Fall ’21 Winter ’22 COVID

Fall ’21 Winter ’22 COVID

The disease continued to ravage everywhere, though there seemed to be zones of relatively less contagion where most people had chosen to get the vaccination.  In places where people continued to refuse or at least hesitate to get the effective vaccination choices, hospitals were overwhelmed.

October 1, 2021:  Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said their results (still not peer-reviewed) demonstrate their novel drug molnupiravir cut in half the rate of hospitalization and death in persons with mild to moderate disease. If authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, the pill would become the first oral medicine to fight viral infection for Covid-19. [CNN article]

3,898,466 COVID Deaths Worldwide

October 2, 2021: 235,399,322 cases; 4,810,952 deaths worldwide

719,674 COVID Deaths USA

October 2, 2021: 44,491,504 cases; 719,674 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

October 2, 2021: 64.6% at least once; 66.9 % both

US COVID Decline

October 11, 2021: the number of Covid-19 cases in the US continued to fall infections and hospitalizations declined. The average rate of daily new cases has dropped below 100,000, to 93,814 as of October 10, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he would like to see new daily cases well below 10,000, but the decline was a start. “Hopefully it’s going to continue to go in that trajectory downward,” he said. [CNN article]

Merck/Molnupiravir

October 11, 2021: Merck said that it had submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize what would be the first antiviral pill to treat Covid.

An approval for the drug, molnupiravir, would be a milestone in the fight against the coronavirus, experts said, because a convenient, relatively inexpensive treatment could reach many more high-risk people sick with Covid than the cumbersome antibody treatments currently being used. [NYT article]

4,913,952 COVID Deaths Worldwide

October 17, 2021: 241,456,533 cases; 4,913,952 deaths worldwide

744,546 COVID Deaths USA

October 17, 2021: 45,792,532 cases; 744,546 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

October 17, 2021: 65.9% at least once; 68.4 % fully

Cold Weather Effect

October 18, 2021: the NY Times reported that even as the Delta-variant-driven virus wave was receding in much of the United States, many counties across the country’s northernmost regions were experiencing rising cases as colder weather arrived.

The top five states in new daily cases per capita were led by Alaska, which was logging the highest daily average: 125 cases per 100,000 people, according to a New York Times database. The next four states, with at least 67 cases per 100,000 people, were MontanaWyomingNorth Dakota and Idaho.

Cases were at least trending downward or holding steady in those states. The five states with the fastest rising caseloads were Vermont, Colorado, New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota, and the two counties with the most cases per capita in Vermont and New Hampshire were on the Canadian border.

US Falls Behind

October 24, 2021: the NY Times reported that the United States was one of the first countries to begin vaccinating its population, and by summer 2021, was leading most nations in getting shots in arms, with 67 percent of the population receiving at least one shot by July 4, 2021.

By October 2021, the United States,  despite having a surplus of doses, had fully vaccinated only 57 percent of its population, according to a New York Time tracker. Resistance remained high among some demographic groups and within some specific work force sectors, including police officers and firefighters.

That left the United States lagging behind dozens of nations in the pursuit of full vaccination. Although, with a population of about 330 million, it ranks third in the sheer number of administered doses, more than 411 million, after China’s more than 2.2 billion doses and India’s more than one billion.

Cautious Optimism in US

October 27, 2021: rates of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths had sunk significantly in the US since a wave driven by the highly contagious Delta variant peaked in September.

But with cases still relatively high, many children still ineligible to be vaccinated, and colder weather coming, leading health experts  said it was not time to feel comfortable about the country’s position.
“We are now heading in the right direction … but with cases still high, we must remain vigilant heading into the colder, drier winter months,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a White House coronavirus briefing. [CNN article]

4,995,959 COVID Deaths Worldwide

October 28, 2021: 246,251,235 cases; 4,995,959 deaths worldwide

744,546 COVID Deaths USA

October 28, 2021: 46,685,145 cases; 763,784 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

October 28, 2021: 66.5% at least once; 69.1 % fully

Available, But Reluctant

October 29, 2021: the Food and Drug Administration authorization a Covid-19 vaccine for ages 5 to 11 which made 28 million unvaccinated children in the United States suddenly eligible for the shot and offered the country an opportunity to make big inroads in its efforts to achieve broad immunity against the coronavirus, but even many parents who were themselves vaccinated and approved the shot for their teenagers were churning over whether to give consent for their younger children, questioning if the risk of the unknowns of a brand-new vaccine was worth it when most coronavirus cases in youngsters are mild.

