Chicago Gaelic Park Irish Fest 2009

Attended my... 9th? maybe 10th Gaelic Park Irish fest this past weekend.
Found it soon after moving to the area, when we spotted a flier in a window of a store near our house.

four days, three stages of live music, beer tents, many varied food booths, a tent full of retailers, and free midway rides.
All this for a not-unreasonable price of $15 per person, per day.

My god, how can you go wrong with THAT?

Well, you can host such an event while spending as little money as possible.
You can stop paying for bands once they start to get popular.
You can, by and large, only book acts that are eager to play Chicago for the first time, or who don't have much in the way of travel expenses, IE - local bands.

You can rent or buy the cheapest possible folding chairs, and then just keep using 'em year after year until they all break and/or someone gets hurt....

Like I did, last year, while holding my (At the time) 9-month old daughter.

"Ah, but you've gone back year after year, whiner. you're not telling the whole story."

Ok.

Back in the day...

...the beer was sold in small-ish plastic pitchers. $5 would buy you your own, say, quart of miller lite. A couple of those, and you're diggin' on the midway rides, and in a more receptive mood in relation to whatever music was put in front of you.
"This is the best band ever!!!! Let's go ride the Matterhorn again!"

...You'd have friends, local and more that would come into town, childless like you, and you'd do what a couple thousand other people did over the holiday weekend. turn it into a big party.

...Every town, village, and municipality in the midwest did not host their own irish festival, thus making it easier for the decent bands to get gigs elsewhere...
Combo of beer and lack of competition introduced me to a couple of my very favority bands to see live, Great Big Sea and The Clumsy Lovers. Also afforded us opportunities to see the Young Dubliners, Black 47, The Elders, the Fenians, and various other good bands that know how to combine rock and roll and traditional celtic music.

So we'd brave one extreme weather situation after another, one year flooding, another year freezing cold, the next year scorching hot, and we'd go. And if some years I had to engage the 4WD in my jeep, just to get out of the parking lot at the end of the day, that was just a cool, mud flinging bonus.

Now.....
...We have a child.
...Friends aren't coming into town for the party anymore. Many of them have kids, too. or the single ones have gotten married, and don't see the need for these kind of adventures anymore.
We've grown up, apparently.
Dammit.
...Beer's still $5, but comes in a 12 oz cup.
...Quality of music's gone way down hill. We used to have to pick the best day out of 4 good ones, now we search for the one that sounds like it has more promise than the others.
"Pictures of the bands playing on Monday are not all of a bunch of old people.... a couple of 'em have websites...."


And one of their cheap-ass, as-old-as-I-am plastic folding chairs DID collapse while I was sitting on it, last year. And not just cuz I'm large, there were larger folks sitting everywhere.
And I WAS holding my infant at the time.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking at the ceiling of the tent, laying in wet gravel, still holding my daughter, who didn't seem too traumatized by the experience. The fact that I instinctively held on to her, and she was not lying in a mute heap 10 feet away, injured, made me feel really good about my parenting skills, and my dedication to her well-being. I knew I loved her, and would do anything to keep her safe, but there it was, actual proof.

MY dad was standing there, staring at me with a horrified look.
"You ok?" said my retired fire-fighter dad, in full-on firefighter rescue guy mode.
"I don't know yet" I said quietly, still holding my child aloft by her armpits. I indicated the baby. He took her.
She smiled at him.
I slowly stood up, and realized I had drawn a crowd.
Also realized that nothing was broken, and that I had kicked over the stroller as I went down, sending beers flying.
One of the bystanders pointed to where I landed, and said "you're lucky."
I looked to where he was pointing.
There, literally an inch from where my skull landed, sticking up out of the ground, was a large, steel, tent stake. If I had landed one inch from where I did, I would have been dead, or paralyzed, or lucky to get off with just a minor skull fracture.
I eventually stopped shaking, and walked around a little bit to get away from the well-meaning crowd, while my dad held his unharmed granddaughter, who was by this time clapping along with the music.
I replaced the beers I had kicked across the tent. I fielded the "holy sh*t are you ok, what happened?" questions from my wife, and moved on.

And we were back there again this year. It was 60 and rainy, a forecast far worse than predicted, and bad enough to cause our friends to cancel, turning their car around en route and going back to their house.
The potentially not-crappy bands were... pretty crappy. And my daughter had no interest in the music at all this year, nor in spending any time in the tents.
Maybe if the bands were decent.....

We spent the afternoon shuffling back and forth between the merry go round, the petting zoo which also offered pony rides, and the tent containing various irish breeds of dogs.
every so often, we'd try to spend some time listening to one of the boring bands, while waiting out a rain shower.
I drank a $5 beer in a plastic cup, quickly so as not to have it diluted too much by rain water.
We did NOT get our $15 per adult worth of fun, though my 21 month old thought the animals were swell. And it was pretty cool watching her march up to an Irish Wolfhound, one of the biggest dogs god made, and just give it a big hug. My god, she's fearless.

And we'll probably go next year, if we're around, law of diminishing returns be damned. We'll bundle up if forecast calls for it; wear shoes we won't miss; pack an umbrella AND sunscreen; and maybe, like this year, my daughter's enjoyment of all parts NOT related to irish music will almost be enough to make it worth our while, should the band line up suck, the weather not cooperate, and the friends cancel.

I read today where someone has compiled a list of 15 of the most recession-proof consumer products.

