Mayday Fesitvals!

(Note, my intention was to post this last Sunday! Also, we now have clean drinking water!)

There is no place we'd rather be today than Minneapolis, to celebrate the largest mayday festival in the U.S. and possibly in the world! We hosted a brunch this weekend for all of our Minneapolis friends, so as to be in solidarity with the energy building around Powderhorn park today. One of our friends, who will remain anonymous, had never been to the Minneapolis festival (!!!), but said that Mayday festival was applauded this week, in an MIT newsletter he received, as being the best in the country. For the brunch we ate fresh asparagus and duck and chicken eggs from Z's farm; everything else, even the bacon and mimosas, paled in comparison to the first asparagus of the year.

We also attended Jamaica Plain's version of mayday: the Wake up the Earth festival. There was a parade, but it only lasted 17 minutes (!!!) and a huge music festival at the corridor park that stretches above much of the orange line subway. I was sufficiently overwhelmed by the number of music acts going on simultaneously, so we sat by a Bread and Puppet show in one corner of the park. The actors and puppets and music were so familiar in their Minneapolis HOBT -influenced design (or likely HOBT was originally influenced by B&P?) that the 30 minute hard-to-hear show was only a tease for what we are missing in Mpls! I wish the most fantastic weather upon Powderhorn this weekend - sun! Sun! SUn! SUN! SUN! SUN!

Also, I can't help but point out the irony in the HOBT Mayday theme from 2 years ago (?), which focused on fresh water shortages and privatization of water in developing nations - because the entire Boston metro area (aprox 2 million people) is currently without clean drinking water. All bottled water was sold out within a couple hours of the announcement that a 10 foot diameter water main cracked and broke (it was only installed in 2002), cutting off Boston from its main water source and from all treated water sources. Even for a 'developed' nation and a city surrounded by water, it doesn't take much for us to realize how vulnerable we are to water shortages. We are currently under a boil water order for all water consumption, even for pets.