In announcing its authorization of a lower-dose shot made by Pfizer and BioNTech for the age group, the F.D.A. said clinical trial data showed the shot was safe and prompted strong immune responses in children. The most common side effects were fatigue, fever and headache. [NYT article]

5,000,000 Deaths

November 1, 2021: the number of people who have died from Covid-19 around the world has surpassed five million, according to data held by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center.

JHU’s global tally of deaths reached5,000,425 at 4:50 a.m. ET on Monday 1 November. It reported that 197,116 people had died of Covid-19 worldwide in the past 28 days. The number of coronavirus cases officially reported globally stands at 246.7 millionsince it was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Last Thursday (October 28), the World Health Organization (WHO) warned global cases and deaths were increasing for the first time in two months. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this was driven by ongoing increases in Europe.
“It’s another reminder that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over,” Tedros said , noting that the increases in Europe outweighed decreases elsewhere.
“The pandemic persists in large part because inequitable access to tools persists,” he said, adding that 80 times more tests and 30 times more vaccines have been administered in high-income countries than low-income countries. [CNN article]

Pfizer/Paxlovid

November 5, 2021: Pfizer announced  that its pill to treat Covid-19 had been found in a key clinical trial to be highly effective at preventing severe illness among at-risk people who received the drug soon after they exhibited symptoms.

The antiviral pill was the second of its kind to demonstrate efficacy against Covid. It appeared to be more effective than a similar offering from Merck, which was awaiting federal authorization.

Pfizer’s pill, which would be sold under the brand name Paxlovid, cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89 percent when given within three days of the start of symptoms. [NYT article]

5,064,597 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 7, 2021: 250,601,987 cases; 5,064,597 deaths worldwide

775,218 COVID Deaths USA

November 7, 2021: 47,336,577 cases; 775,218 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

November 7, 2021: 66.9% at least once; 69.8 % fully

Travel Restrictions

November 8, 2021: the U.S. lifted restrictions  on travel from a long list of countries including Mexico, Canada and most of Europe, allowing tourists to make long-delayed trips and family members to reconnect with loved ones after more than a year and a half apart because of the pandemic.

Starting on this date, the U.S.  began accepting fully vaccinated travelers at airports and land borders, doing away with a COVID-19 restriction that dated back to the Trump administration. The new rules allowed air travel from previously restricted countries as long as the traveler had proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test. Land travel from Mexico and Canada would require proof of vaccination but no test. [NPR story]

Pfizer/Molnupiravir

November 16, 2021: Pfizer announced a deal to allow its promising Covid-19 treatment to be made and sold inexpensively in 95 poorer nations that are home to more than half of the world’s population.

Under the agreement through Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that researches access to medical products, Pfizer would grant a royalty-free license for the pill to the Medicines Patent Pool, a nonprofit backed by the United Nations, in a deal that will allow manufacturers to take out a sublicense. They will receive Pfizer’s formula for the drug, and be able to sell it for use in 95 developing countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, once regulators authorize the drug in those places. The organization reached a similar deal with Merck for its Covid antiviral pill, molnupiravir, to be made and sold inexpensively in 105 poorer countries.

