A Lewisian Year
May. 1st, 2021 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksPresented in partnership with the Lewisia Communications Board and Lewisia Public Library
Sponsored by The Historical Society
Hello, readers, listeners, and psychic osmosizers! Welcome to A Lewisian Year, a monthly showcase celebrating the rich culture here in the Lake Lewisia district. Each month, we'll highlight some seasonal events, local celebrations and interpretations of national and world holidays, and historical tidbits.
MAY
The Grand Picnic
As you approach the lakeside, you can smell flowers before you can see them. The sweet scent hangs heavy in the air as you make your way around to the far shore. There, in the open space between the water and the edge of the surrounding forest, a whole line of long picnic tables already hold an assortment of covered dishes down the center. You add yours to the first free spot you find. Did you bring a salad of crisp spring greens, or a platter of smoky roasted meat, or a pie mounded high with whipped cream and candied violets?
All around the tables are flowers. The chiffon petals come in a riot of colors, some tiny as dewdrops and some large enough to serve as a blanket. Flowers on long stems rest in baskets. Daisies and cosmos, candy pink and butter yellow, form braided crowns, and one of the people running the setup drops a crown on your head as you pass by. More volunteers are in the trees, hoisting up long garlands of flowers to drape from branch to branch.
Down by the lake, huge rafts of flowers weigh down little boats. Once more people have arrived, the flower rafts are rowed out into deeper water and set adrift. From the shore, you can see a serpentine tail wrap around one and pull it into the depths. A few bubbly notes of lake monster voice sing gratitude. Other rafts drift slowly out of sight, to be enjoyed by other lake denizens. In the forest, deep in the shade of the trees, eyes watch and claws grasp, pulling flowers from garlands and spiriting them away.
Then we eat. Oh, we eat so much. Every specialty, every comfort food, every treat imaginable is there, brought by a neighbor or a coworker or a friend. Dishes hot and platters cold, mugs that steam and cups that fizz, pass from hand to hand along the tables. Everyone eats. Everyone is welcome. It's the Grand Picnic.
The Grand Picnic is the first major feast of the year. It celebrates May first, incorporating a number of May Day traditions into one local ritual. Sitting as it does between the lush growth of spring and the coming heat of summer, it is a celebration of meetings and mergings. It only makes sense, then, that the event always takes place on the far shore of the lake, where the water and the forest meet and where all the residents of Lewisia--human, cryptid, animal, and everything else--can come together.
Historical records are unclear on when the first Grand Picnic was held. It's possible it was never formally founded at all, rising instead organically over time from traditions of offering up food and the first flowers of spring to local spirits, personal deities, or hostile neighbors to foster goodwill over the coming year. Whatever its origins, the Grand Picnic seems to me to embody the spirit that defines Lewisia. Community is something we make together. Everyone brings what they can, and everyone gets a seat at the table, and everyone appreciates the good things this town gives to us.
Towel Day
May twenty-fifth marks Towel Day, a celebration of a certain infamous guidebook for travelers. Did you know, though, that Lewisia can boast authorship of another one of the great travel guidebooks?
Though long since out of print and supplanted by more recent books on the subject, Lewisia native Winifred Paisley penned the first edition of A Path Below: A Walking Tour of Underworlds and Afterlives in 1893. Several of the original illustration plates from the book, depicting cave systems, subterranean ferrymen, and roots of world trees, are held in the Historical Society's collection.
Buried Gardens Charity Auction
May has, for the last several years, been the occasion for the charity auction benefiting the Buried Gardens. Prior to their unplanned relocation, there had been several fundraisers for the original Sunken Garden plan, which helped make the initial groundbreaking and planting possible. Once they sunk, however, several new needs arose. The garden caretakers needed to be outfitted with spelunking equipment and educated on the care of the many new plants discovered to thrive in the darkness. One can hardly just toss some sunflower seeds down the cave shafts and hope for the best, after all.
