PSG
Well, we returned from
Pagan Spirit Gathering
Sunday night around 8pm. I had to miss Comfest for PSG this year, but I
think I made up for it by making it a very musical PSG.
Before we left we were somewhat apprehensive about going, for various reasons. One of those was that last year when we returned from a very wet PSG we found three inches of water in the basement, due to a broken pipe. This year the worst that we found was that ants had discovered a cookie we'd accidentally left on the counter. (Luckily it was in a container that somewhat impeded their access to it.)
One notable aspect of this PSG was making the 11:00 news on Cleveland's notorious channel 19. They tried to get in both through the gate and through the woods, then buzzed the morning meeting with a helicopter. How a private event in the woods of southern Ohio is considered news in Cleveland is beyond me.
Check out the resulting report:
[Windows Media stream] [32MB MPEG] [Stills & more info] [Wisteria's Report]
Anyway, this PSG was really good for me. I feel quite refreshed.
The weather was nearly perfect. There were two really clear (though chilly) nights when the stars were out in all their glory, and we even saw some meteors. Other nights were comfortably warm. Except for one evening, all the rain we had was overnight. The daytime temperatures went from high 60s to low 80s.
This seemed to be a slightly more rocking PSG than previous ones. First I noticed some cars in the parking lot with punk stickers (Social Distortion, Black Flag), and then some punk-dressed people. One of the food vendors would often play music like Guster. The first late-night coffeehouse performer included lots of old rock songs in his set, particularly Four Dead in Ohio. The normally fairly folky Todd Alan pulled out his electric guitar a few times during the week, including at a coffeehouse performance that felt to me very much like the bar performances I like to go to.
There were two workshops per day, and I spent the first two days at a fascinating four-part workshop given by Rev. Patrick McCollum. He comes from a pagan tradition that's basically a type of Wicca today but doesn't trace back to Gerald Gardner. He got into it in the mid-60s and has traced it back as far as the mid-50s. He talked about the knowledge, passed down to him from his teachers, that he wants to become more widespread before it gets lost. (Such as a creation story that makes different direction/element associations than most Wiccan-influenced pagans learn today, and a really cool (and somewhat startling) demonstration of the reason for the chalky circular mounds surrounding ancient ritual sites.) He also included some interesting sidenotes like a 1967 pagan meeting where leaders of various pagan/witch groups got together to resolve some differences, and the Garderians were just one small faction that was just less willing to compromise than the others.
Separately, I also learned that the Serpent Mound is oriented so that its loops point in the direction of the rising sun on the solstices and equinoxes. I didn't know that before.
Everyone at PSG is supposed to put in six hours of work time, and half of mine was spent helping out the sound guy at one of the evening concerts. Mostly it was takedown, plus running messages like "they need more vocals in the monitor," and a bit of listening for ways the sound could be improved (more bass). The weirdest part of that was that the band used electronic drums, so they needed drums in the on-stage monitor, and when I stood close to the stage I couldn't hear the drums the way I would normally expect to.
That night was the candlelight labyrinth, but I skipped it because I was so tired from helping haul sound equipment. Instead I saw Todd Alan play at the coffeehouse. His 14-year-old daughter was impressed that I was standing up and getting into the music (the way I often do when I go see bar bands), rather than just sitting there like everyone else but her.
On Wednesday I went to the Samba workshop for a third year. I ended up with the snare drum part, which was the most demanding drumming I've done since my middle-school band days. I didn't get a fun rhythm pattern like I did last year; it was just a steady stream of eighth-notes (at a pretty fast tempo), but alternating between two strong hits and two weak hits.
The next day I continued the percussion with a workshop on Indonesian Gamelan, a trancy music based on a non-western pentatonic scale. Although I had fun muddling through the patterns on the melodic instruments, I ended up doing best playing a gong on the off (even) beats.
Both percussion workshops led to performances on Friday before (Samba) and after (Gamelan) the annual PSG talent show (in which nontacitare told a story). First the Samba group paraded through camp -- doubling the tempo halfway through, and therefore just about losing me or at least my arms. Then we watched over a dozen acts in the talent show. After the talent show, the evening's "real" band (which included the Gamelan guy) set up onstage, and then the Gamelan players set up in front of them to play for a while. It sounded good, but I had two problems. First, unlike our practice session I had to hold up my gong rather than have it hanging on something, so my arm got tired again after recovering from Samba. Second, another gong player, with whom I was supposed to alternate some notes, set up at the opposite end of the stage, and in between were some instruments with notes all too close to his gong. So I ended up getting confused a few times about which beat to hit. It was a humbling but fun experience.