5,121,897 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 16, 2021: 254,570,447 cases; 5,121,897 deaths worldwide

784,779 COVID Deaths USA

November 16, 2021: 48,072,898 cases; 784,779 deaths in the US

70.5%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

November 16, 2021: 68.3% at least once; 70.5 % fully (18+)

Thanksgiving Spike

Covid-19 cases continued to rise across the United State and millions of Americans remained unvaccinated.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the daily case rate in the United States was about half of what it was at this time last year, . But the current pace — about 92,000 new Covid-19 cases each day — was up 16% from just a week ago.
Cases had dropped off quickly at the tail end of the summer surge, but had started to climb again in November and were now back to levels last seen in August.
Nearly a third of new cases were in Midwestern states, with Michigan and Minnesota reporting more cases per capita than any other states. But the trend was nationwide; all but a dozen states saw cases rose over the past week, JHU data showed. [CNN article]

Omicron

November 26, 2021: scientific experts at the World Health Organization warned that a new coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa was a “variant of concern,” the most serious category the agency uses for such tracking.

Such a designation is reserved for dangerous variants that may spread quickly, cause severe disease or decrease the effectiveness of vaccines or treatments. The last coronavirus variant to receive this label was Delta, which took off this summer and now accounts for virtually all Covid cases in the United States.

The W.H.O. said the new version, named Omicron, carries a number of genetic mutations that may allow it to spread quickly, perhaps even among the vaccinated. [NYT article]

5,294,744 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 8, 2021: 268,078,671 cases; 5,294,744 deaths worldwide

813,904 COVID Deaths USA

December 8, 2021: 50,422,410 cases; 813,904 deaths in the US

71.2%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

December 8, 2021: 70.4% at least once; 71.2 % fully (18+)

National Guard Called Up

December 8, 2021: the governors of Maine and New York deployed the National Guard in response to dangerously low capacity at statewide medical facilities due to the pandemic.

The New York National Guard announced that it had deployed 120 medics and medical technicians to a dozen long-term care facilities statewide. The deployment came at the behest of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who issued the order last week in response to staffing shortages. [CNN article]

1/100 Elderly

December 13, 2021: the New York Times reported that as the coronavirus pandemic approached the end of a second year, the United States stands on the cusp of surpassing 800,000 deaths from the virus, and no group had suffered more than older Americans. All along, older people had been known to be more vulnerable, but the scale of loss was only now coming into full view.

Seventy-five percent of people who had died of the virus in the United States — or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far — had been 65 or older. One in 100 older Americans had died from the virus.

For people younger than 65, that ratio was closer to 1 in 1,400.

Omicron/Cautious Optimism

December 22, 2021: two new British studies provided some early hints that the omicron variant of the coronavirus might be milder than the delta version.

Scientists stressed that even if the findings of these early studies held up, any reductions in severity need to be weighed against the fact omicron spreads much faster than delta and was more able to evade vaccines. Sheer numbers of infections could still overwhelm hospitals.

The new studies seemed to bolster earlier research that suggested omicron might not be as harmful as the delta variant, said Manuel Ascano Jr., a Vanderbilt University biochemist who studies viruses.

Cautious optimism is perhaps the best way to look at this,” he said.  [AP article]

5,393,397 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 22, 2021: 277,502,769 cases; 5,393,397 deaths worldwide

813,904 COVID Deaths USA

December 22, 2021: 52,510,978 cases; 833,029 deaths in the US

72.6%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

December 22, 2021: 72.6% at least once; 72.6 % fully (18+)

December 7, 2021: as daily coronavirus cases in the United States soared to near record levels, federal health officials shortened by half the recommended isolation period for many infected Americans, hoping to minimize rising disruptions to the economy and everyday life.

Virus-related staff shortages had upended holiday travel, ledd to the cancellation of thousands of flights, and threatened industries as diverse as health care, restaurants and retail. Yet health experts warned the country is only in the early stages of a fast-moving surge.

“The Omicron variant is spreading quickly and has the potential to impact all facets of our society,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency had previously recommended that infected patients isolate for 10 days from when they were tested for the virus, butit slashed that period to five days for those without symptoms, or those without fevers whose other symptoms were resolving. [NYT article]

Record Number of US Cases

December 28, 2021: the U.S. record for daily coronavirus cases was broken, as two highly contagious variants — Delta and Omicron —  converged to disrupt holiday travel and gatherings, deplete hospital staffs and plunged the United States into another long winter.

