noelleprice (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} noelleprice) wrote,@ 2006-09-15 22:40:00 |
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Ernesto gets in a parting shot: Wedding on the Farm
Life is funny. Sometimes the longer-standing your plans are, the more likely it is that something will fall through the cracks. My friend Butch, who I met at an open mike in San Diego where neither of us lived at the time (Noelle's Prime Directive: never hesitate to do an open mike in a town not your own... you never know who you might meet...) had been telling me about his upcoming wedding for over a year. He said to save Labor Day weekend as well as a day or two before and after - that it was going to be a big extended party with lots of folk music with guests invited to camp out for the duration. Butch and Christie live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, so when I moved to Louisiana in the meantime, I thought, "All the better! Road trip!" Butch has often pointed out to me that Nashville is only an hour away from them, and that I should consider combining a visit their way with a gig or two in Music City. So I emailed Butch for likely venues and talked to other contacts in Nashville, booked a show for the Tuesday evening after the wedding, and was quite pleased with how the whole thing was coming together. Until I got the official email invitation from Christie, telling me all the information I already knew, and one new little tidbit: the wedding was indeed still to be on Jimmy and Maggie's farm... it just turns out that their farm is in _New Jersey_!!!
Oh boy, that made things a bit more complicated. Apparently my asking about venues hadn't seemed strange to Butch because, as he put it, "well, Nashville _is_ on the way to New Jersey from New Orleans, roughly speaking". As is almost any point south of New York and east of the Mississippi, roughly speaking. Fortunately, the newlyweds-to-be helped me pull the whole thing from the jaws of disaster by pointing me in the direction of a really cheap flight: $120 including taxes for Nashville-Philly round trip. So I drove to Nashville, flew to Philly, and planned to take a train to Trenton, but was kindly picked up along with several other arriving guests by the self-described "Best Available Man", Adam Brodsky. (I hesitate to tell you that I think Adam is a brilliant songwriter, because I am afraid you will then be persuaded to check him out and inevitably think the less of me. Seriously, I promise you that if you possess an ounce of decorum this guy will offend you immediately. I will also attest that he is one hell of a nice guy.)
Those of you who didn't get around to reading my August 27 entry about the odd things one thinks about when one spends hurricane season smack in the middle of the strike zone may want to go back and skim at this point in order to fully appreciate what follows. In it I discuss the internal conflicts that arise from praying and wishing a storm to turn eastward and then when the danger has passed from you suddenly being struck by remorse as you watch the track shift to your friend's town... in Ernesto's case, heading straight for Tampa. I commiserated with my dear friend Lara about this conundrum, and shesaid she was in the same boat... hoping for it to turn further east, but then feeling bad for her friend in Miami. I proposed we could at least hope for it to continue to track even further eastward and maybe break up in the Atlantic. Which is pretty much what it did! Well, that was easy enough now, wasn't it? North Carolina got a bit of a beating, but mostly just heavy rains... Ernesto was down-graded back to a tropical storm from the hurricane status it had achieved on its way into the Gulf. By contrast, had it continued into the Gulf it would have most likely fueled up on the warm waters and escalated into a bigger hurricane.
Funny thing is though, even in such a generally ideal scenario, there are always unforseen consequences. Though it had lost a lot of its power, Ernesto still had one last goal, which was to attend my friends' _outdoor_ wedding. It was the wedding crasher we couldn't throw out. It rained like crazy from the night before the wedding all through the next day and finally cleared just in time for a campfire and bedtime. And then the weather was absolutely gorgeous from then on out. But the wedding itself - what an adventure! Tremendous credit to all involved in putting the tent back up that crashed overnight, and keeping the tents up throughout the ceremony (timed precisely with the heaviest deluge and fiercest winds), and in general keeping spirits up and logistics on the preferred side of the disaster line. Apparently a tree branch, itself as big as your average tree, cracked and fell right next to the portapotties in the middle of the ceremony... but the wind and rain were so loud we didn't even hear it happen (except the one guest who was in the portapotty at the time!!!) It was a wonderful wedding in spite of it all, which is a real testimony to the character of the bride and groom, organizers and helpers, family, and guests. Here are a few pictures that capture the mood...
The resilient couple...
The Best Available Man raises his toast and drops his umbrella...
The father of the bride, whose toast was in the form of a very witty poem. Of the lines I remember, this is my favorite, written to describe his response when Christie came home one day determined to learn to play the hammer dulcimer, which she now plays quite incredibly: "... her birthday wish she did stammer - a stringed box, as big as an ox... and you hit it with a hammer!"
The wedding and the days that followed were a feast of music... swedish nickelharpists, an irish folksinger, various dulcimers (hammer and otherwise), fiddle players, mandolins, drums, bagpipes, and of course more guitars and singer/songwriters than you could shake a stick at. Over the next three days, the gathering evolved/devolved into a waxing and waning song circle punctuated by an excess of fabulous food that appeared in waves. And having shared a room with ten people for the last several months, sleeping in my tent _by myself_ in the open air provided me the best rest I'd had in a long time. I was pretty much in heaven. Thanks so much to Jimmy and Maggie for their hospitality, and to all the other wonderful people who were strangers to me when I arrived who I now consider friends. Rarely have I felt so entirely welcome while having done so little to have earned it.
