Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

It's raining and I had to carry my dog, Una, to the car because she didn't want to leave this morning. I can't say I don't understand how she feels, because the three and a half hour to four hour drive ahead of me doesn't look so good right now. But that's how life is, for humans and dogs.

I visited my sister in State College, Pennsylvania, for the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts once again, as I did last year and as I try to every year.

On Saturday, I got to town close to 1 p.m., but by the time we got ready and got into town, it was closer to 2 p.m. We stopped on the way to pick up my sister's fiancé's brother and his brother's girlfriend.

Then the group of us walked around and admired the art. Many of the artists were returned from the previous year. There wasn't a whole lot that grabbed my eye or got me excited.

We looked at the schedule but didn't see many bands that interested us. We did watch part of a performance by a band at the Allen Street Stage, The Bullet Parade, who were listed as "indie rock" and whose harmonies sounded off-key.

But while they played, a mime on stilts danced gracefully around the streets, and acted out mini-intrigues, such as leaning against a wall and peering around the corner. We sipped our iced coffees, which we'd got in The Daily Grind, while watching him. I tried for a good picture, which was hard because it was really bright and hard to see the LCD screen on my camera. I eventually got a few.

In Central Parklet, they had some cutouts set up where you could take pictures of yourself in famous paintings.

We also watched a guy working on the traditional sand sculpture, an ambitious work that is different every year.

As we walked past the art booths, we kept running into people that I knew, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. One of them, whose nickname is Dr. Suitcase, didn't recognize me. He thought I was another friend of his who was due to perform on stage later that day. I corrected him, we exchanged a few tidbits of info about what we were up to lately.

One friend had no trouble recognizing me, perhaps because I'd e-mailed her some recent photos. I saw her at the booth next to us, checking out a vase with a fascinated smile on her very familiar face. I hadn't seen her since my Monty Python Society days. I'll call her The Music Teacher, since that is what she's up to these days.

We exchanged hugs and she introduced me to her husband, whose family lives in the State College area. We caught each other up to date a bit, but then I became aware the group was waiting for me, seated on a nearby curb. So we exchanged cell phone numbers, promising to get together on Sunday for lunch while my sister was working.

My sister and I were getting hungry by this point, so we got some prepackaged sushi at McLanahan's. The sushi was good, but they didn't provide enough soy sauce. We all sat at a table under an umbrella at a new plaza on Allen Street and joked around about silly things like getting a dog free with your table (a guy near us had one; why didn't we get one?)

By now, everybody was getting tired of the crowds and the heat, so we drove back to the apartment of my sister's fiancé's brother's girlfriend (confusing, wot?). We hung out there for awhile, petting her cats and talking mostly about cats. Her parents had made her declaw hers because he was scratching the furniture. Her roommate's cat, who was not declawed, went easy on him, fortunately, even when he exuberantly pounced on her head. Without claws, it probably just felt kind of soft.

So after that, we drove back to my sister and her fiancé's place and made dinner, an eggplant casserole that was yummy. We watched A Few Dollars More, which is not the best spaghetti western Clint Eastwood ever did. My sister and I split an Amstel Light, and I fell asleep over the book I was trying to review for Wild Violet.

More from the 2004 Arts Fest:

July 14, 2004 - Festival Family Serendipity

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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