Day 5.169: Wild Goose recap #2 (Friday)

You can read my Thursday recap here.

Friday was a much better day than Thursday for us, although there were some frictions caused by tiredness and heat and the fact that we had rushed the girls down there as soon as school was over for the year.

This is what I did (most are represented in some way in the collage):

I caught the end of a session by Logan Mehl-Laituri about his experience becoming a conscientious-objector while serving in the US Army.  He spoke with great passion and I imagine his book is a fascinating read.

After that I went to a session on Photography and Advocacy.  This was slightly diminished by the sun beating the projector for brightness so we were unable to see the photographs.  Still, it was cool to hear someone talking passionately about photography and film-making making a difference in the world.  How much pressure trying to get a good photo of a photographer though?!

While we were getting lunch, we were thrilled to see some more of Aimee Wilson playing in the Performance Cafe.  Loved it!

I caught a bit of Christine Sine - admitting she loved the hot weather - while keeping the kids company while Exile #2 went to see Frank Shaeffer.

Somehow, I managed to catch some of both Phyllis Tickle telling forgotten Bible stories and Ian Cron on being a post-cynical Christian - both were very engaging and I wish I could have heard more.

My main session for the afternoon was Mike Stavlund talking about Integrating Our Losses.  He is about to publish a book which he basically wrote five years ago - one chapter a week following the death of his baby son.  Echoing words from one of my friends recently, he said that we have to stop trying to assign a hierarchy of loss - "Our heart doesn't know the difference it just experiences loss."  He read sections of his book which were very moving, chaired the discussion of grief and loss in a really lovely way and made me cry reading the lyrics of a song by The Cobalt Season which was based on one of his blog posts during that time (lyrics, audio). It was a beautiful and profound time.

Our evening started with Joy Ike who the program failed to compare with Tori Amos - despite her piano style being wonderfully Tori-esque.  It was an enjoyable set (not so sure about the ukulele, but I didn't begrudge her that!).

Then we headed down to the main stage where Damion Suomi and The Minor Prophets were playing.  Wow - what a lot of energy and cool instrumentation.  Combined with funny but profound songwriting.  Great!  They were followed by Jennifer Knapp who had been so engaging in the mid-afternoon sun last year.  For some reason, it left me a bit cold this year except for the sign-language performer who was excellent.

After that, we made our way back to our tent and I popped in to the Performance Cafe where the captivating Tevyn East was performing her dance-song-drama piece.  We got to see more of it on another occasion, but I'm very sorry I didn't get to see it in its entirety - it was something special.

You can see the photos (currently just first two days) here.