I drove around the Hudson Valley last weekend and had a terrific time. Started at Sleepy Hollow to see Washington Irving's grave and the bridge the Headless Horseman crosses every night, then wandered the antique shops at Cold Spring, and in the late afternoon headed to Woodstock, NY. This is the Woodstock that named the music festival, though in reality it was forty miles away.

If you like hippies, you'll love Woodstock. The whole place is teeming with them, aged fifty to faaar beyond. There's a slight tinge of burnout, but mostly the crowd is content as fat cats laying in the sun, still clinging to the old "do what you feel" vibe.

Woodstock is probably the only place in the world where a tourist can run into two drum circles. My friend Matt somehow snapped a panoramic shot of the larger one. Note the "Have a drum, leave a drum; need a drum, take a drum!" pile in the center.

This is before the pair of elderly androgynous hippies turned up -- guy in a dress, girl with a beard -- so my favorite character up to now was the woman in pink on the far right. She was totally focused on her part in the music. She concentrated like she was cutting diamonds, intent on hitting her drum at the exact right nanosecond. She couldn't have hit it four times while I watched. The sharp thump got lost in the cacophony of three hundred more energetic drummers with varying degrees of talent, but her face still glowed with the bliss of satisfaction like she'd just invented Tupperware.