Published on
June 23, 2008 in
daybook.
We spent Saturday at the Wooden Boat Show and Summer Solstice Festival at North House Folk School in Grand Marais.
North House says they teach “traditional Northern crafts,” but I like to describe them as a school of pre-industrial technologies. If you want to start with tree and an axe and end with a house, this is the place. The teachers tend toward pragmatism— in general, if the state of the craft has improved since pioneer days, the teachers embrace the improvements.
I used to participate in the weekly community bread-baking in the wood-fired oven:
The community bakes have mostly disappeared for lack of a quorum of local bread zealots (the foremost of which departed to run Farm and Sparrow outside Asheville, NC).
Summer solstice weekend always includes the Wooden Boat Show (in conjunction with the wonderful Wooden Boat Magazine), the Boats to Tools auction, the Chowder Chow-Down (a dozen or so restaurants each bring their favorite chowder. Ten bucks at the door gets you a bowl, a spoon and a napkin), lots of boat-related seminars, and the Solstice Pageant local and visiting families have spent weeks putting together (the pageant director hails from the storied Bread and Puppet / Heart of the Beast social nexus). Here’s the Flickr set.
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I compounded my third-act despair from earlier this week by spending Thursday and Friday baking instead of writing: My friend and baking idol David Bauer (of the Farm and Sparrow bakery in Marshall, NC) was teaching his “Rustic Breads for the Brick Oven” class at North House, and I was delighted to be able to attend the class and learn (or begin to learn, or begin to begin to learn) some of his techniques.
However:
Despite my best efforts at self-sabotage, I set myself up at the Java Moose for a couple of hours this morning and managed to scribble out the last few scenes. Wonderfully, the characters decided to stage a completely different conclusion than the one I had outlined for them. I like theirs better.
So:
Month One Success! Hurrah!!!
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After missing my Week Two goal last Friday, I was in such a state of pessimism that I didn’t bother setting a carrot for this week: I figured I’d just take what I could get. As things worked out, though, I have just wrapped up the second half of Act 2 and am ready to write the reveal and roll into Act 3 tomorrow. (None of this is a coincidence: Rachel has been taking care of the girls almost full time all week to let me get caught up.)
So: A Friday celebration! Fortunately, there was a ready-made one waiting for us over at North House: A barbecue and contra dance that the girls theoretically slept all afternoon to get rested up for. The beauty and glee that characterize my family life right now are in bizarre contrast to the cynical vulgarity of the Pismo story—but you’ll find out all about that as soon as I can get a decent edit put together.
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We’ve now driven three hundred miles north to Grand Marais Minnesota, to get the girls here in time to help prepare for the annual Solstice Pageant at North House.
I did yesterday’s writing in a wooden gazebo overlooking Lake Superior. Mostly this had the effect of underlining how immune I am to my surroundings when I’m working. For all I knew or cared, I could just as well have been writing in the basement of a chemical factory, or within sight of a recently-burned-over parking lot. Of course, emerging into an absurdly beautiful setting works as a nice surprise and reward when I’m done.
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