The Winter of 1994

            I have been thinking about my good friend, the late Mark Rogosin. He often spent time with me in my office at the Woodstock Library. In 1993, he was a volunteer in the automation project that required placing a barcode on each book. The staff started to notice that once he had handled a book, he never forgot where it was located and its subject.  He was frequently quite helpful to people because of this mystifying ability.

The townspeople had created an interesting description of Mark by labeling him a silent monk, a mad street person, and a defrocked lawyer. He used to be a patent attorney named Harvey Mark Rogosin, but now he was an artist specializing in Tibetan Buddhist tradition named just “Mark”.  He assured me that artists in that tradition were really more like tradesmen, not cultural icons to be adored as might be expected of Woodstock artists. He also said he had never been disbarred, so he was still a lawyer.

 He often did not speak, but I think it was just more comfortable for him to ignore the give and take of words, so silence became a good option.   Maybe some Buddhist monk had asked him to impose a bit of restraint on his tendency to speak with no sign of stopping, so silence could have been a discipline he embraced from time to time. In my office, he talked a blue streak, and I had to remind him when to take a break.

Mark seemed puzzled by questions.  A simple “How are you” often received no response at all.  It was also useless to ask him why he did not respond to that regular everyday question, since it added another layer of question. Mark’s usual interaction with people was the giving of hand painted Mani stones because, he explained, someday people would find these stones here and there and know Buddhism had been in Woodstock. Most people loved Mark’s Mani stones and sometimes sought after them holding the stones to be a blessing.  He seemed to have great commitment to Buddhism, as well as an extensive knowledge of Buddhist images, color usage and myth,

 He had come here because of the KTD Monastery, not, he often reminded me, because of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.  He did have the distinction of actually having attended that festival, and seemed to treasure the memory.  Although he never mentioned the festival’s music or his 1969 companions, I think he was swept away by that awesome moment.  He rarely mentioned the past. He never mentioned his family, and would only reference them as “my associates at that time.” He enjoyed looking at the old KTD newsletters stored upstairs in the library and even pointed out a small image of his face, taken in the early eighties hiding among a smiling group of young Buddhists. I was always quite curious to know how he had run into trouble with the KTD monastery. He often mentioned they were not pleased with him.

One night, over a shared take out meal of vegetable Chop Suey, he told me his version of the cause of his problems.  Monasteries, he assured me, are not democracies.  That was not news to me.  I had never been monastic, but I did read books.  Mark said things were just fine until new people arrived from Tibet, and the new arrivals did not tend to end up on “the dish list” which, I supposed, was a posted list of monastery duties.  He, on the other hand, was always on “the dish list”, and growing increasingly tired of the situation.  This made me laugh to myself as I pictured the dishes of unknown sanitary condition that crammed the shelves at Mark’s house.

            His anger at the dish situation led him to draw an unflattering cartoon of the people who escaped the dish list and post it on the bulletin board. This kind of criticism was not allowed, and resulted in his being placed in the little cabin near the village green.    He told me that Tibetan Monks did engage in long philosophical debates, but placement on the list of duties was not an allowed topic.  Clark Strand writes that the cause of Mark’s disgrace happened when he broke the paintbrushes of other monastery artists. It is probable that both of these stories have some truth in their recounting. 

The winter of 1994 was so cold that dangerous ice dams formed on the Library’s roof causing leaks here and there. Mark’s little house was completely unheated and the water was frozen, so, to stay warm, he was always in the Library busily reading about the early Woodstock art colony. He would often arrive with ice in his beard and moustache, and spend the rest of the day thawing.  He often did not remove his coat all day.  His pockets habitually bulged with small rocks, preferably round, and he would write OM on the stones and hand them to people as he went through the day.

            He admired Whitehead’s utopian ideas and Hervey White’s active nature.  He always called Hervey “Harvey” probably because that was his own real given name.  Whitehead had taken some time in deciding on the location of his art colony, and Mark made comparisons of Whitehead’s thoughts about ideal living locations to Buddhist thought on the perfect site for monasteries.

            During the cold winter of 1994, word went out that Michael Lang was planning a new festival on the 25^th anniversary of the Bethel festival aka. “The Woodstock Festival”, to take place in nearby Saugerties.  Mark went into frenzy thinking about the ownership of the name “Woodstock”, so he conquered the local bus system and went to Kingston Law Library to check what was happening about the trade marking of the name “Woodstock.”  Of course,  Woodstock Ventures had trademarked the name Woodstock in association with “festival,” “music,” “art,” and “craft," and all images featuring birds on guitars and had full intent to crack down on anybody who intended to make tee shirts or any other commercially viable object that might cash in on the Woodstock obsession.  Soon, Mark was following the trade marking controversy with increasing irritation.

More on another day.

Today, the mother bear and her cub turned over the garbage can.  It’s time to deal with garbage in the summer mode by hiding it away, freezing all food, and putting it out for collection at the last moment.  dj