May Day is going to be HUGE for us this year! It’s the first time May Day has fallen on a weekend since we started the Morris troupe at Jo’s school, so instead of just doing a single token venue and a quick dance at school, the kids get to go around all day with the adult troupes (last year there were three adult troupes: Santa Cruz’s Seabright Morris, Hayward’s Faultline Morris and San Francisco’s White Rat Morris…I don’t know how many will be here this year). We’re going to be starting at dawn at the lighthouse on Monterey Bay, dancing the sun up. Then we’ll all go for breakfast at Zachary’s downtown (they always save seating for the Morris hoards on May Day). After that, we’ll dance at the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz (dancing in the fields is also a May Day Morris tradition) and then go back downtown to dance in front of Bookshop Santa Cruz (and pass the hat). After that, the adult dancers get a break, but we three Sea Horse Morris grown-ups will be taking the kids out for pizza up here in Felton, then taking them to dance at the Felton Covered Bridge Park. Finally, we all get to wind down with a big ceili at Boulder Creek Brewery (a pub up here in the valley), which always clears the floor so we can dance, sing, eat, drink, and generally make mayhem…er…merry! I’ll probably fall on my nose Saturday night, but I’m really looking forward to it.
This will be my Sweetheart Professional’s official Morris debut! Hopefully we’ll get some pictures for the website…if so, I’ll let you all know!
My partner and I are going to kayak out to an island at the mouth of the Detroit river and have a sunrise breakfast and if we get there before sunrise, I will whistle the Sun Up!
I don’t have any plans this year, but my avatar is the picture taken last year when I visited Newgrange on Beltaine. It was just coincidence that I was there on that day but it makes the picture of me whistling there all the more special to me.
Tony, I think anyone who goes there and doesn’t feel weird vibes has no soul.
Paul, I went to Knowth the same day. You enter through the main visitor’s center, buy a Heritage card, and then all Heritage sites in Ireland (Newgrange, Knowth, Tara, Clonmacnoise, Kilmainham Gaol, etc) are free thereafter. So seeing Knowth doesn’t cost anything extra and you access both through the same entrance (the visitor’s center at Newgrange). Knowth is interesting because the interpretation of the white stones is different. At Newgrange the main scientist was of the opinion that the white stones had originally been as they are seen now but had fallen down, over the millenia, so they were picked up and put up as we now see them. There were differing opinions, that the stones had originally been brought to the site and thrown onto the ground, so when Knowth was opened to the public, the stones were left on the ground to illustrate that theory. It’s good to see both.
Alford Morris will, as usual, be dancing at dawn at Alford windmill. (Note to self - pub not open, take hipflask.) What’s even more amazing than dancing at this unearthly hour is that people actually turn up to watch us do it.
Then it’s breakfast at the windmill and this year on to dancing at Tetney Scarecrow Festival. The scarecrows will be the ones without the bells.
Lunch at the pub, with session, and then on to dance somewhere else. (Can’t remember where but after a lunchtime pub session I tend to just go where I’m taken anyway)
OK, let me try this again. I do have a reputation to uphold, you know. So (clearing my throat)…Weird vibes? Well, no more than when I listen to you playing that Copeland low D, Tony!
mmmm…i feel better…all is right with the world now.
Hopefully we’ll get some pictures for the website…if so, I’ll let you all know!
