Spoutwood Says Goodbye Sometimes

 Ah, Spoutwood, Spoutwood! Home of the first and biggest fairy festival! We at “The Gods Are Bored” salute you and daub a tear from the eye.

 

The May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm was held at a private property (Spoutwood) until 2019. The weekend event – spiritual if you wanted spirituality, silly fun if you wanted that, music and drumming if you wanted that – outgrew its location at long last. Since 2019 it has been held at two different venues near Baltimore.

 

As with any community, the dedicated Spoutwood volunteers have become like family over the years. We have watched children grow up from tots to tweens to teens to twenty-somethings. We’ve developed real bonds and genuine care for one another. Anyone who says the only place you can achieve that kind of agape love is in church, well. Either Spoutwood is a church, or agape can develop among people who are like-minded and willing to show other people how to have a good time.

EXHIBIT A: THE FIRST PHOTO OF ME AT SPOUTWOOD

 

As far as I can count, the 2023 May Day Fairie Festival was my 18^th year in attendance. And just as those tots have turned to twenty-somethings, I have moved along from Mother to Crone. The walking, the dancing, even the shouting, has become more difficult. And yes indeed, my enthusiasm has waned as I pine for dear Spoutwood Farm, even though this year’s venue was breathtaking.

 

For many years I built my whole spring around Spoutwood. This year, when I set out on Saturday morning to drive to the event, I realized I had forgotten my dragon, Big Red. I had forgotten the small Mountain Tribe banner hanging in my spare room. I had forgotten earrings, for crying out loud. I only brought the one costume I was wearing. And my energy level – more and more it’s non-existent in May – was almost underground.

EXHIBIT B: WHEN YOU FORGET THIS GUY, IT'S A SIGN

 

All three of you long-timers here at “The Gods Are Bored” might recall that I have been leader of the Mountain Tribe for about 15 years. Oh my bored Gods, how I have loved doing Mountain Tribe! But time marches on. When one forgets her dragon and her earrings, it’s time for a change.

 

And so I decided to step down from Mountain Tribe. I had a person in mind to replace me, and when I asked him to do it, he got tears in his eyes. The beauty of this festival is that there’s a whole new generation of young people who are willing to put in the hard work to organize and run it. One of those people is now the new leader of Mountain Tribe.

 

And so, at the Sunday ceremony, I formally removed my Mountain Tribe insignia (which somehow I didn’t forget) and gave it to the new leader. I thought I too might cry, but I didn’t. In fact I felt quite happy to see this young man, with all his devotion, take over something I have loved for such a long time.

EXHIBIT C: HANDING IT OVER

 

The new location for the May Day Fairie Festival is waterside, Chesapeake Bay views with a rocky point and a sweet, small beach. But time after time I found myself daydreaming about Spoutwood Farm, in the rolling Piedmont hills just before Appalachia, how green everything is there, that bright golden green of early spring so beloved by the poets. And I thought about the folks who were in Mountain Tribe there who live in that area and didn’t make the journey to the new location.

 

It’s time for this magnificent festival to continue without me. Its future is bright.

 

Being a part of Spoutwood has deeply enriched my life. But Spoutwood says goodbye sometimes. And I wave, and blink back tears, and move on down the line.

What Did I Just See?

 For those of you just joining in the fun here at "The Gods Are Bored," you should know that I am a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of organized labor. I want to be buried with my union card in my cold, dead hand. United we bargain, divided we beg. Therefore it was with great happiness and anticipation that I got up this morning and headed into Philadelphia for the AFL-CIO Unity Summit.

Every four years the AFL-CIO has a whopper of a convention, and I guess it's just about like any other convention, with lots of people cheering and saying all the right things. This year's convention is in Philadelphia, which is a neat 20 minute train ride from my door. Joy!

Except the convention starts on Sunday, and the Unity Summit was on Saturday.

If the date wasn't tip-off enough, the invitation I got to this Unity Summit was just another email to my inbox with a link to register. Just out of curiosity (to see how much it cost to attend), I filled out the registration. Turns out it was free, with lunch provided. 

Better yet, there was a whole day of speakers scheduled for the Unity Summit, and there was a breakout seminar called "Next Gen Organizing" having to do with bringing more young people into the labor movement.

To say I had high expectations for this bash was an understatement. Philadelphia is a union city. Our Labor Day parade is impressive. My first thought was how long I might have to stand in line before I could get my registration badge.