The punch lines associated with this list are, to be honest, so easy and so numerous that my brain locked up, like when too many people are trying to buy tix on-line at the same time.....

In no order, here's a sample from the list.

Mac and Cheese
Spam
Chocolate
Lipstick
Fishing gear
condoms
laxatives
stomach relief meds (Tums and such)
Guns
running shoes
Cheap Wine (further clarified to be "inexpensive wine" which successfully removes the image of MD 20/20 or Wild Irish Rose from my head, and replaces it with any bottle of wine that still needs a corkscrew, but can be purchased for under $8)

"SAMPLE" is my way of saying I don't remember all fifteen items.

Where to start.....Combine Mac and Cheese and Spam, and a bottle of inexpensive domestic wine.... What color goes with Spam and Mac & Cheese, Red or White? I'd guess a white, but good luck finding one that heralds how well it complements....spam.

You'll need the tums for later, when you wake up in the middle of the night with your upper abdomen on fire.
Which is too bad, cuz you and your mate became amorous after drinking the inexpensive wine, and had 15 minutes of carnal bliss, while still being sober enough to take necessary precautions.

You then drift off to a contented sleep, not expecting to be awoken by indigestion three hours later.

By the way, if you eat enough spam...you won't need laxatives. Please consult a physician before attempting this cure.

If more people owned guns, fewer people would need to buy high end running shoes to motivate themselves to run.
Sadly, article did not highlight a exponential growth in shooting lessons, target practice, etc.

The list, without comment, is pretty humorous, and most of the punchlines were funnier in my head, so I'll dispense with the humour now.

Had someone tell me the other day that make up in general, is recession proof, that women will continue to spend the $$$ on make up, lipstick, nail polish, hair care products, regardless of how tight money becomes. Kinda makes women sound a bit shallow, and the person who told me this is herself a woman.
I'm not sure I agree with her. At the very least, many women will downgrade as money tightens. Bye bye, high end dept. store cosmetic counter, hello CVS.

Fishing gear - nearest and dearest to my heart. Article said that not only is sale of fishing gear and tackle on the rise, but fishing trips are on the rise as well.

Fishing has always been a cheap way to really relax. If more people realize this, and more folks also realize it's a cheap, fun morning out for the whole family and a way to spend QT with their kids, there's no downside. And you can even pick up dinner while you're out if you're lucky, or not finicky about what you eat.
So props to all the new fishermen, as long as they don't all decide to fish where I fish, and as long as they all pick up after themselves.
Which, by the way, will never happen.

So expect a similar increase in the # of empty worm containers, beer bottles and crushed cigarette packs, coming to a river bank near you. We call the "keep-what-ever-we-catch-regardless-of-legality-don't-own-a-fishing-license-screw-picking-up-after-ourselves" folks bucketheads.
Guys who really enjoy fishing for the sake of fishing, guys who "Get it" hate the bucketheads, and....you should, too.

Finally, from a red-blooded american guy standpoint, I'm a big fan of the combo of chocolate, wine and lipstick. It just smacks of potential and promise.

Mississippi Gulf Coast - part 1 - 3.75 years after Katrina

Sitting in my M.I.L's office looking out at the Gulf.
I remarked three years ago that her view had improved, thanks to Katrina.

It's not changed much in three years.

For those that didn't know, her home was one of thousands completely leveled by the storm surge caused by the high winds of Katrina. All that was left were the wood floors and the in-ground pool. The pool was how they figured out where her house used to be.

You see footage of volcano-caused tidal waves hitting an unsuspecting third world country, on various cable channels? That's pretty much what happened here, in the good ol' USofA.

However, levies broke, flooding a portion of a larger city 85 minutes to the west, and most folks didn't hear much about the MS coast, in comparison.

We went berry picking this evening, as wild blackberries are at their peak right now.
We got a couple of big bowls, went out the front door, and..... walked to the lot next door.
We've seen folks stopping behind the house, up the street, etc, off and on all day, and finally figured out what they were doing.

Y' see, there have only been three houses rebuilt on the block in the 3.75 years since Katrina leveled everything. Nature has a way of reclaiming it's turf, if left alone to do so.

Past trips (post-katrina) have given us a riot of birds of prey, living in the neighborhood, and non-domesticated animal tracks in the sand on the beach nearby.

I'm a fan of nature, so got a kick out of this, while still being saddened by the fact that the area's been so incredibly slow to re-build.

But, dammit, you're supposed to go pick wild berries....in the wild. Not where your neighbor's house used to be.
A couple doors down on the other side of the street, there are 8-10 young fir trees scattered in a loose circle around the foundation of a house. A couple more years, you're going to have a small grove going. There are wild flowers everywhere.

And it's quiet. Really quiet.
Still.

I'm within view of the beach highway, it's not supposed to be this quiet.

Blah, blah. You get the picture.

Went to mass at the roller rink this morning. My church was on the beach, and met the same fate as so many other structures. God's house fared no better than my mother in law's.
Or, ironically, the priests' house, (they live next door, and were the 2nd house to rebuild on the block).

So they worked out a deal with the local knights of columbus, and an out of business roller rink was purchased (my MIL brokered the deal) and converted into a church and class rooms.
Lots of the conversion work was done gratis, by the Sea Bee's. I was down here when it all started, and was amazed by the way that everyone who could, just plain stepped up.

I still think that the removal of the disco ball was short sighted, as it really could have added a certain something to the catholic mass.

My vacation is just starting, there are many more days, and hopefully there will be more to write about.