One night late in the week, we ended up sharing dinner with our neighbors, and just hanging out with them for the evening. It was fun, but then turned somewhat absurd when I noticed a tick embedded in my leg. Every year I end up needing to remove a tick. Last year I went to the first aid tent for one, and the woman there actually twisted it off, going against everything I'd always learned about removing ticks (since it risks leaving the head embedded in the skin). This made me quite reluctant to trust the first aid people with a tick again. Last I heard, the best way to remove a tick was supposed to be to suffocate it so that it backs out of the skin. So the five of us were gathered around my leg with flashlights, while I slathered various gels over this tick. And it didn't go anywhere. But it still lived. Finally, one by one our group started saying I should go to the first aid tent, and I resisted until I was the only one against going. So all five of us wandered over to the first aid tent and announced our "tick party". Once we got the attention of the medic on duty (not just some volunteer like last year), he grabbed a little orange plastic thing that looked like a measuring spoon, and appeared to spoon the tick off my leg. It hurt a little, briefly, and then the tick was in his spoon thing. Turns out that the plastic thing was specifically designed for the purpose (it's called "Ticked Off"), and has a slit in the spoon for helping to get hold of the tick. I gotta get me one of those!
Also during the week I got to take a couple brief swims in the Wisteria pond. It was a little cold, but I got used to it, and it's much better to swim surrounded by trees than by concrete. Early in the week there were reports of leeches, which frightened some people away from the pond, but I don't think there were any problems after that; I just made sure to avoid them by staying out of the mud along the edges, and just stepping on the sand and gravel.
The final night, Todd Alan performed at the main stage, telling stories of his life intertwined with PSG's past (such as the story of how PSG came to be held at Wisteria) in between songs. In the middle of that show they attempted to play a tape of the news report about us, but by that point the tape had already been played so many times that the quality was pretty bad. They also had trouble cueing it up to the right place, and there was a jolt across the audience when the news report mentioned the latest from Iraq; it didn't even matter so much what the news was (though it was bad), but more that it was an unwelcome intrusion of ugliness into the idyllic and isolated life we'd had there that week. Later at the coffeeshop, Owain Phyfe's Renaissance-style music helped put us back in that idyllic frame of mind.
On Sunday, we ended up taking much longer to pack up than I anticipated, and we finally finished around 4pm -- tired, hungry, and sunburned. But at least we squeezed everything back into the car. But we didn't find a place to stop for "lunch" until we were less than an hour from home, and I think the Denny's waitress didn't know what to think of us.
When we got home, we were pleased that the house was still intact. I had around 300 emails to deal with, which took a few days. We still have a huge amount of laundry to do, and lots of unpacking -- the living room is still full of stuff.
Now we're going out of town again this weekend (to Columbus). So I guess we'd better get unpacked soon so we can re-pack.
Before we left we were somewhat apprehensive about going, for various reasons. One of those was that last year when we returned from a very wet PSG we found three inches of water in the basement, due to a broken pipe. This year the worst that we found was that ants had discovered a cookie we'd accidentally left on the counter. (Luckily it was in a container that somewhat impeded their access to it.)
One notable aspect of this PSG was making the 11:00 news on Cleveland's notorious channel 19. They tried to get in both through the gate and through the woods, then buzzed the morning meeting with a helicopter. How a private event in the woods of southern Ohio is considered news in Cleveland is beyond me.
Check out the resulting report:
[Windows Media stream] [32MB MPEG] [Stills & more info] [Wisteria's Report]
Anyway, this PSG was really good for me. I feel quite refreshed.
The weather was nearly perfect. There were two really clear (though chilly) nights when the stars were out in all their glory, and we even saw some meteors. Other nights were comfortably warm. Except for one evening, all the rain we had was overnight. The daytime temperatures went from high 60s to low 80s.
This seemed to be a slightly more rocking PSG than previous ones. First I noticed some cars in the parking lot with punk stickers (Social Distortion, Black Flag), and then some punk-dressed people. One of the food vendors would often play music like Guster. The first late-night coffeehouse performer included lots of old rock songs in his set, particularly Four Dead in Ohio. The normally fairly folky Todd Alan pulled out his electric guitar a few times during the week, including at a coffeehouse performance that felt to me very much like the bar performances I like to go to.
There were two workshops per day, and I spent the first two days at a fascinating four-part workshop given by Rev. Patrick McCollum. He comes from a pagan tradition that's basically a type of Wicca today but doesn't trace back to Gerald Gardner. He got into it in the mid-60s and has traced it back as far as the mid-50s. He talked about the knowledge, passed down to him from his teachers, that he wants to become more widespread before it gets lost. (Such as a creation story that makes different direction/element associations than most Wiccan-influenced pagans learn today, and a really cool (and somewhat startling) demonstration of the reason for the chalky circular mounds surrounding ancient ritual sites.) He also included some interesting sidenotes like a 1967 pagan meeting where leaders of various pagan/witch groups got together to resolve some differences, and the Garderians were just one small faction that was just less willing to compromise than the others.
Separately, I also learned that the Serpent Mound is oriented so that its loops point in the direction of the rising sun on the solstices and equinoxes. I didn't know that before.