Life is funny. Sometimes the longer-standing your plans are, the more likely it is that something will fall through the cracks. My friend Butch, who I met at an open mike in San Diego where neither of us lived at the time (Noelle's Prime Directive: never hesitate to do an open mike in a town not your own... you never know who you might meet...) had been telling me about his upcoming wedding for over a year. He said to save Labor Day weekend as well as a day or two before and after - that it was going to be a big extended party with lots of folk music with guests invited to camp out for the duration. Butch and Christie live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, so when I moved to Louisiana in the meantime, I thought, "All the better! Road trip!" Butch has often pointed out to me that Nashville is only an hour away from them, and that I should consider combining a visit their way with a gig or two in Music City. So I emailed Butch for likely venues and talked to other contacts in Nashville, booked a show for the Tuesday evening after the wedding, and was quite pleased with how the whole thing was coming together. Until I got the official email invitation from Christie, telling me all the information I already knew, and one new little tidbit: the wedding was indeed still to be on Jimmy and Maggie's farm... it just turns out that their farm is in _New Jersey_!!!
Oh boy, that made things a bit more complicated. Apparently my asking about venues hadn't seemed strange to Butch because, as he put it, "well, Nashville _is_ on the way to New Jersey from New Orleans, roughly speaking". As is almost any point south of New York and east of the Mississippi, roughly speaking. Fortunately, the newlyweds-to-be helped me pull the whole thing from the jaws of disaster by pointing me in the direction of a really cheap flight: $120 including taxes for Nashville-Philly round trip. So I drove to Nashville, flew to Philly, and planned to take a train to Trenton, but was kindly picked up along with several other arriving guests by the self-described "Best Available Man", Adam Brodsky. (I hesitate to tell you that I think Adam is a brilliant songwriter, because I am afraid you will then be persuaded to check him out and inevitably think the less of me. Seriously, I promise you that if you possess an ounce of decorum this guy will offend you immediately. I will also attest that he is one hell of a nice guy.)
Those of you who didn't get around to reading my August 27 entry about the odd things one thinks about when one spends hurricane season smack in the middle of the strike zone may want to go back and skim at this point in order to fully appreciate what follows. In it I discuss the internal conflicts that arise from praying and wishing a storm to turn eastward and then when the danger has passed from you suddenly being struck by remorse as you watch the track shift to your friend's town... in Ernesto's case, heading straight for Tampa. I commiserated with my dear friend Lara about this conundrum, and shesaid she was in the same boat... hoping for it to turn further east, but then feeling bad for her friend in Miami. I proposed we could at least hope for it to continue to track even further eastward and maybe break up in the Atlantic. Which is pretty much what it did! Well, that was easy enough now, wasn't it? North Carolina got a bit of a beating, but mostly just heavy rains... Ernesto was down-graded back to a tropical storm from the hurricane status it had achieved on its way into the Gulf. By contrast, had it continued into the Gulf it would have most likely fueled up on the warm waters and escalated into a bigger hurricane.
Funny thing is though, even in such a generally ideal scenario, there are always unforseen consequences. Though it had lost a lot of its power, Ernesto still had one last goal, which was to attend my friends' _outdoor_ wedding. It was the wedding crasher we couldn't throw out. It rained like crazy from the night before the wedding all through the next day and finally cleared just in time for a campfire and bedtime. And then the weather was absolutely gorgeous from then on out. But the wedding itself - what an adventure! Tremendous credit to all involved in putting the tent back up that crashed overnight, and keeping the tents up throughout the ceremony (timed precisely with the heaviest deluge and fiercest winds), and in general keeping spirits up and logistics on the preferred side of the disaster line. Apparently a tree branch, itself as big as your average tree, cracked and fell right next to the portapotties in the middle of the ceremony... but the wind and rain were so loud we didn't even hear it happen (except the one guest who was in the portapotty at the time!!!) It was a wonderful wedding in spite of it all, which is a real testimony to the character of the bride and groom, organizers and helpers, family, and guests. Here are a few pictures that capture the mood...
The resilient couple...
The Best Available Man raises his toast and drops his umbrella...
The father of the bride, whose toast was in the form of a very witty poem. Of the lines I remember, this is my favorite, written to describe his response when Christie came home one day determined to learn to play the hammer dulcimer, which she now plays quite incredibly: "... her birthday wish she did stammer - a stringed box, as big as an ox... and you hit it with a hammer!"
The wedding and the days that followed were a feast of music... swedish nickelharpists, an irish folksinger, various dulcimers (hammer and otherwise), fiddle players, mandolins, drums, bagpipes, and of course more guitars and singer/songwriters than you could shake a stick at. Over the next three days, the gathering evolved/devolved into a waxing and waning song circle punctuated by an excess of fabulous food that appeared in waves. And having shared a room with ten people for the last several months, sleeping in my tent _by myself_ in the open air provided me the best rest I'd had in a long time. I was pretty much in heaven. Thanks so much to Jimmy and Maggie for their hospitality, and to all the other wonderful people who were strangers to me when I arrived who I now consider friends. Rarely have I felt so entirely welcome while having done so little to have earned it.