The Buried Garden fund also provides support for the various creatures and entities introduced to the town when the garden connected to the network of existing tunnels down there. It is more than mere compensation for the disruption of their lifestyle, though that would have been reason enough. Discovering a whole understory of the town, populated by people who had come as refugees and existed under our feet and beneath our notice, demanded more response from the town than a covered dish and a polite "welcome to the neighborhood."
In addition to funding a worthy cause, the Charity Auction promises a night of dinner, entertainment, and a chance to go home with something marvelous. Highlights from previous auctions have including:
a selection of cave seeds suitable for growing at home (windowless bathrooms and closets recommended),
a romantic weekend in the guest quarters of the historic Beacon House,
various bioluminescent artworks crafted by the tunnel folk using traditional spore-based pigments,
and three teleporting hens of the Quicksilver Bantam variety, who may or may not have meant to appear on the auction stage at that moment but who have been living quite happily with the winner in any case.
I look forward to attending for the first time, along with some of my sister initiates. I'm technically there for cultural education purposes. If I happen to bring a little spending money with me, well, it's for a good cause. And you never know what might appear on the auction block this year.
This Month in History
The Rocky Head Beach Riots began on May 13th, 1987, prompted by a group of outsider teens spying young Lewisians performing minor conjurations, and lasted another three days. The riot prompted the involvement of two sheriff departments, the Marguerite County Department of Parks and Recreation, and at least one still-unidentified school of magical practice. While no one was killed during the riots, several nonfatal curses were obtained, and a significant amount of damage to local wildlife habitat required replanting work.
The incident prompted more stringent guidelines for young Lewisians when interacting with outsiders. As Rocky Head Beach is the closest and most accessible beach area to Lewisia proper, it is a popular spot for residents to visit. Being outside of Lewisia's domain, however, and equally popular with many other people, the area has potential for such mishaps. The possibility of becoming an Encounter for an outsider, someone shocked and amazed by the most mundane facts of life in Lewisia, may be enticing, but Encounters can become Incidents all too easily.
That's a taste of what May has to offer us. See you next month, when June brings bonfires, fireworks, and a serious need for sunscreen.
Sponsored by The Historical Society
Hello, readers, listeners, and psychic osmosizers! Welcome to A Lewisian Year, a monthly showcase celebrating the rich culture here in the Lake Lewisia district. Each month, we'll highlight some seasonal events, local celebrations and interpretations of national and world holidays, and historical tidbits.
MAY
The Grand Picnic
As you approach the lakeside, you can smell flowers before you can see them. The sweet scent hangs heavy in the air as you make your way around to the far shore. There, in the open space between the water and the edge of the surrounding forest, a whole line of long picnic tables already hold an assortment of covered dishes down the center. You add yours to the first free spot you find. Did you bring a salad of crisp spring greens, or a platter of smoky roasted meat, or a pie mounded high with whipped cream and candied violets?
All around the tables are flowers. The chiffon petals come in a riot of colors, some tiny as dewdrops and some large enough to serve as a blanket. Flowers on long stems rest in baskets. Daisies and cosmos, candy pink and butter yellow, form braided crowns, and one of the people running the setup drops a crown on your head as you pass by. More volunteers are in the trees, hoisting up long garlands of flowers to drape from branch to branch.
Down by the lake, huge rafts of flowers weigh down little boats. Once more people have arrived, the flower rafts are rowed out into deeper water and set adrift. From the shore, you can see a serpentine tail wrap around one and pull it into the depths. A few bubbly notes of lake monster voice sing gratitude. Other rafts drift slowly out of sight, to be enjoyed by other lake denizens. In the forest, deep in the shade of the trees, eyes watch and claws grasp, pulling flowers from garlands and spiriting them away.
Then we eat. Oh, we eat so much. Every specialty, every comfort food, every treat imaginable is there, brought by a neighbor or a coworker or a friend. Dishes hot and platters cold, mugs that steam and cups that fizz, pass from hand to hand along the tables. Everyone eats. Everyone is welcome. It's the Grand Picnic.
