was built by one of the New Deal's make-work programs, the National Youth Administration.  It is currently listed in the national and New York registers of historic places.

My guess is that Rand knew about Woodstock, New York from her husband's involvement with the Art Students League.  I'm unclear as to why she decided to say that Woodstock was in the Berkshires. Often, New Yorkers bunch together provincial locales. Alternatively, she may not have wanted to give credit to one of the birthplaces of American communism.* 


*From Wikipedia:  

The Communist International, to which the UCPA and the CPA both pledged their allegiance, sought to end duplication, competition and hostility between the two communist parties and insisted on a merger into a single organization. That was eventually effected in May 1921 at a secret gathering held at the Overlook Mountain House hotel, near Woodstock, New York. The resulting unified group was also known as the Communist Party of America, which morphed into the Workers Party of America (December 1921) and changed its name in 1925 to Workers (Communist) Party and to Communist Party USA in 1929.

Pennsylvania Town Rejects Agenda 21

Lynne Teger forwarded a February Lebanon Daily News (LDN) article about West Cornwall, Pennsylvania's rejection of Agenda 21.  West Cornwall is in southeastern Pennsylvania's Lebanon County. LDN says that the town passed a resolution opposing Agenda 21 and then withdrew from the state's regional plan.  As the article points out, Agenda 21 is a UN-based plan to globalize the world economy and redistribute wealth from more to less economically productive nations' citizens.  It aims to eliminate property rights by imposing taxes that one-percent property owners can easily afford but that those with constrained resources cannot. The United States signed it under George H. W. Bush, and the nation has funded its implementation ever since through the President's Council on Sustainability and, more recently, through a range of government agencies.

In the Empire State, Andrew Cuomo, emperor of economic destruction, has funded 10 regional councils or soviets to implement Agenda 21-based plans.  The regional soviets are Emperor Andrew's first goose-step toward attacking local democracy.  Given the abject failure of the emperor's economic policies, it stands to reason that  His Majesty Il Duce now pursues fascistic environmental policies.  

One of the tactics that proponents of Agenda 21 use is to forestall intelligent conversation by claiming that Agenda 21 does not exist or that it is a "tin foil hat" conspiracy theory.  Such proponents usually have not read the document and have not thought through the implications of global redistribution of wealth and soviet government.

Agenda 21 is no more a conspiracy theory than is the World Trade Organization, NATO, or the UN itself; you can read it here.   Under town plans like the Woodstock, Saugerties, and Olive, New York comprehensive plans, people who live in rural or suburban areas with constrained cash flows or limited means will be the first to see their lifestyles curtailed.  In exchange for escalating taxes and ever-increasing environmental regulation and control, the towns will build cramped urban housing in mixed-use areas. 

Woodstock versus Ron Paul

My wife and I went for a walk in Woodstock, NY this afternoon.  I asked one of the local psychics whom she supports---Romney or Obama.  She answered that she does not support anyone because the elections are rigged by "men in black suits," and she was talking figuratively about the black suits.  When I returned home I noticed the above on Facebook. Maybe there's hope. Thanks to Sara Reckelhof Leaks, Frank Stephenson and artist Tim Cavanaugh.

The Arrest of Dr. Longmore

The Woodstock Times carries an article this week that says that Dr. Wayne Longmore has been arrested for prescribing excessive amounts of hydrocodone, a controlled substance.  The article suggests that patients were re-selling controlled substances that they bought with Dr. Longmore's prescriptions and that the doctor has been under investigation for two years. Woodstock, New York is a century-old arts- and-music colony famous for the Woodstock concert and many of its residents. Dr. Longmore has treated me; I think highly of his practice.

