Jenny Everywhere: Parable of the Hippies
Mar. 20th, 2026 04:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanfordThanks for this goes to Luis Abbadie, who drew Jenny Everywhere at Woodstock and unknowingly prompted me to actually type this out. The speech Jenny gives here has been bouncing around in my head off and on for a while but I never had reason to use it until now.
This is just barely over the arbitrary 500 word limit for the Fragments collections and it’s also very light and fluffy - but in the end I thought it was best posted as a standalone to make linking easier.
Jenny Everywhere tells a
Parable of the Hippies
by Scott Sanford; 20 March 2026
“I’ve got no chance!”, wailed the teenager. “Do you know how many kids try out for this every year?”
“Yeah, I get it that there’s competition for the, um, thing,” Jenny Everywhere agreed ungrammatically. She was pretty sure she was getting this teen drama only because she was nearby, but it was obviously something he cared about.
“Hamada Technology Scholarship in Robotics,” Eric filled in.
“Right.” She sighed philosophically. She did not, in fact, have any clue how many kids tried out for the Hamada thing every year, but also did not care. “Look, I’m in the music industry; you don’t have to tell me about long odds against success. But…”
“But what?”
“Did you ever heard of a guy named Richie Havens?”
“I don’t who that is.” Eric shook his head.
“No reason you would. He was a folk and R&B singer, worked out on the east coast, started back in the sixties. He appeared on Sesame Street a few times in the seventies. Before your time.”
“But you know him.”
“I’m a professional, I know stuff like this. But you have heard of Woodstock, the music festival, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, it’s probably the most famous single rock festival in history, of course you’ve heard of it. So it won’t surprise you that a lot of seriously big names performed there: The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, you get the idea.”
Eric nodded.
“Every big event has things go wrong, and on the very first day of Woodstock they had a big one – their opening act, Sweetwater, wasn’t there! They’d gotten stuck in traffic, because there were half a million people all trying to get into the same place all at once, and nobody could drive anywhere. All the roads were full.
“But the show must go on and all that. They looked around and found that Richie Havens had made it on site earlier, before the traffic jam. He had every quality they needed – he could sing and he was there.
“And that’s how Richie Havens became the opening act at Woodstock!
“See where I’m going with that?”, Jenny asked.
“You’re telling me that it’s not always preparation and skill but sometimes dumb luck too,” Eric said. “And also that I should be ready to grab the opportunities when they fall into my lap.”
“You should, yes. This happened several times at Woodstock, too. A singer named Melanie got stage time because she was willing to sing in the rain. And one of the guys from the Lovin’ Spoonful was just there as part of the audience but got shoved on stage for half an hour when they needed somebody. It happens.”
Eric looked at his neighbor and felt encouraged. Sometimes it was easy for him to forget she knew about music, what with all the weird stuff that kept showing up, but then stuff like this fell out.
“You think I should go for it, then?”, he asked.
“Sure, give it a try. Maybe you won’t get the scholarship thing, but you definitely won’t if they don’t know you exist.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, feeling better.
Read other Jenny Everywhere stories
This is just barely over the arbitrary 500 word limit for the Fragments collections and it’s also very light and fluffy - but in the end I thought it was best posted as a standalone to make linking easier.
Parable of the Hippies
by Scott Sanford; 20 March 2026
“I’ve got no chance!”, wailed the teenager. “Do you know how many kids try out for this every year?”
“Yeah, I get it that there’s competition for the, um, thing,” Jenny Everywhere agreed ungrammatically. She was pretty sure she was getting this teen drama only because she was nearby, but it was obviously something he cared about.
“Hamada Technology Scholarship in Robotics,” Eric filled in.
“Right.” She sighed philosophically. She did not, in fact, have any clue how many kids tried out for the Hamada thing every year, but also did not care. “Look, I’m in the music industry; you don’t have to tell me about long odds against success. But…”
“But what?”
“Did you ever heard of a guy named Richie Havens?”
“I don’t who that is.” Eric shook his head.
“No reason you would. He was a folk and R&B singer, worked out on the east coast, started back in the sixties. He appeared on Sesame Street a few times in the seventies. Before your time.”
“But you know him.”
“I’m a professional, I know stuff like this. But you have heard of Woodstock, the music festival, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, it’s probably the most famous single rock festival in history, of course you’ve heard of it. So it won’t surprise you that a lot of seriously big names performed there: The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, you get the idea.”
Eric nodded.
“Every big event has things go wrong, and on the very first day of Woodstock they had a big one – their opening act, Sweetwater, wasn’t there! They’d gotten stuck in traffic, because there were half a million people all trying to get into the same place all at once, and nobody could drive anywhere. All the roads were full.
“But the show must go on and all that. They looked around and found that Richie Havens had made it on site earlier, before the traffic jam. He had every quality they needed – he could sing and he was there.
“And that’s how Richie Havens became the opening act at Woodstock!
“See where I’m going with that?”, Jenny asked.
“You’re telling me that it’s not always preparation and skill but sometimes dumb luck too,” Eric said. “And also that I should be ready to grab the opportunities when they fall into my lap.”
“You should, yes. This happened several times at Woodstock, too. A singer named Melanie got stage time because she was willing to sing in the rain. And one of the guys from the Lovin’ Spoonful was just there as part of the audience but got shoved on stage for half an hour when they needed somebody. It happens.”
Eric looked at his neighbor and felt encouraged. Sometimes it was easy for him to forget she knew about music, what with all the weird stuff that kept showing up, but then stuff like this fell out.
“You think I should go for it, then?”, he asked.
“Sure, give it a try. Maybe you won’t get the scholarship thing, but you definitely won’t if they don’t know you exist.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, feeling better.