The first tip-off that my expectations were about to be shattered was how long it took me to get my registration badge. I walked right up.

The festivities were scheduled for a ballroom on the top floor of the Convention Center. And the last time I was in that space was at Netroots Nation in 2019. Elizabeth Warren was one of the speakers that day, and the freaking Fire Marshal was at the door because of the crowd.

Today the Fire Marshal must have been home with his feet propped up, drinking his coffee and placing a few online wagers. When I say that ballroom was sparsely populated, I mean it was embarrassingly empty, considering the heft of the AFL-CIO.

To make matters more depressing, the speakers were outstanding. They all had rousing messages about battling voter suppression and systemic racism, and one or two of them mentioned in passing that Amazon and Starbucks workers were organizing here and there ...

Wait. What?

Over the past six months, about the only good news was that workers had successfully organized an Amazon warehouse and numerous local Starbucks stores. To me this is huge. It's the future of the labor movement, and the AFL-CIO should be all over it. In fact, I expected "Next Gen Organizing" to feature some of these brave people from Amazon and Starbucks. Nope.

So there I sat in a dark, cavernous ballroom, watching enthusiastic speakers dish out heaping helpings of platitudes to empty tables.

Worst part was that the "Next Gen" segment featured people who were indeed young, but they were also children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of union members who happened to go into the organizing business. Which is what it seemed like - a business.

All of this I can forgive, because solidarity. But you know what is unforgivable? There was no swag. Dang! What's a convention without swag?

(Well, I think some people got some swag, but all I got was an N95 mask I had to put on right away, and two Covid testing kits as I left.)

The whole thing reminded me of how the administration in my school district celebrates National Teacher Week by giving each of us a bag with some random penny candy and a mini bottle of water.

Either go big or go home, that's my motto. The AFL-CIO could have thrown a gigantic party today at the Philadelphia Convention Center if they had just invited everyone who marches on Labor Day to come in their union t-shirts, gather in some swag, and have a nice lunch. The ballroom would at least have been populated. As it was, any oligarch who might have wandered into the Unity Summit could quickly conclude that the halcyon days of organized labor are over and done.

Don't get me wrong. The convention only gears up on Sunday, and rumor has it the president might drop in before it's over. So I'm sure that all the union muckity mucks from all over America will be descending.

But not the most important muckity mucks. Not the brave people stepping out of line at their workplaces to form bargaining units. Not the soldiers. Just the generals.

Oh well. The day wasn't completely lost. On my way back to the train I went through Reading Terminal Market and snagged a Beiler's doughnut.

Now I'm back in my lounge chair, having learned nothing about how to help those Starbucks baristas get unions in their shops.

In solidarity,

Anne Johnson

In Which Fox News Robs Me of Another Valuable Friendship

 We have all been there, right? Someone we have known forever, loved forever, looked forward to seeing, goes down the worm hole and becomes lost to us. But not without a parting salvo.

There is a business in my community that I have loved and supported for 17 years or more. It's family-owned and run by a mom, pop, and son. It stocks items I would much rather buy in person than from an online source.

Now, these owners. I'm not going to say they weren't eccentric (or Republicans) before they tripped and fell into the Fox News wormhole. I knew that small business owners frequently vote Republican because of tax issues. But 10 years ago, these people would not have displayed the xenophobic, racist anxieties that they are displaying today.

I didn't even have to go to the store to discover the sea change. Today I was reading on my porch when the mom of the business called me. I have her in my phone as "Mom."

She wanted me to be her co-author, and she sketched an idea that she thought would make a great t.v. series. It was so loathsome that I have no doubt it would be a fantastic hit with the people out there who refuse to be vaccinated because "freedom."

When I asked her where she got her idea for the series, she said, "The news." Note that she knows me well enough that she didn't say the "F" word. But I already knew the answer before I posed the question.

A fellow customer just told me that this business now has Fox News running in the back room all day every day. This would do wonders for the store if it wasn't located smack dab in the bleeding heart of Liberal Land. As it is, I don't think many customers will agree with the sentiments.

I counted this family as best friends and visited their emporium frequently, up until four years ago, when my visits fell off sharply. Now the visits will end. I would rather not see them at all than see them parroting the Fox News hard-liners. This makes me very, very sad.

But OH WELL. Tomorrow, while the business celebrates its 40th anniversary with a lawn party, I will be 30 miles away, doing a LARP with people I don't even know!

Shedding a shell, growing a new one, knowing that a lot of good will be left behind.