Masked, armed government agents patrol our streets, stake out our stores and show up at our houses of worship. Bone-thin children starve in plain sight. The leader of this great country obliterates facts just because he doesn’t like them. Is it any wonder that hope often seems hard to find these days?

On this 56th anniversary of the Aug. 15 through Aug. 18 gathering that has come to symbolize hope, the 1969 Woodstock festival, the key ingredients of that hope — peace, love and understanding — are even mocked by those who call the believers in those ideals “snowflakes,” and worse. Have those four days of peace and love in the Town of Bethel in New York's Sullivan County become irrelevant? Or is Woodstock and all it symbolized — including protests against the Vietnam War — as relevant as ever?

At the site of the 1969 festival, now the sloping green fields of the $150 million Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the answer last week came through as loud and clear as a piercing guitar solo by Woodstock devotee, Carlos Santana. That’s where I spoke with folks from around the........

© The Leader