Ticia Bernuth Agri
Happy birthday
Born September 16, 1944
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 article, Agri 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
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.
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