His arrest renewed my interest in the drug laws.  It is possible to live in a country and not believe in its laws or its values.  I have written the following letter to The Woodstock Times:

Paul Smart’s “Doctor Derailed” (March 29) upset me in four ways.  First, Dr. Longmore is a fine physician--one of the finest who has treated me.  Second, a reasonably priced practice like Dr. Longmore’s, which does not rely on insurance, contributes to the community.  Its closing is a loss. Third, his federal persecutors  contribute nothing to  the public good on any level.  They do not heal, they do not make the community safe, and they do not protect the community’s morals.  Rather, the drug enforcement industry is a cancer on the common weal and the public purse.  Fourth, those of us who believe in liberty are reminded of America’s totalitarian drug laws.  A nation that imprisons men like Dr. Longmore is not free.  Thoreau said: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”  Today, anyone who fills in a bubble for a candidate--Democratic, Republican, or other--who supports America’s drug laws bears responsibility for the FBI’s and the federal government’s criminal violence toward Dr. Longmore. 

Update: Paul Smart's article in the April 5 Woodstock Times about Dr. Longmore's arrest quotes the above letter. 

Subaru Psychology

 Motor Trends named the Subaru Forester 2009 Sport Utility of the Year (see bottom video below).  Because of its four wheel drive and reasonable price ($31,000 fully loaded) the Forester is a good choice for a second car in the Catskills, where winding mountain roads and snowy winters are the norm.  For instance, my 1991 Ford Probe was unable to go up Overlook Mountain back in the winter of '98 (it couldn't get traction about half way up) and my Lexus went into anti-skid mode going downhill on the curvy Boiceville end of Piney Point Road last winter.  Plus, the Forester's ample rear cargo room is ideal for hauling trash, lawn products from the hardware store and other artifacts of rural life.

But there is a problem:  the Subaru "love" commercials.  A friend in Olivebridge, which is Subaru country (as is my neighboring West Shokan) points out that mainly left wingers, diesel dykes, people with bumper stickers that read "Women's Writers' Conference", transvestites in tu tus and hippies drive Subarus.  My friend takes issue with my buying a Subaru seeing that I view Republicans as a big government party and consider Democrats the party of Karl Marx.  See the two commercials below.  Clearly,  the Subaru love theme is problematic.  The Subaru is a car for vegetarians, not high cholesterol types like me.

After my friend made this observation I began checking out Subaru drivers. They are passive-aggressive.  Left (never right) turns in busy intersections; speeding up when you try to pass them on the NYS Thruway; erratic stops in the Village of Woodstock.  Passive-aggressive driving is characteristic of leftists, who are tolerant of all values and will lynch you if you disagree. Equally, left-wingers are plain bad drivers as any drive through Woodstock will confirm. The recognition that Subaru drivers are passive aggressive supports my friend's claim that they are tu tu clad granola crunchers as well.


But this argument leads me to the best reason to buy a Subaru. It is the perfect undercover vehicle. I can go to Woodstock, park in the lot behind the Houst hardware store, load up on rock salt, and no one will break my window.  Or, I can attend an Obama rally and everyone will think I'm really a supporter. Or visit the farmer's market in Woodstock. Or the next Arlo Guthrie concert in Bel Ayre.  An undercover vehicle has many uses around here.  Contrast that with a red Porsche.

The Subaru Forester is the perfect undercover car. 

Affirmative Action in the Village of Woodstock*

I just wrote the following letter to Brian Hollander, Editor of the Woodstock Times.

Dear Editor:

In response to allegations of racism in the local Tea Parties, I did an informal survey of the Town of Woodstock's representation of various minorities.  I counted the number of African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians and South Americans entering and leaving seven local stores.  My finding is that the proportion of minorities who live in the Town of Woodstock is not statistically different from the proportion of minorities in the local Tea Parties. It is, however, significantly lower than the proportion of minorities living in the State of New York and in Ulster County.  A fair assessment is that the Town of Woodstock is racist.

More than the Tea Parties, which do not use expensive house prices to exclude minority group members, Woodstock is a racist Town.  Fewer than five percent of the inhabitants are African American, Latin American, Native American or Asian.

