From: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org (lucy-list-digest) To: lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: lucy-list-digest V6 #125 Reply-To: lucy-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk lucy-list-digest Monday, July 26 2004 Volume 06 : Number 125 In this issue: [lucy-list] general post-Falcon Ridge assessment ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:04:16 -0400 From: Benay Bubar Subject: [lucy-list] general post-Falcon Ridge assessment I have just returned from Falcon Ridge, utterly exhausted...Lucy set lists and more detailed commentary will hopefully come when I have time (and when I manage to decode what I scribbled on the now waterstained and crumpled napkin that stood in for my set list pad ("Lucy sang 'The Rel Thneed?' Oh, OK...The Red Thread...") Just a couple of general comments for now... It was, on the physical survival level, a brutal Falcon Ridge. On Friday, as my group arrived, I could almost see my hopes receding, my half-whispered prayers to the weather gods shifting from "Please let it be sunny and pleasant this weekend" to "OK, black clouds, but please let it just be overcast and not rain" to "OK, rain, but please don't let it rain any harder than this" to "OK, pouring rain...just please don't let the tent blow away!" The rain began on Friday morning as my group was arriving at the festival, and it continued for hours with a vengeance...we huddled in the wind-buffeted tent, dripping, staring out the tent screen and at one another, bemoaning the fact that the manufacturer of our "waterproof" rain gear had neglected to design it to hold up against such a deluge as this. No cars were allowed up the hill, so we had to drag all our belongings up on foot from the parking lot. The ground, everywhere, was a sea of oozing mud inches deep..."wet" and "mud-spattered" ceased to be worthy descriptors, as they described everything and everyone. The rain, luckily, became intermittent just in time for Friday's music, and it stopped by the end of the night, though not early enough for there to be any sun to dry anything or anyone off. We slept, wet, in our tents, and woke to a Saturday of clearing skies...soon followed by blazing heat. After having been nearly drowned, we were then utterly baked for two days. Sunscreen of any SPF, which we'd only barely retrieved from the car after Friday's downpour, was not really a match for the relentless heat...which perhaps was nothing record-breaking, but outdoors it certainly felt that way. Sunburn set in with malicious swiftness. In short, this Falcon Ridge was one viewed by some of us through a haze of discomfort. It was necessary to cultivate a zenlike detachment, an acceptance of the fact that there was a certain baseline level of physical misery below which one could not seem to go. With the dampness followed by scorching heat, combined with the muscle strain of more than the usual amount of hill-climbing (thanks to those initial supply trips in the rain), it soon became faster and easier to take stock of the body parts that did NOT hurt in some way than those that did. (By weekend's end, I could count only my elbows and my fingers in that list...until one elbow got sunburned too!) It was a weekend when one easily and deeply envied the musicians...not for their talents or the adulation they received, but simply for the fact that they were DRY and in the shade! This was Falcon Ridge 2004, this much-varied misery. But here is what was also Falcon Ridge 2004: Lucy, who practically owned the festival. She was on more stages, at more times, with more other musicians, than anyone else (at least, it seemed that way), and with only a couple of minor exceptions, she never sang the same song twice. Her voice couldn't dry the dampness or keep the sunburn from stinging, but it made those troubles fade to the background and bolstered the soul; despite the trials inherent in camping at Falcon Ridge this year, regular infusions of Lucy's voice were among the things that helped make the place...at least for this weekend...home. ------------------------------ End of lucy-list-digest V6 #125 ******************************* This has been a posting from the Lucy Kaplansky mail list digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe lucy-list-digest" in the body of the message