As a third year of the pandemic loomed, the seven-day average of U.S. cases topped 267,000 , according to a New York Times database. The milestone was marked after a year that had whipsawed Americans from a relaxation of rules in the spring to a Delta-driven summer wave to another surge that accelerated with astonishing speed as Omicron emerged after Thanksgiving. [NYT article]

Free Home Testing

January 10, 2022: under a new policy announced by the White House, individuals covered by a health insurance plan who purchase an over-the-counter COVID-19 diagnostic test that has been authorized, cleared or approved by the Food and Drug Administration will be able to have those test costs covered by their insurance beginning this Saturday.

Insurance companies and health plans would be required to cover eight free over-the-counter at-home tests per covered individual per month, according to White House officials. For instance, a family of four all on the same plan would be able to get up to 32 of these tests covered by their health plan per month.

“We are requiring insurers and group health plans to make tests free for millions of Americans. This is all part of our overall strategy to ramp-up access to easy-to-use, at-home tests at no cost,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra stated in a news release. [NPR article]

5,538,904 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 13, 2022: 320,721,656 cases; 5,538,904 deaths worldwide

813,904 COVID Deaths USA

January 13, 2022: 65,236,475 cases; 869,212 deaths in the US

73.4%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

January 13, 2022: 74.6% at least once; 73.4 % fully (18+)

ICUs Approach Capacity

January 14, 2022: the New York Times reported that the extremely contagious Omicron variant was fueling an enormous coronavirus wave that  pushed hospitals close to their capacity limits in about two dozen states, according to data posted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Figures showed that at least 80 percent of staffed hospital beds were occupied in 24 states on January 14, including Georgia, Maryland and Massachusetts.

More troubling, the data showed that in 18 states and Washington, D.C., at least 85 percent of beds in adult intensive care units were full, with the most acute scarcity of beds in Alabama, Missouri, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Texas.

The pressure on I.C.U. capacity came as the Omicron variant had touched off a nearly vertical rise in infections and hospitalizations. The country as a whole and 26 states had reported more coronavirus cases in the past week than in any other seven-day period.

In that time, an average of more than 803,000 coronavirus cases had been reported each day in the United States, an increase of 133 percent from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database, and 25 states and territories had reported their highest weekly caseloads yet. Deaths were up 53 percent to an average of roughly 1,871 a day.

Endemic vs Pandemic

January 20, 2022: some European countries such as Spain wre making tentative plans for when they might start treating COVID-19 as an “endemic” disease, but the World Health Organization and other officials warned that the world was nowhere close to declaring the pandemic over.

An AP article explained that diseases were endemic when they occured regularly in certain areas according to established patterns, while a pandemic referred to a global outbreak that caused unpredictable waves of illness.

The World Health Organization had said that redefining the coronavirus as an endemic disease was still “a ways off,” according to Catherine Smallwood, an infectious diseases expert in the agency’s European headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. “We still have a huge amount of uncertainty and a virus that is evolving quickly.”

School Masks Optional

February 9, 2022: Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced that the State would drop its statewide school mask mandate when it expired on Feb. 28. The state joined a growing list of liberal-leaning states that moved away from mask requirements.

The moves heralded a new phase of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, where regions that had taken a cautious approach for two years were relaxing their guard as the Omicron variant receded. Baker was a Republican; other recent moves had come from Democratic governors in states like New Jersey, Connecticut and Oregon, and Illinois. [NYT article]

5,795,175 COVID Deaths Worldwide

February 9, 2022: 403,450,029 cases; 5,795,175 deaths worldwide

935,922 COVID Deaths USA

February 9, 2022: 678,824,393 cases; 972,200 deaths in the US

74.9%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

February 9, 2022: 76.3% at least once; 74.9% fully (18+)

CDC’s New Mask Strategy

February 25, 2022: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered a new strategy to help communities across the country live with the coronavirus and get back to some version of normal life.

The new guidelines suggested that 70 percent of Americans could stop wearing masks, and no longer needed to social distance or avoid crowded indoor spaces.

The recommendations no longer relied only on the number of cases in a community to determine the need for restrictions such as mask wearing. Instead, they directed counties to consider three measures to assess risk of the virus: new Covid-related hospital admissions over the previous week and the percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients, as well as new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the previous week.