The Grand Picnic is the first major feast of the year. It celebrates May first, incorporating a number of May Day traditions into one local ritual. Sitting as it does between the lush growth of spring and the coming heat of summer, it is a celebration of meetings and mergings. It only makes sense, then, that the event always takes place on the far shore of the lake, where the water and the forest meet and where all the residents of Lewisia--human, cryptid, animal, and everything else--can come together.
Historical records are unclear on when the first Grand Picnic was held. It's possible it was never formally founded at all, rising instead organically over time from traditions of offering up food and the first flowers of spring to local spirits, personal deities, or hostile neighbors to foster goodwill over the coming year. Whatever its origins, the Grand Picnic seems to me to embody the spirit that defines Lewisia. Community is something we make together. Everyone brings what they can, and everyone gets a seat at the table, and everyone appreciates the good things this town gives to us.
Towel Day
May twenty-fifth marks Towel Day, a celebration of a certain infamous guidebook for travelers. Did you know, though, that Lewisia can boast authorship of another one of the great travel guidebooks?
Though long since out of print and supplanted by more recent books on the subject, Lewisia native Winifred Paisley penned the first edition of A Path Below: A Walking Tour of Underworlds and Afterlives in 1893. Several of the original illustration plates from the book, depicting cave systems, subterranean ferrymen, and roots of world trees, are held in the Historical Society's collection.
Buried Gardens Charity Auction
May has, for the last several years, been the occasion for the charity auction benefiting the Buried Gardens. Prior to their unplanned relocation, there had been several fundraisers for the original Sunken Garden plan, which helped make the initial groundbreaking and planting possible. Once they sunk, however, several new needs arose. The garden caretakers needed to be outfitted with spelunking equipment and educated on the care of the many new plants discovered to thrive in the darkness. One can hardly just toss some sunflower seeds down the cave shafts and hope for the best, after all.
The Buried Garden fund also provides support for the various creatures and entities introduced to the town when the garden connected to the network of existing tunnels down there. It is more than mere compensation for the disruption of their lifestyle, though that would have been reason enough. Discovering a whole understory of the town, populated by people who had come as refugees and existed under our feet and beneath our notice, demanded more response from the town than a covered dish and a polite "welcome to the neighborhood."
In addition to funding a worthy cause, the Charity Auction promises a night of dinner, entertainment, and a chance to go home with something marvelous. Highlights from previous auctions have including:
a selection of cave seeds suitable for growing at home (windowless bathrooms and closets recommended),
a romantic weekend in the guest quarters of the historic Beacon House,
various bioluminescent artworks crafted by the tunnel folk using traditional spore-based pigments,
and three teleporting hens of the Quicksilver Bantam variety, who may or may not have meant to appear on the auction stage at that moment but who have been living quite happily with the winner in any case.
I look forward to attending for the first time, along with some of my sister initiates. I'm technically there for cultural education purposes. If I happen to bring a little spending money with me, well, it's for a good cause. And you never know what might appear on the auction block this year.
This Month in History
The Rocky Head Beach Riots began on May 13th, 1987, prompted by a group of outsider teens spying young Lewisians performing minor conjurations, and lasted another three days. The riot prompted the involvement of two sheriff departments, the Marguerite County Department of Parks and Recreation, and at least one still-unidentified school of magical practice. While no one was killed during the riots, several nonfatal curses were obtained, and a significant amount of damage to local wildlife habitat required replanting work.
The incident prompted more stringent guidelines for young Lewisians when interacting with outsiders. As Rocky Head Beach is the closest and most accessible beach area to Lewisia proper, it is a popular spot for residents to visit. Being outside of Lewisia's domain, however, and equally popular with many other people, the area has potential for such mishaps. The possibility of becoming an Encounter for an outsider, someone shocked and amazed by the most mundane facts of life in Lewisia, may be enticing, but Encounters can become Incidents all too easily.
That's a taste of what May has to offer us. See you next month, when June brings bonfires, fireworks, and a serious need for sunscreen.
