Art and Aunt Harriet's Chocolate Cake

It's been some time since the last time I logged on here. While nothing major has happened, the world has seemed to swirl around in some sort of warp speed vortex only found in science fiction movies.

Last week, State College celebrated the 39th Annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. My first Arts Fest experience occurred somewhere in my childhood, at least 16 years ago (perhaps the 23rd annual), but it could be more. I don't remember it so well because I was probably bored and hot and wishing I could take my hands out of my pockets, but knowing that I couldn't because if I did, I might brake something and then have to pay for it. I also think that we came up here with our family-friends, the Williams. What I do remember is riding in the car to what seemed to be a very remote location in the midst of hills and green trees.

I have attended Arts Fest three times since then, in 1999, 2001, and again this year. While my first experience eludes my memory, I have loved it every time since then. This year had several highlights:

Last Thursday night, there was a concert on Old Main Lawn featuring Cliff Turner and the Afterburners. I didn't have high hopes for this musical event. If nothing else, these guys seemed old, and they're from Bellefonte, the next town up the street. Don't get me wrong. I like Bellefonte; I work there. I think the people are nice, but I'm a bit of a snob. I found that I consider the population of State College to be intellectually superior (which it may actually be), which I translated to mean that its people have more talent and musical taste. I was WRONG! Cliff Turner's band is not some urban-hillbilly upscale karaoke; they're a phenominally energetic and musically thrilling cover band. I loved them. They encouraged us to dance, and we did, and it was hard to stop. What made the situation even more memorable for me is that I was the only guy in a group of six. Most guys might not object to this, and I don't either. Sometimes, however, if you're the only guy in a group of girls, you feel like you're their gay friend. I wasn't dating any of these women, but I was hanging out and dancing with them. I hope you can at least see how it could feel that way. But the truth is I wasn't the gay friend. I am their straight friend who just happened to be the only guy.

I left Cliff Turner a little downtrodden because I had assumed that I had reached the pinnacle of Arts Fest and that the rest of the weekend would be a bust...it wasn't. Friday night, and I was walking around looking at the art sale, I happened to come across some folks playing the drums and dancing along College Avenue (see the picture at the top). Something amazed me about this. These guys might not have played a very complex rhythm, but they did play together, and together, their beat seemed to change over time, and it was amazing. And then, there was the dancing. As it followed the drums, all I wanted to do was join in with them and be able to move my body in such a powerful way.

And then more fun happened. Saturday, my family came from Downingtown to celebrate my birthday. We had lunch at Spats and looked at everything around town. We saw great artwork, enjoyed people watching, and got hot. It was a blast, and I loved having them around. In the early evening, we joined some of my friends to eat a cake that my mom had made. This was no ordinary cake. This was my Aunt Harriet's Chocolate Cake. In my opinion, this cake is the best example of chocolate cake ever made. It is the standard by which all other cakes are judged, and my mom made the best one she had ever made. Delicious.

When all that was over, a large group of us went downtown to experience the fest one more time. The planned highlight of our night was to top it off with the dumping buckets. Let me explain this fantastic contraption. In an effort to allow people to cool off while roaming the Fest, Roaring Spring put up a system of running water that filled perhaps twenty-four brightly colored buckets attached precariously to swinging hinges. As the buckets filled with water, their increasing weight would cause them to topple over, spilling their contents to the floor, all to be recycled and dumped again. Little kids loved it, and I loved watching them try to figure out which bucket would dump next. I actually took a picture of it and considered posting it on here, but I figure their parents wouldn't appreciate pictures of their kids on the internet without their consent. But anyway, we were going to stand under this innundating structure at the end of our night. About 3 minutes before we were to arrive at the buckets, the sky exploded with rain. But, que será será, we were going under the buckets. So, with increasing rain soak, we stood under the buckets, played games under the buckets, and joined the night-owl children in order to have water touch every part of our clothing and bodies. Invigorating.

Since then, I've had my birthday, had a party, and worked for a week. It's been awesome all around.