My affirmative action plan is straightforward. The Town of Woodstock needs to mandate that all homes to be sold within its borders must be sold to minority group members until such point that the minority group members are proportionately represented.  This will force prices of many Woodstock homes to fall since such an ordinance would restrict demand.  However, in the name of equity, equality, affirmative action, and to redress the harm that the people of Woodstock have done to under-represented ethnic and racial groups, homeowners should be grateful for the opportunity to sell to them, even at a loss, to redress social wrongs that the people of Woodstock have perpetrated.   Anyone who does not support this proposal is a greedy and selfish racist.

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert


*Woodstock, NY is located about 100 miles from New York City.  It is famous for the Woodstock concert of 1969 (although the actual concert took place about 30 miles away); for artists' and musicians' colonies that go back for over 100 years; and as a weekend home center for Upper West Side "liberals."

American Breakfast Tea

Paul Smart, editor of the Olive Press and Phoenicia Times published an article about Glenda McGee's, Chris Johansen's and my forming the Woodstock-Shandaken-Olive Tea Party in the Woodstock Times this week. The article begins:

"We're drinking lattes and regular bold coffees in the back of the Kingston Starbucks, talking about the starting up of a new Olive/Shandaken/Woodstock offshoot of the year-old Kingston Tea Party group that meets monthly at the Ulster Town Hall. Mitchell Langbert and Glenda McGee are noting how they wished their friend Chris Johansen had been able to make it, since he was the one working the organizational details involving who'd be joining, when and where meetings would be occurring, and how the new local Tea Party effort would operate."


Read the whole article here.

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock

I just saw Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock at the Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock, NY. The concert, as the movie makes clear, was not in Woodstock but rather in White Lake, which is about 30 miles away. In real life Michael Lang, the then-young promoter of the Woodstock concert and often on horseback in the film, works out once in a while at the same gym I do, in the Emerson Inn and Spa. The film notes that its protagonist, Elliot Teichberg (aka Elliot Tiber), and Lang both grew up in Brooklyn not very far from my employer, Brooklyn College. I live about midway between Woodstock and where the concert actually was. During the summer of 1969 Jimi Hendrix lived about 4 miles away in Boiceville. He must have driven past my house, which was a small cabin then, when he drove to White Lake. I spent that summer as a janitor in a summer camp near Woodstock. I was only 15 years old and did not have the guts to ditch out and go to the concert. Even then I disliked crowds.

Taking Woodstock is a good movie. Ang Lee's direction, as usual, is crisp and sensitive. James Schamus's and Tiber's writing is excellent. All of the acting is very good. Demetri Martin as Elliot Teichberg is excellent as is Henry Goodman as Jake Teichberg. Imelda Staunton as Sonia Teichberg steals the show. She is great.

The film handles Teichberg's inner conflict about his homosexuality tastefully. But I thought that, like other recent movies about the Catskills such as Wendigo, it is unfair to the "locals". As the movie makes clear, there are at least two cultures in the Catskills. First, descendants of Dutch and Yankee settlers from the 18th and 19th centuries (for the most part the Catskills were settled almost as late as the American west because of a lengthy conflict and law suit about title to the Hardenburg patent, because the Livingstons' attempt to create a neo-feudal system by settling Scotch-Irish tenant farmers who were to sign three-generation leases failed, and because the Catskills are rocky, terrible farmland and have no natural resources except for their physical beauty, streams, wood and fish). Second, more recent immigrants from New York City and around the country.

