By Jennifer Cutting
Oh Lord, be with us when we sail
Upon the lonely deep,
Our guard when on the silent deck
The midnight watch we keep.
And help us to remember
All the times securely kept
When, after the tempest,
The waves lay down and slept.
O give us light, direct our course,
Until our hearts renew,
Let not the dark shadows obscure
The stars from our view.
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We spent a very nice, very warm afternoon at the Washington Folk Festival at Glen Echo Park. We arrived early so we would have time to look at the pottery in the yurts and visit the craft displays, where there are always fabulous tie-dyes and beautiful handmade jewelry, before going to the main tent where the festival opens, where we saw the Rockville High School Pipe Band march and perform before Ocean Orchestra took the stage. They played several favorites, including "T'was on One April Morning," "Neptune Reel," "Summer Will Come Round Again," the Green Man song, a song about the sun to the tune of "General Taylor," and "Waves," which is my favorite of Jennifer Cutting's post-Songs for the Night Sea Journey songs and I haven't heard it in a couple of years now. They also had Stephen Winick come on to sing a song in Manx Gaelic and the Foggy Bottom Morris Men performed with them, so it was a great set.
A piper greets visitors arriving at Glen Echo Park for the Washington Folk Festival.
Pottery on display outside one of the park's yurts.
Ocean Orchestra opened the festival...
...where they were joined by the Foggy Bottom Morris Men.
The Green Man appeared with them as well.
Zan McLeod, on mandolin between Jennifer Cutting on keyboard and Cheryl Hurwitz on fiddle, played later at the festival with Carey Creed, another local musician I like. Lisa Moscatiello is on lead vocals here, with fellow former New St. George member Rico Petrucelli on bass. Steve Winick is providing percussion with one of those metal egg shakers. We've seen the drummer and the British guitarist with them twice now, but I keep forgetting their names!
Glen Echo Park used to be an amusement park with roller coasters and a swimming pool, but now the remaining structures are used as an artists' colony.
Here are the Morris Men performing between the craft show in the Bumper Car Pavilion and the Spanish Ballroom behind the picnic area.
We brought a picnic and ate lunch under the tent, then walked around the festival some more -- Andrea Hoag and some other musicians were playing Swedish music on the Cuddle Up stage when Ocean finished, and we visited the House of Musical Traditions tent and watched the Morris dancers perform by the Spanish Ballroom. Eventually the kids demanded to go home so they could go to the pool before it rained (which it only did briefly), so we dropped them off, then went to the food store. We had been talking about the Black Sox scandal with the kids after watching The Great Gatsby because of the line about fixing the Series, so in the evening we watched Eight Men Out, which I hadn't seen easily in a decade -- I had completely forgotten that Charlie Sheen and David Strathairn were in the movie, I mostly remembered John Cusack and Christopher Lloyd. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly since I hadn't seen old Comiskey Park since they year they tore it down, which was also the year we moved to Chicago for grad school.
The Friday Five: Superpowers
1. If you could turn invisible, what would you do with this ability? I want to say sneak into diplomatic conferences and trick world leaders into peace and cooperation, but that seems so unlikely right now that I'd probably just sneak onto planes and boats and see the world.
2. If you could fly, how would you do it? Wings? Rocket pack? Purely under your own power, like Superman? Purely under my own power, no encumbrances.
3. If you could transform into other people, look however you wanted, how would you choose to look, or who would you turn into? I don't know what to say to this except that I might try being tall just for a change.
4. If you could turn into an animal, which animal would it be? A dolphin, assuming it lived somewhere we haven't wrecked its habitat, or a bird, with the same caveat. Or else my cat, who is very spoiled.
5. If you had superpowers, would you use them to become a vigilante superhero, fighting crime? Based on the latest Batman and Iron Man franchise developments, I don't think I have the stomach for it. I'd rather become a lawyer superhero or something.
Fannish5: Which five canons would you want to live in, and why?
1. Harry Potter. Even forgetting the awesome flying and time-turning, it'd be worth it for "Scourgify" alone.
2. Doctor Who. Not with the Doctor, whom I am convinced is bad luck; I just want the TARDIS. And I'd happily settle for being Sarah Jane Smith's neighbor.
3. Star Trek. I don't want to live full time on a starship, I need plants and pets around me, but I'd love to live on the united Earth of that era.
4. Bookworld. I want Thursday Next's career so badly. Though I'd take any menial job the Council of Genres might offer me.
5. The West Wing. Throughout the Bush years, I would have been willing to have Martin Sheen play Jed Bartlet in the White House while Bush played himself on a sitcom about how not to be President of the United States.
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