Florida Family Gathering 2006
I spent a week at the Florida Gathering this year. Mostly spent it hiking around the trails with Lucy (she was one tired doggy and that is not easy to do with a border collie) and never really getting plugged in anywhere. I did help build the seats at Granola Funk but I never made a single show there as it was situated across a swamp and I just wasn't really thinking that I wanted to take a mud swim trying to cross three different log bridges getting there and back in the dark.
The real gathering was over on the Kid Village beach but we didn't find this out until the Saturday before I was headed home. That is where all the kind folks were hiding out. We spent the afternoon hanging out on the beach and the kids were playing in the water and the mama's and the papa's were playing music. The mood was happy, loving and comfortable, this feeling is why I gather.
Some of the workers from the New Orleans relief effort showed up for a few days of reprieve and generally had nothing good to say about what was going on up there. One sister told me she expected the political situation to become dangerous later this summer and the residents will take to the streets as the government essentially is trying to steal thier property, bull doze thier houses and resell the land to the highest bidder. Raise the tax base, it's all about the money and always has been and always will be. Unfortunately for the ninth ward residents, they are being kicked by our government repeatedly after being knocked to the ground by our Mother.
Anyway, back to the gathering, I attended 420 council most days until I decided that I couldn't take the dribble anymore. Same old bitches and no real solutions. The real problem is that you can't tell anyone what to do, you can suggest that if your dog is mean you should leash it but we don't have any real way to deal with someone who just refuses. You can request that there are is no alcohol at the main circle but there is no way to enforce this. So council's just end up being a bitch session with no real solutions.
I am not generally an after dinner main circle girl and didn't make a single one of those and I hear that I really didn't miss anything. Kip was generally disappointed in the drumming and I hear that there was an excess of partying going on at main circle.
A-Camp was of course at it's best but overall, I think they were not so badly behaved. They did have the best campsites on the water but they didn't have front gate and from where we were camped we could bypass them entirely and usually did. I did have friends camped on the other side of them but I would only go visit them in the morning when things were quiet at the drunk block.
To me Gatherings are generally memorable because they are really good and speak to my soul (Kentucky 1999) or really bad (Alexander Springs - 2001) or else they are just not memorable. I would put this years Fl Gathering in the not memorable category. It was a nice gathering, nothing really out of the ordinary bad but nothing out of the ordinary good. What I will most likely remember about this gathering will be the girls who were leading the boys around on leashes. And constantly announcing that they was looking for volunteers be thier slaves. Very strange but all were consenting adults and it didn't appear that anyone was getting hurt. I actually think the boys were rather enjoying it but what do I know, I really enjoy my freedom.
I may also remember it as the Gathering where I learned that I really enjoy hiking. I could fall into the groove and just walk on some of the lessor used trails. It would be just me and Lucy walking along and I could just bliss along at my own pace. I would actually feel a little disappointed when I arrived where I was going or when I approached an area of people, like trade circle. I would feel obligated to stop and be sociable, after all that is why I was there but, I really enjoyed hiking on the back trails that not many people used. Most days I hiked around the entire gathering, taking different trails in then out and trying to make a circle of it. Being a babylonian cubie has put me in very poor physical shape but this gathering gave me a reason to want to go work out daily. It's not exercise, it's training for my next big adventure!
The real gathering was over on the Kid Village beach but we didn't find this out until the Saturday before I was headed home. That is where all the kind folks were hiding out. We spent the afternoon hanging out on the beach and the kids were playing in the water and the mama's and the papa's were playing music. The mood was happy, loving and comfortable, this feeling is why I gather.
Some of the workers from the New Orleans relief effort showed up for a few days of reprieve and generally had nothing good to say about what was going on up there. One sister told me she expected the political situation to become dangerous later this summer and the residents will take to the streets as the government essentially is trying to steal thier property, bull doze thier houses and resell the land to the highest bidder. Raise the tax base, it's all about the money and always has been and always will be. Unfortunately for the ninth ward residents, they are being kicked by our government repeatedly after being knocked to the ground by our Mother.
Anyway, back to the gathering, I attended 420 council most days until I decided that I couldn't take the dribble anymore. Same old bitches and no real solutions. The real problem is that you can't tell anyone what to do, you can suggest that if your dog is mean you should leash it but we don't have any real way to deal with someone who just refuses. You can request that there are is no alcohol at the main circle but there is no way to enforce this. So council's just end up being a bitch session with no real solutions.
I am not generally an after dinner main circle girl and didn't make a single one of those and I hear that I really didn't miss anything. Kip was generally disappointed in the drumming and I hear that there was an excess of partying going on at main circle.
A-Camp was of course at it's best but overall, I think they were not so badly behaved. They did have the best campsites on the water but they didn't have front gate and from where we were camped we could bypass them entirely and usually did. I did have friends camped on the other side of them but I would only go visit them in the morning when things were quiet at the drunk block.
To me Gatherings are generally memorable because they are really good and speak to my soul (Kentucky 1999) or really bad (Alexander Springs - 2001) or else they are just not memorable. I would put this years Fl Gathering in the not memorable category. It was a nice gathering, nothing really out of the ordinary bad but nothing out of the ordinary good. What I will most likely remember about this gathering will be the girls who were leading the boys around on leashes. And constantly announcing that they was looking for volunteers be thier slaves. Very strange but all were consenting adults and it didn't appear that anyone was getting hurt. I actually think the boys were rather enjoying it but what do I know, I really enjoy my freedom.
I may also remember it as the Gathering where I learned that I really enjoy hiking. I could fall into the groove and just walk on some of the lessor used trails. It would be just me and Lucy walking along and I could just bliss along at my own pace. I would actually feel a little disappointed when I arrived where I was going or when I approached an area of people, like trade circle. I would feel obligated to stop and be sociable, after all that is why I was there but, I really enjoyed hiking on the back trails that not many people used. Most days I hiked around the entire gathering, taking different trails in then out and trying to make a circle of it. Being a babylonian cubie has put me in very poor physical shape but this gathering gave me a reason to want to go work out daily. It's not exercise, it's training for my next big adventure!
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