An excellent book on Woodstock is the late Alf Evers' Woodstock: History of an American Town and his equally excellent Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock. The Catskills still has a remnant of true American individualism and there has always been an anti-establishment streak around here ever since the farmers used to dress as Indians and tar and feather the Livingstons' rent collectors. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and Hervey White selected Woodstock for an artists' colony in 1902 because of the area's physical beauty. Within a few years there was a division between the musicians, who moved to Maverick Road and the artists who remained at the original artists' colony on Byrdcliffe that is still there, where some of the earliest artists' lofts still exist. Of course, Woodstock is not White Lake, and the various cultures in Woodstock, the old artist culture which is still around, the weekenders, and descendants of the original townspeople have gotten along reasonably well, despite occasional resentments, and on occasion have married. The film depicts the people of White Lake as quick to exhibit prejudice, and although bigotry exists everywhere, I do not think that is a fair depiction of the Catskills culture, which I have loved for most of my life.

Clintons to Move to Woodstock, NY?

Last August Bill and Hillary Clinton interrupted my usual workout at the exclusive Emerson Resort and Spa in Mount Pleasant, NY, about 15 miles from Woodstock and about 10 miles from my house. Actually, I took President Clinton by surprise when he opened the door to the gym. He sent a secret service agent to scope out the gym instead. On March 13, the Kingston Freeman wrote:

Speculation has been growing around Ulster County in recent weeks that former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, are buying a home in the community known for its arts and history. The former first couple, whose home is in Westchester County, seems to be enamored of the area — evidenced by multiple visits here — but whether they plan to become local residents is anything but certain...An employee in the Woodstock town assessor’s office said she had heard talk on the street about the Clintons buying a house here but had not seen any deed to prove it....The Woodstock town supervisor’s office also said it had no information, nor did the public relations director at the Emerson Resort & Spa in Mount Tremper, where the Clintons have stayed on two occasions, most recently in December.

Casey Seiler of the Albany Times Union adds:

The Daily Freeman has a piece today about speculation that the Clintons are close to purchasing a house in or around Woodstock. No word from spokesmen at the Clinton Global Initiative or the State Department.

Could anything be more perfect that having America’s echt Boomer power couple — who named their daughter after a Joni Mitchell song, for heaven’s sake — ending their peripatetic late-midlife careers and retiring to the town that gave their generation its pop-cultural watershed moment, or at least the name for it?

Our question for today: Would the Clintons be good, bad or indifferent for the town?

Maybe the Bilderburg Group will start having its meetings at the Emerson. That should be good for the local economy but not so good otherwise! Maybe the Catskills will be become the headquarters of the New World Order...Nah...

'Tis a Small Town, But There Are Those Who Love It--Woodstock, NY 1/6/09

To quote a t-shirt of twenty years ago: "the concert wasn't here. It was in White Lake, 30 miles away!" I took these while I was doing the laundry.

West Shokan, New York 1-4-2009

Emerson Inn and Spa, Mount Pleasant, New York.

Democrats Jam Republican Convention Radio Broadcast

Not really, but I was driving on Route 28 near Woodstock, NY and the broadcast of Mike Huckabee's and Governor Linda Lingle's speeches kept getting interrupted by Grateful Dead music. I'm betting Maurice Hinchey and the animal rights activists in the Woodstock Democratic party were copying the Soviet Communist Party when they used to jam Radio Free Europe.

Jobs for Ulster County

Lance Matteson is president of the Ulster County Development Corp. and his job is to find Ulster County jobs. Recently, County Legislature Minority Leader Glen Noonan called Matteson’s job oxymoronic. But sustainable economic development is achievable. To create jobs, Ulster County needs to break bad habits. Like New York State as a whole, too much of Ulster County’s jobs strategy has depended on large-scale government funding. These include the $117 million Woodland Pond development in New Paltz, the $1 million Kings Highway project and the $8 million Solar Energy Consortium that depends on federal and state funding. These are worthy projects. But a better and more sustainable approach would be a micro-jobs strategy. The entrepreneurial spirit of the County’s hard working and creative citizens could be supported through encouraging loans and tax breaks to entrepreneurial business start ups rather than to big developers.

