THE US: Conor O'Clery in Woodstock, spiritual home of the US anti-war movement, finds new life in old tunes
"I thought I had retired from all this," said Peter Poccia, holding a sign that read,"They lied about Vietnam. They are lying about Iraq. It's all about $$$".
By "all this", he meant taking part in anti-war protests. Mr Poccia (55), a male nurse, had done a lot of that when he returned in 1969 from Vietnam, where he had been in charge of a field hospital.
"I saw some terrible things", he said, as a car went by with the driver honking his horn and giving a peace sign. "And they are going to do it again. The colour of the dead bodies may not be the same but the stench will be the same."
Peter Poccia was one of dozens of people in upstate New York who braved temperatures of minus 15 on Saturday to hold roadside vigils in towns and villages against war in Iraq.
One vigil was in Woodstock, where at noon on Saturday some 50 people gathered on the village green for two hours to display anti-war signs and wave at passing cars.
For the anti-war movement, good vibrations still come from Woodstock, an artistic centre in the Catskills mountains whose name was given to the great peace and love festival of August 1969, held in a vast meadow some distance out of town.
Woodstock is the spiritual heart of the anti-war movement in the United States, forever associated with the alternative society and the message of peace from Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and such rock groups as Mountain.
Guitarist Steve Knight used to play with Mountain. He joined the vigil on Saturday with his trombone and played We shall overcome and Where have all the flowers gone?, the notes solemnly echoing around the narrow streets of bric-a-brac shops and galleries.
Now a member of the five-strong Woodstock town board, Knight was spurred back to action by his outrage over Iraq. "We have an unelected president rattling his sabre all over the world; who does everything to benefit his millionaire cronies," he said, taking a break to adjust the mouthpiece of the trombone.
The weekend anti-war vigils have become a regular feature in Woodstock - and all over New York state - since last summer, but many had joined for the first time on Saturday to mark the world-wide day of protest.
With Steve Knight was another town board member, Gordon Wemp. He is not a former hippie, but a contractor with two children whose future he worries about.
"I strongly believe in protecting my country, and Saddam Hussein is a despicable person, but it should be done through diplomacy, like Clinton used, not the threat of war," he said.
The Woodstock vigil was organised by Women in Black, the Peace Action Network and the Woodstock Women for Peace. Many were middle-aged or more: the young anti-war people had mostly gone in hired buses to Washington for the nation-wide rally.
"When I was young it was a young person's thing to rock the boat," said composer Michael Bohacik, a veteran of the Woodstock festival. "Now the young people rocking the boat are being supported by the people from that era like me."
At 2 p.m. the two-hour vigil ended and several members took refuge from the bitter cold in the Heaven Cafe.
Here too there were messages of peace. And on the way out of town, the sign sticking up out of the frozen snow outside the United Methodist Church asked: "If war is the answer, are we asking the right question".