Everyone at PSG is supposed to put in six hours of work time, and half of mine was spent helping out the sound guy at one of the evening concerts. Mostly it was takedown, plus running messages like "they need more vocals in the monitor," and a bit of listening for ways the sound could be improved (more bass). The weirdest part of that was that the band used electronic drums, so they needed drums in the on-stage monitor, and when I stood close to the stage I couldn't hear the drums the way I would normally expect to.
That night was the candlelight labyrinth, but I skipped it because I was so tired from helping haul sound equipment. Instead I saw Todd Alan play at the coffeehouse. His 14-year-old daughter was impressed that I was standing up and getting into the music (the way I often do when I go see bar bands), rather than just sitting there like everyone else but her.
On Wednesday I went to the Samba workshop for a third year. I ended up with the snare drum part, which was the most demanding drumming I've done since my middle-school band days. I didn't get a fun rhythm pattern like I did last year; it was just a steady stream of eighth-notes (at a pretty fast tempo), but alternating between two strong hits and two weak hits.
The next day I continued the percussion with a workshop on Indonesian Gamelan, a trancy music based on a non-western pentatonic scale. Although I had fun muddling through the patterns on the melodic instruments, I ended up doing best playing a gong on the off (even) beats.
Both percussion workshops led to performances on Friday before (Samba) and after (Gamelan) the annual PSG talent show (in which nontacitare told a story). First the Samba group paraded through camp -- doubling the tempo halfway through, and therefore just about losing me or at least my arms. Then we watched over a dozen acts in the talent show. After the talent show, the evening's "real" band (which included the Gamelan guy) set up onstage, and then the Gamelan players set up in front of them to play for a while. It sounded good, but I had two problems. First, unlike our practice session I had to hold up my gong rather than have it hanging on something, so my arm got tired again after recovering from Samba. Second, another gong player, with whom I was supposed to alternate some notes, set up at the opposite end of the stage, and in between were some instruments with notes all too close to his gong. So I ended up getting confused a few times about which beat to hit. It was a humbling but fun experience.
One night late in the week, we ended up sharing dinner with our neighbors, and just hanging out with them for the evening. It was fun, but then turned somewhat absurd when I noticed a tick embedded in my leg. Every year I end up needing to remove a tick. Last year I went to the first aid tent for one, and the woman there actually twisted it off, going against everything I'd always learned about removing ticks (since it risks leaving the head embedded in the skin). This made me quite reluctant to trust the first aid people with a tick again. Last I heard, the best way to remove a tick was supposed to be to suffocate it so that it backs out of the skin. So the five of us were gathered around my leg with flashlights, while I slathered various gels over this tick. And it didn't go anywhere. But it still lived. Finally, one by one our group started saying I should go to the first aid tent, and I resisted until I was the only one against going. So all five of us wandered over to the first aid tent and announced our "tick party". Once we got the attention of the medic on duty (not just some volunteer like last year), he grabbed a little orange plastic thing that looked like a measuring spoon, and appeared to spoon the tick off my leg. It hurt a little, briefly, and then the tick was in his spoon thing. Turns out that the plastic thing was specifically designed for the purpose (it's called "Ticked Off"), and has a slit in the spoon for helping to get hold of the tick. I gotta get me one of those!
Also during the week I got to take a couple brief swims in the Wisteria pond. It was a little cold, but I got used to it, and it's much better to swim surrounded by trees than by concrete. Early in the week there were reports of leeches, which frightened some people away from the pond, but I don't think there were any problems after that; I just made sure to avoid them by staying out of the mud along the edges, and just stepping on the sand and gravel.
The final night, Todd Alan performed at the main stage, telling stories of his life intertwined with PSG's past (such as the story of how PSG came to be held at Wisteria) in between songs. In the middle of that show they attempted to play a tape of the news report about us, but by that point the tape had already been played so many times that the quality was pretty bad. They also had trouble cueing it up to the right place, and there was a jolt across the audience when the news report mentioned the latest from Iraq; it didn't even matter so much what the news was (though it was bad), but more that it was an unwelcome intrusion of ugliness into the idyllic and isolated life we'd had there that week. Later at the coffeeshop, Owain Phyfe's Renaissance-style music helped put us back in that idyllic frame of mind.
On Sunday, we ended up taking much longer to pack up than I anticipated, and we finally finished around 4pm -- tired, hungry, and sunburned. But at least we squeezed everything back into the car. But we didn't find a place to stop for "lunch" until we were less than an hour from home, and I think the Denny's waitress didn't know what to think of us.
When we got home, we were pleased that the house was still intact. I had around 300 emails to deal with, which took a few days. We still have a huge amount of laundry to do, and lots of unpacking -- the living room is still full of stuff.
Now we're going out of town again this weekend (to Columbus). So I guess we'd better get unpacked soon so we can re-pack.