another year....

Well, I'm winning the fight over the post-fest cold and blues.
It was a great weekend in all- some of the BEST music to date. And the workshops that ran were all really well attended. We joke about people converting to the cult of SVFF... but it's true, the community wins people over.

Here are a few review/links

http://andthehitsjustkeeponcomin.blogspot.com/2010/09/shelter-valley-folk-festival-2010-we.html

http://http://www.facebook.com/Elbowmarie#!/video/video.php?v=465499515378&ref=mf

http://www.facebook.com/Elbowmarie#!/album.php?aid=527737&id=695855383&ref=mf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheltervalley

too lazy to embed them in something pretty today.

Last year I felt like I was too busy and missed the festival. This year I was busier, but calmer- I felt like I knew what I was doing, and knew (somewhat) what to expect. The difference in attitude made a huge difference. I even went into it knowing full well of my tendency to control every piece- and fighting my urges... allowed things to unfold.
My internal dialogue chanted "in a hundred years, it's not going to matter- people won't notice if all the paint brushes weren't in matching containers, or that the workshop speaker didn't do x, y,z... all that will remain is a blip on wikipedia (if that still exists). An entry that will read "Shelter Valley Folk Festival was (is) an incredible space, a leader in the push for community, arts and fine music."
That little pep talk changed everything.
Even when the weather got so bad, so dangerous, that we had to close down the villages.

villageS.

all of them.

sigh.

I'm sad about that. Sad that all the hard work from the past year was just shelved. And there really wasn't anything we could do about it. One of our artists lost $2000 in pottery to a gust of wind that knocked over one of her shelving units. The stage in the family village got knocked down in the wind, the tents started to come apart... making the whole space unsafe. We closed that area down for a few hours, then ran partial programming outside the gate in the main field... children hula hooping to the main stage music.. it was beautiful with the clouds racing above them.... The main village tents had to be torn down- after searching the county for extra re-bar and rope- it wasn't enough. The tents couldn't take the strain of the wind. So we made the decision to take them down, rather than lose them or risk injury.

This year I feel like I've grown into the role better- I made decisions and asked people to support me in them.. rather than stand there helplessly as things happened around me. So I feel really good about that. I'm just waiting for the sadness... grieving? to pass.