Based on these three factors, counties could calculate whether the risk to their residents was low, medium or high, according to the agency, and only areas of high risk would require everyone to wear a mask. [NYT article]

5,956,508 COVID Deaths Worldwide

February 25, 2022: 433,304,746 cases; 5,956,508 deaths worldwide

935,922 COVID Deaths USA

February 25, 2022: 80,532,307 cases; 935,922 deaths in the US

74.3%  Fully Vaccinated (+18 old) USA

February 25, 2022: 75.6% at least once; 74.3 % fully (18+)

February 26, 2022: scientists released a pair of extensive studies that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

Analyzing a wide range of data, including virus genes, maps of market stalls and the social media activity of early Covid-19 patients across Wuhan, the scientists concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus spilled over into people working or shopping there on two separate occasions.

“When you look at all of the evidence together, it’s an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both new studies.[NYT article]

 

Previous and subsequent COVID-19 posts:

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Happy birthday
September 16, 1931

Male-dominated

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, An Aquarian Exposition was not an event with equal women’s representation. Few of the performers were women and while there were certainly women in attendance, males far outnumbered them.

Men also dominated those who organized the festival.

Having said that, the event could not have happened without women.

One of the first things I learned when I began teaching was that it might seem that administrative personnel like the principal would be the most important people, the people I needed to keep on the good side of and always cooperate with.

Actually in many ways it wasn’t them but the secretaries and custodians. They are the ones who actually kept the school afloat on a day-to-day basis.

So, too, with any event. The people taking notes, answering the phones, keeping the “boss” on task, keeping the schedule, communicating, and so many more mundane tasks are the real heroes, or more likely, the real heroines.

Such was Joyce Mitchell.

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Joyce Mitchell

Docents at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts love and seek out interaction with guests on tours.  On a 2021 tour, a docent wondered who this woman was who was offering so much information? It turned out to be Joyce Mitchell, who was the production coordinator at Woodstock.

It isn’t often such “royalty” anonymously joins a tour, but on that did it happened and a lifelong memory formed for that fortunate docent.

Much of the information gathered for this little post recognizing the contributions of this wonderful and demure woman came from the outstanding Woodstock podcast, Keep the Dream Flowing, Episode 21.

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Wasn’t exactly sane myself

When asked how she got involved with the “crazies” of Woodstock Ventures, she responds laughing, “Well, I wasn’t exactly sane myself.

She explains that she was a hired producer and at that time doing weekly radio shows sponsored by the US Army.  She sent out recorded shows to various radio stations throughout the world for that station’s DJ to play. The “shows” were 5 or 10 minutes long.

Since the Army sponsored the show, it regularly refused to play certain selections Joyce had chosen, such as the Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man or the Beatles’ Back in the USSR.

She hated the job, but it paid well.

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Dig Latrines?

Joyce’s daughter was 13 on February 4, 1969 and Jerry Schultz, a college friend of Joyce, attended the party.  Jerry brought a guest: Stan Goldstein.  Stan and Joyce discussed their occupations. The party ended, but a week or so later, Stan called and asked, “How would you like to work on a festival?

Her response was, “Like Tanglewood?” 

Goldstein responded, “Not quite. More like Monterrey.”

And while classical music was her main love, Joyce loved all kinds of music. A lunch meeting with Goldstein and Michael Lang followed. Lang’s quiet approach attracted her to the possibility.

One of the questions Lang asked was about sanitation. How would she handle sanitation for 100,000 people? She responded that she’d have two backhoes, one to dig a long trench and the other to fill in that trench.

Lang and Goldstein laughed and said that idea was better than the military’s and offered her the job.

She asked, “What? To dig trenches?”

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

With Michael Lang

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell
Michael Lang and Joyce at the festival

Joyce worked mainly with Michael Lang who on May 20 had found separate office space at 513-A Avenue of the Americas so he could be away from the other organizers and concentrate on the Woodstock vision. Chip Monck and Mel Lawrence were also nearby.

