a few more things about weekend in heaven (FP festival)

I've lost my notes temporarily (they're somewhere in the apartment but that doesn't mean much, could take months to find them), so here are a few highlights:

I played Apples to Apples (an excellent card game!--click on the link for the basic explanation) twice with a group of the young boys there, mostly aged 8-11. Boy are their minds weird, even by pre-adult male standards. Just one example of preadolescent male weirdness: Greg was the judge for "spiritual." I think I put down "Tibet." He eventually chose the "My hair" card, saying "My hair is very spiritual." Dude-boy had nice wavy dark-brown hair, but spiritual?

I like weird, so I missed Billy Jonas' first concert to play with the guys the second time. I did get to hear him Sunday--he was *excellent* and I blew some of my disposable income on one of his CDs.

Sunday morning we had Quaker meeting out on the porch of the program lodge, facing the lake. Just three of us, with plenty of silence and some wonderful messages, and then Susanna arrived at about a quarter of nine. Susanna and her mom are two of my influences in becoming Quaker; Stasa, who started the tradition of Quaker meeting at Festival, is another. (Thank you, Stasa!)

For once, I didn't worry about getting to programs on time. If I ran into someone and started talking, I took that time. This worked wonderfully. And at the very end of the weekend, when Ken was out watching the potato gun shooting (a new FP Festival tradition in its third season or so) I was walking toward the door when someone I didn't know had just started playing her guitar and singing "Song for the Mira." Now, this is one of my favorite folk songs, and embodies the perfect homeplace (and to some extent the Folk Project festival and people):
"Out on the Mira, the people are kind
They treat you to homebrew and help you unwind
And if you come broken, they'll see that you mend
And I wish I was with them again" (third verse)

Jess (we introduced ourselves after the song) had just started and I made a "can I sing too?" gesture. We sang together, and she asked if I could hold the melody on the last chorus while she sang harmony. I nodded, very nervous as I'm usually not good at holding a melody or harmony line on my own. But it must have been good--Ken R., who does excellent harmonies with his wife, said we harmonized well together!

All in all, another memorable weekend. I'm going to be with them again...