It was a holiday weekend in the US as well as in the UK – I think this is the only holiday besides Christmas and New Year where the dates coincide.
In England the festivities were originally Whitsun (Pentacost) but it doesn’t have any special significance now except that in certain rural areas (like where I used to live) there is altogether too much Morris Dancing, fiddle playing and beer drinking. The holiday no longer even has a name – which confuses Americans. They want to know what it’s for and are puzzled by the answer that it is just a bank holiday.
In America, the last Monday in May is a patriotic day – like many holidays here. On this one fallen soldiers are remembered. When I walked past the churchyard yesterday I saw that many of the graves, newly tended, had little American flags stuck into the ground beside fresh flowers. If there was some ceremony to mark this private duty I missed it.
The weekend, also the unofficial start to summer, was the first of the seasonal farmers’ markets on the island, and the artists’ studio tour. The market was pretty low key – I suppose the cold spring means not much produce is ready yet. The fire department sponsored a stall for the “Disaster Preparation Committee” with their motto, “Preparation Prevents Panicky Poor Performance”. A note in this month’s community newsletter says the Committee is “getting out of the Winter Blahs”, which I guess is comforting to know.
I didn’t visit as many of the artists’ studios (there were 15) as I planned, but I did see a demonstration of raku pottery and dropped in on a display of computer generated art with wine tasting from the Island winery (no prizes for which of the two was a stronger draw).
Sadly, I couldn’t find the place where they were offering to spin your dog or cat’s hair while you wait, but anyway, Fluffy recently had a haircut and didn’t have any to spare (if only I had known about this opportunity sooner) and Eloise already thinks I am the enemy without any attempts to harvest her fur.
I finished up my tour at the Permit Queen’s studio where she and the Headstone Carver were showing their work along with a young woman who made wooden earrings, boxes, lamps and wine stoppers. It was late in the day by then and there weren’t a lot of customers, so when the Headstone Carver wandered off the three of us fell to chatting about creative energy – or, to put it more simply, the urge to make things. Since, though our ages ranged thirty years or more, we are all mothers, that pretty quickly led to talking about making the most important thing we had made – babies – which led to a change of subject altogether.
The young artist has one child, a normal healthy little girl of four, who was delivered at 23 weeks. Doctors gave the baby about a three per cent chance of survival. Because the mother was really poor – instead of moderately poor and uninsured – the state covered about a million dollars worth of medical care, from the emergency helicopter ride to get her off the island for delivery to paying for gas and overnight expenses so she could visit her baby during the four months she spent in hospital. If they hadn’t been on that program, she said, they would have been paying that debt their whole life and then passing it on to their daughter.
The artist mentioned that she was half Indian, from the Makah Tribe. I asked whether that was why she got on the health program, but she said no, it had nothing to do with it, she got on simply because she had no money.
She only ever noticed one piece of special treatment on account of being half Native American, and when I asked her what that was, she replied that every year on Thanksgiving the federal government sends her a turkey.
I guess it doesn’t quite make up for mass murder and grand theft real estate, but it is an interesting idea. I’m trying to imagine the Committee that set this up, and what its motto might be: Festive Fowl Fosters Fillial Feeling?
Meanwhile, summer rules until Labor Day.
