I have been hearing about the school for several years, and a friend of mine taught blacksmithing there in the past. Since I’m interested in the old ways of doing things, having a widely renowned folk school in my vicinity is a good thing.
I’ll be honest. I was a disappointed in the festival. It turned out to be a big arts and crafts fair, and the arts and crafts being sold were not much different than those sold at any other arts and crafts festival that I’ve ever been to. There were artsy things and crafty things made of wood, stone, clay, fiber, glass and metal. Don’t get me wrong. Many of the wares were quite clever, and I appreciate the talent required to make them, but how many walking sticks, wooden cups, clay bowls, alpaca knit shawls, troll carvings and dream catchers do you really need?
To be fair, I’m not really an arts and crafts festival type of guy (as you may have guessed). But then I also hate petting zoos and baby panda exhibits. Furthermore, I’m not very artistic. The fact is that I’m challenged to sharpen a pencil. Every project I ever tried to make in high school shop class ended up as an ashtray. Even my project in the electronics shop class ended up being an ashtray. I’d like to think that shows a lot of creativity on my part, but what it really shows is that I have the artistic talent of a banana slug. So before you get upset by this post, consider the source.
Part of my disappointment was that I was expecting something more pioneer-ish and less artsy-fartsy at the fall festival. I was hoping to see demonstrations on things like hog butchering, flint-knapping, skinning and tanning, barn building, and making snares and traps. You know, mountain man-type stuff.
All fun aside, the John C. Campbell Folk School is a great asset and resource to have in this area. It’s another one of those things that make this neck of the woods unique. The school offers hundreds of classes throughout the year. Some of them are more to my taste like blacksmithing, woodworking, and working with leather. You owe it to yourself to check out the following link to find out what the school has to offer. https://www.folkschool.org/
While at the festival I saw a lot of people walking around who looked and dressed like old hippies. It was like one of the lost tribes of Timothy Leary or the Woodstock Re-enactors Club had descended on the festival. I assumed that most of them were exhibitors, but some of them may have been folks who came to see the festival. The sight of them was causing me to have flashbacks to my flashbacks of life in the late 60s. You just don’t see a lot of tie-dyed shirts these days. It was groovy, man. I don’t know whether some of these people were original hippy-generation hippies. I do know that there were several women who should reconsider their decision to burn their bras.
I also saw a number of people walking around who looked like they wandered over from a renaissance fair. I have no idea what that was all about. I’m pretty sure that the original pioneer folk in this area did not dress like peasants, wenches and jesters from the Middle Ages.
We wandered behind one of the buildings and came upon a parking area where many of the exhibiters parked. Almost every vehicle had one or more stickers on it urging people to save the whales or stop fracking or coexist. I think I may have even seen an old McGovern sticker.
Permit me the following aside. While I appreciate the sentiment behind a coexist bumper sticker, I think the message is unrealistically idealistic in this age of terroristic ideologies and mostly wasted here in the United States. I suggest that whoever hands those stickers out needs to go over to Iraq and try to hand out a few around a mosque or, better yet, go to the northern provinces of Pakistan and distribute some of them at the first madrasas school they come to. That may cause a quick reassessment of the message. I’d love to live in a world where all coexist, but until that happens I’m more of the waste ‘em all school of thought.
Anyway, back to the bumper stickers I saw at the folk festival. I got to wondering why artsy/crafty people always seem to be into peace, love and organic foods. How come you never see a Prius with a bumper sticker that says “Support Big Oil” or “Eat More Meat” or “The U.S. Needs Nuclear Energy” or even “Romney/Ryan?” I think the next time I go to a folk festival I’m going to wear a t-shirt that says something like “I work at Monsanto and I’m proud of it” or “Bring Back Profiling” just to see what sort of reaction I’ll get.
Maybe I’m stereotyping the arts and crafts crowd. Patton, one of the most aggressive military commanders we ever had, wrote poetry and had an artsy/fartsy side to him. One of the best city commissioners I ever worked with was an artist by trade. Maybe the fact she was originally from Texas has something to do with it. It’s something worth pondering.
Well, there you have it―my visit to the folk festival. I’m sure that was exciting. Maybe in the next post I’ll regale you with an account of my visit to Walmart.
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