Her biggest challenge was trying to keep Michael on task, keeping appointments, being on time.  She said she sometimes succeeded. She also felt he did a great job creating a Woodstock team.

She said that decades after the event, it was time for history to take over ownership of the event, but that it should always be noted that Michael Lang had created the team that made it succeed in the way it did despite the challenges that the late 60s presented to any such endeavor.

The team had a sense of transcendental peacefulness which became the festival’s hallmark despite the physical challenges the overwhelming crowd presents.

Holiday Inn/Liberty, NY

At the festival itself, one of the jobs that landed on Joyce’s steady shoulders was to drive to nearby Liberty, NY and the Holiday Inn where many of the performers were booked, or more precisely, overbooked. Nearby on a normal day. That 1969 August weekend was anything but normal. It was only through the help of a police officer that she succeeded in getting to Liberty.

Once there, negotiations were necessary. The Dead were willing to share rooms, but not the Who and Mitchell had no kind words for drummer Keith Moon.

The main job in Liberty, was to pay the performers their  upfront half of the contractually agreed fee, with the other half to be paid at the end of the performance. It was only through the help of a police officer that she succeeded in getting to Liberty.

Because the telephone connection between her work trailer and the stage malfunctioned, she spent much of the weekend running back and forth from and to the stage delivering messages.

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Acid Kiss

Parts of the walkways can be seen both to the extreme right of the sound tower and to the left of the lighting tower.

A wooden walkway bridged West Shore Road to the back of the stage and then another walkway went up to the stage itself.

Joyce says she got more exercise that weekend running back and forth to and from the stage than she’s ever had. On one of the Saturday trips she ran by Doris Dynamite, a friend who gave a hug to Joyce and then gave her an open mouth kiss. Nonplussed, Joyce kept going. She gradually realized that the friend had dosed her via the kiss.

Realizing she couldn’t do her job very well at that point, she wandered into the crowd and realized how the crowd had become one with the music, had become a community of trust and self-respect.

Lenny Bruce and sleep

Lenny Bruce Tapestries | TeePublic
This may have been what the flag looked like

After four-days of the festival and not getting any sleep, Joyce found a tent (marked with a Lenny Bruce flag) that someone had set up for her and collapsed into it finally allowing sleep to take over.

On her way there, she saw friend Felix Pappalardi. Reaching out to greet him, she fell into the mud. He helped her up and she went to the tent. When she finally woke up, the mud had caked to a point that, coming out of the deep sleep, she couldn’t understand why she could hardly move.

Solution? Wade into Filippini Pond.

Podcast

There are other interesting stories (both Woodstock-related and not) she touches on in the podcast regarding Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, naked strangers, the Last Poets, Robert Kennedy, George Harrison, Miles Davis, Alan Douglas, Paris after the war, hitchhiking in Europe, and other topics each of which reflect upon a life filled with music and art.

Woodstock Joyce Mitchell

Ticia Bernuth Agri

Ticia Bernuth Agri

Happy birthday
Born September 16, 1944
Ticia Bernuth Agri
1969 in Europe. From Ticia’s Facebook page

Wallkill had evicted the Woodstock Music and Art Fair from Howard Mill’s site. It was three weeks before the festival was to start.

Stories vary of who found Max Yasgur’s field one county away in Bethel.

The one I’m buying is the one Ticia Bernuth Agri, simply Ticia Agri at the time, tells.

Ticia Bernuth Agri

Happy Avenue

She and Michael Lang, lead organizer and font of good vibes,  drove northwest on NY Rt 17 from Orange County, NY into Sullivan County, NY.  They got off at the Monticello exit and headed west on Rt 17B.

Ticia’s story is that about 9 miles later, she was the one who spotted Happy Avenue in Bethel.

But Happy Avenue is not where Max Yasgur’s field was. Happy Avenue was not where Max Yasgur lived, but the name was certainly enticing.

Michael and Ticia had to drive a mile north on Happy Avenue before coming to the West Shore Road intersection and then, fortuitously, making a left and even then having to drive another mile before arriving at the Hurd Road/West Shore Road intersection and seeing Max’s field from the bottom. It caught their eye.