Capitalizing on Ulster County’s cultural and natural treasures requires creativity that builds on institutional and human capital. Museums, resorts and support for the arts are some of the directions a jobs strategy might take that amplify the County’s strengths. We can all imagine arts centers, Catskill museums and new IBMs reappearing in Kingston. But big ideas are not enough. In corporate America, for every product idea that succeeds, seven fail. Why should Ulster County be different? Many small ideas offer a better and more sustainable strategy than a few big ones rigidly controlled. Why focus on home run sluggers when Ulster County can encourage many base hitters?

Of all of Ulster County’s wonderful assets, its most important is its hardworking, entrepreneurial and imaginative citizenry. The best jobs strategy would not only amplify their skills and human capital, but would build on their imagination through a technique known as micro finance. Micro finance is a way to rebalance the economy’s bias toward big developers, large corporations and big banks back to individuals. It is the individual that made America great, not big business. What we remember as the biggest firms, Standard Oil (Exxon), McDonald’s and Dell Computer, started as ideas that were funded through personal saving. Exxon was founded by John D. Rockefeller, who in three years as an accounting clerk was able to save one year’s salary and bought his first store in Cleveland. McDonald’s was started by the McDonald brothers who closed their hot dog stand to open the first scientific-management designed restaurant. Dell Computer was started by a college student named Michael Dell. But in the past six decades New York has sacrificed its entrepreneurial spirit to big developers and state eminent domain schemes. High taxes discourage private citizens from saving the capital they need. And the capital is transferred to big firms like Bear Stearns that often squander it. Howard Schultz, born in Brooklyn, moved to Seattle to make Starbucks a great firm.

For too long New York State has relied on government solutions to economic problems. The result has been a consistent pattern of economic decline. The reliance on big government development comes from the State’s early and ambitious adoption of the Progressive ideas of Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith and Robert Moses. More than other states, New York has relied on private use eminent domain, high taxes and subsidies to big business. The Progressive model has failed.

New York State’s population has grown by a 30 percent over the past 40 years and since the 1970s much of that growth is due to immigration. In contrast, the US population has doubled, a growth rate three times that of New York’s. In the post-World War II period, New York has lead the nation in both the numbers of people leaving the state and in the number of private use eminent domain actions taken. Upstate New York has become a ghost land of deserted factories and impoverished but hard working citizens while New York has consistently ranked among the top three states in taxation.

The State has relied on a flawed model of urban renewal and economic development that involves public subsidies to large projects. The Progressive model that Al Smith and Robert Moses pioneered assumed that the chief problem confronting society was to replace individual initiative with government intervention. New York advocated higher taxes, greater degrees of regulation and greater government involvement in the economy.

Among the most important of the policies replacing individual initiative with large institutions have been those that inhibit individual capital formation, savings, by private individuals. But private savings is how most of the nation’s important businesses, from Standard Oil to Dell Computer, have been formed. A jobs formation strategy ought to focus on re-orienting banks and public policies away from taxation and toward financing entrepreneurial start ups. This would involve encouraging banks and other lenders to finance and support start ups within Ulster County.

Economic growth comes not from attracting large businesses into Ulster County, but from creating conditions whereby Ulster County’s entrepreneurial, academic, artistic and idealistic spirit can best express itself. This can be done by re-balancing access to credit from big developers to small business and start-up entrepreneurs.
Microfinance is the idea that financial institutions can be encouraged, supported or created to provide financial services to entrepreneurs that enhance their ability to start businesses. The recent fiasco in the national credit market suggests that financial insitutions have lacked competence in assessing the best credit risks. They have tended to exclude small borrowers and taken reckless gambles that have ended up requiring public support. The scorning of entrepreneurial start ups by the nation’s financial institutions has caused the inefficient allocation of financing away from entrepreneurs toward real estate, big box retail and hedge funds.

A meaningful jobs strategy would start with Ulster County’s development of a loan guarantee program, much like student loans, whereby banks would be encouraged to lend to entrepreneurs along with arrangement for tax abatements and refunds for individuals who start businesses.