august 4, 2002.
Surely some will survive.
"When we moved into our house, there was nothing growing in the yard; not even grass. My husband gathered seeds from everywhere, thinking surely some will survive. Now, all I have to do in the garden is prune back the overgrowth."
- overheard in church this morning
This story really, really resonates with me. If I can teach like that - if I can plant in profusion with the hopes that something will survive - perhaps all I'll have to do near the end is prune back the ill-advised enthusiasms while leaving enough joy to keep the plant healthy.
Six hours later and the church announcements are in blog format. This is a change that's been coming for a month; with my successor a little lacking in the experience department, I need to find ways to smooth her path.
The sad thing is that I've come to adore this website. I want to continue tending it, although our new location makes that wildly improbable.
Friday (part 2)
When we arrived at our campsite, we were told to set up near "the big blue monstrosity," an accurate description of the tarp-and-pipe longhouse three sites over. There were several tents set up around the ends of this structure, but none inside. Later we discovered that a large number of old friends had gotten together to build a town hall of sorts, where they could cook, play music, sing & celebrate out of the rain. They also had a flagpole rigged up with 4 guy wires anchoring it to the soil. I sneered at this obvious bit of engineering over-preparedness. Then our flag broke in two. Greatly humbled, I had to admit that this was something very much like the final triumph of the engineer over the artsy. I kept my architectural comments to myself for the rest of the weekend.
We spent most of the day in Tenty, leaving only for food and bathroom breaks. Around four o'clock we headed off to the site to see about our volunteer duties for the weekend. Absolutely no one was around, and we soon found out that there wouldn't be anyone showing up until 5. So we took a walk around downtown Canso, determined to at once kill time & see the town we had only passed through last year. We ended up on the Bluenose II, a special attraction in from her Lunenburg home (coincidentally enough, we had missed her there and grumbled loudly about it at the time.) She was slick with rain but still beautiful in the way of all wooden schooners. Being on the deck made me want to cast off & sail to Bombay for a cargo of tea. But we didn't, or this might be an entirely different story.
At five we returned to the main gate and got our grey volunteer bracelets. After this there was nothing to do but try to cook dinner on our little propane hibachi. We had made some delicious shishkabobs the previous day, but an entire day of wind and rain proved too much for our small barbeque. After wasting the sixth or seventh match, we decided to put it in the car to dry out. With our first purchase of food, we began our time as paid visitors of StanFest.
My Lion's Club fish n' chips was served to me by a bored gothling who immediately complimented me on my pink studded collar. In quick succession I found out about her, her punk friend (with pink hair) and what others thought of their fashion choices. I have to admit, it's a lot harder to be a punk/goth in rural Nova Scotia than in a city. I found her cute, and for the rest of the weekend, I enjoyed her enthusiastic greetings (very un-goth, but very nice nonetheless). On our last meeting, she served me extra fish and extra chips...by which I must conclude that even a month later, even at the far reaches of the earth, Convergence magic is still working on my behalf.
(The Boy had a shrimp burrito. It was not magic, although he claims that it was delicious.)
At around 7 pm, a number of festival staff (including Stan, my old crewmate on the Good Ship Education) got up on the mainstage. The mikes were turned on and the voices began to boom out 'Barrett's Privateers.' It was wet, it was cold, it was already dark, but we forgot it all. StanFest was begun.
It started raining during the first act, of course (Scott Cameron Smith), and by the time the next act got started (Colleen Power), the stage was beginning to flood and the lightening to threaten the electrical system. Flooding! Violence! We grabbed cheap ponchos from the concession tent and listened to the locals confidently state that the storm would be over any minute. After twenty 'any minutes,' we gave up and went back to the tent.
We listened to the rain beating on the roof and thought about poor St. Stephen hitching in an unfamiliar wet dark place. We realized that simply handing over a $1 poncho was probably not going to fix everything. But just as we reached a pinnacle of guilt, he showed up half-drunk and extremely happy. We gave him the note we'd just written and hugged him with glee.
(It seems that this rockstar motherfucker had no sooner stepped off the express bus in Monastery and unfolded his "STANFEST" sign when a shuttle bus of performers pulled over to pick him up. He drank rum all the way to Canso with Anselmo and Carlos del Junco (they promised to split the fine if caught by the police), and he rolled through all of the gates without showing a ticket. He did, however, appreciate the $1 poncho.)
By this time the torrential rain had slowed to a mere drizzle, and we became aware that Bluehouse had taken the stage. The three of us slowly meandered down to the stage area, listening in amusement to the young apes who had ineptly set up something resembling a camp in the next site over. They had rushed through the job so as to get started on dismantling their higher functions as quickly as possible, and their tent leaned drunkenly into our space (as would its occupants in the next few days). I had no idea then how many Vasquez-influenced fantasies these jackoffs would inspire before the festival closed. Near the end of our run, the only thing that kept me from setting them on fire was the fact that I had promised to present a law-abiding face to my Hogsboro High students in September. To paraphrase Carmaig de Forest, "Asswipes, yeah they were some too." I left Canso hating them with the fire of a thousand suns. But not yet.
Whn we finally made our way to the main stage, we were in time for the next group: Hunter Hayes etc., a swamp boogie band out of Louisiana fronted by a 10-year-old accordion prodigy. No, really. It was totally wild. The band started in with the boogie, and this little tow-headed moppet started wailing away on the accordion. It was beyond cool. St. Stephen looked at me, laughing and incredulous. "Is this really happening?" I could only nod, as our previous (undocumented) year at StanFest had prepared us for the marriage of the bizarre and the accomplished. Such is the magic of StanFest.
The mainstage show never quite recovered from the lightning shutdown. Although we tried our best to enjoy Lennie Gallant and his Jesus-as-a-metaphor-for-falling-quotas songs, it was obvious that everyone had their minds on the skies. When the thunderstorm resumed at 11:30, the organizers bowed to the inevitable: there hadn't been a mainstage set cancelled since the first festival, but by Jesus there wasn't going to be much of a show if someone fried on a mike. Canso isn't exactly a resort location (although we learned that weekend that the town is reputed to be the location of the secret Basque fishing ground that predated Columbus' "discovery." But I digress.) Canso is often at the mercy of Weather, and in retrospect it seems inevitable that their luck would run out again after 5 years of scheduled main stage acts.
The Boy & I secretly enjoyed the shut-down, as we were utterly exhausted and the sudden end of the night cut 1 1/2 hours off our volunteer docket (I know, shame!) The three of us sat around Tenty; the boys drinking beer outside until the rain drove them in. As St. Stephen was the last to arrive, he was forced to sleep next to Drying Shoe-Town (pronounced 'SHOO-ton'). Such is the lawless nature of our 5 man (no woman) tent. It's every damp man for himself.