Max’s home and dairy farm were about  3 miles from there.

Ticia Bernuth Agri

Who’s Ticia Agri

According to a 2009 Sea Coast online articleAgri was born in New York City and grew up in the Hudson Valley. At age 16 her parents divorced and both moved to Europe.

She lived with her father in Rome, but traveled to 72 countries, including India, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

These travels — and her stories about living on a dollar a day, coming across Arabs with bejeweled sabers, visiting a guest palace — got her the job with Woodstock Ventures in the spring of 1969.

Keep the Dream Flowing

There is a Keep the Dream Flowing podcast and  in 2019 Ticia was interviewed for it.  By the way, the podcast is an excellent one for those interested in hearing stories about Woodstock from people who are or were involved in the famous event. It’s available via the usual platforms, but the early episodes seem to be only available via Spotify.

Woodstock Appears

From her Facebook page w the caption: My favorite photo of Michael and I working. Ticia is on the phone. Michael Lang is speaking with Joyce Mitchell.. I’ve colorized the Baron Wolman picture.

In the podcast (Episodes #3 and #4 from July 22 and 30, 2019 respectively) she describes herself as an adventurer and open to new people, places, and things.

In 1969, her then boyfriend who knew Stan Goldstein (one of the festivals key organizers) told her that Goldstein was looking for an assistant to Michael Lang.  She describes her reaction to the remark as a karmic one: she simply knew the job would be hers despite no experience in such matters.

The boyfriend initially ignored her requests for an interview, but Ticia’s persistence paid off. She got the interview, impressed Goldstein with her extensive travel experiences,  and became Lang’s assistant.

Her main job, an impossible one, was to keep Lang on time and on task. She tried.

Wes Pomeroy

One of the first decisions she helped with had to do with security. In one interview, the applicant described having dogs and hoses to insure tranquility. Both Agri and Lang knew he was not the one.

The next person was Wes Pomeroy who wanted security to simply help attendees. They knew he was their person. He “got it.”

Agri speaks about the festival’s intent being a blueprint for how things could be and how they tried to execute that blueprint. And doing that without commercializing the event. It was just “being together in Oneness.”

She describes Michael Lang as a “Manifester,” someone who wants  and seeks the best for everyone. The opposite of a con-artist who always connives for their own best interests.

How Max Yasgur?

There are versions of how Woodstock Ventures and Max Yasgur. What Ticia related was that shortly after Wallkill evicted the festival, Elliot Tiber contacted Ventures offering permits and a site. When Lang and Agri arrived, the permits looked OK, but the site was a swamp.

Lang and Agri drove west on 17B and Agri saw the Happy Road street sign and yelled to Michael, “Turn!” They eventually saw the field, went back to Tiber and asked him whose land it was: Max Yasgur.

She also describes that despite the intensity of having to build their venue in three weeks, many of the hundreds of attendees who showed up days early became part of the process to create, to manifest, the event.

And how the locals offered assistance to the thousands of young people walking miles and miles toward the site.

All toward the greater good.” “It was a moment of oneness and freedom.”

Afterwards

She later moved to Woodstock and got involved in renovating a house. She became a road manager for a couple of bands, worked on other festivals, e.g. Atlanta Pop Festival,

Meditation Healing

From her Meditation Healing site:

In the 1990’s, she led a meditation group at The Light and Healing Center in Exeter, NH, Where she created The Ribbon Breath Meditation. She studied over 4000 hours of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Ticia received a three year training certificate from Center IMT, for Integrative Manual Therapy, trained with the carrier of the medicine for the Aztec nation, Tzenwaxolokuatli, studied Plant Spirit Medicine with Eliot Cowen, studied shamanism for 7 years, And received her teaching certificate in 2007.

She has taught shamanic classes, and worked as a karmic healer in Italy, France, the UK and in the United States. She is currently doing long distance healings as well as working as a meditation guide to teach students to journey with their spiritual teachers to the upper, middle, and lower worlds in a safe and ethical way with the proper protocols to clean karma and Heal oneself and others.

References:

Meditation Healing site