Happy Solstice
It’s a beautiful summer in Duluth, even with the weird, wet weather we’ve been having. The climate is changing whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Our family spent the Solstice in Grand Marais, MN and attended the North House Folk School Solstice celebration including a schooner ride, trying out crafts like wood working and making flat bread in an outdoor wood fired oven. The night capped off with a Solstice Pagent celebrating the interconnectedness of nature (including the human animal!) through the mycorrhizal network.
It was both a sweet weekend and celebration, and I was also holding some sadness about how much my dad would have loved it all! The family vacation, the boats, and the schooner ride. I’ve picked up his habit over the years of saying “This is so nice!” throughout the day when there are particularly sweet moments, and it’s one of my favorite inherited/adopted behaviors.
The pageant included a puppet show including a huge walking puppet and a whole array of mushrooms, a centipede and others. My uncle who we lost the summer after my dad, was a puppeteer and I thought of his work throughout the show. Growing up with artists like my uncle and my sister who recently supported her art students’ production of Seussical brings to my attention the level of skill that goes into developing a craft and the devotion of time to getting the level of detail wanted out of a project.
