Phenomenal Folklife

I spent the most marvelous five hours at the Northwest Folklife Festival yesterday.

We arrived about an hour before my performance call so that I could walk the grounds of the Seattle Center and look for the merchant who sells the Afghani door decorations. I thought we needed one more for our dining room ( we have two already, but there are three doorways in the dining room). Luckily, Gazdi was in the same location they've had for the past few years, and even more fortunately, they had three of these items for me to look at. None was quite wide enough for that third door, which used to be a door to the back porch before someone enclosed it to add space to the dining room. But the owner made a terrific suggestion. Since they are very long, why not cut some of the length to add to the width? I am sure I will spend part of the day sewing today. Such an excellent suggestion to make it fit in my house!

Then I needed a snack. No way was the leftover mac and cheese I ate at 4 PM going to last until 7 PM, after Dunava's gig. So I enjoyed an Indian spiced chicken kabob. Five deliciously moist chicken pieces on a skewer with some cabbage too. It was the perfect snack to give me energy through Dunava's set.

I left Rik and our friends to enjoy wandering the festival and listen to some good music. Dunava was meeting to rehearse before our set. We all went up to the fourth floor of the Center House where there were fewer people wandering about. (I insisted we take the elevator. No way was I walking up four flights of stairs!) I sat, the rest of the choir stood, and we reviewed one verse from each song. Then it was back downstairs to the Center House Theatre for our gig.

We had a few minutes to sound check. Luckily the theatre was empty and so we could do so without an audience. We went backstage at 6:20 when people began to enter the house. At 6:30 the emcee spent a few minutes talking up Folklife and then announced Dunava.

It was a standing-room only, full house of fans and friends. We had prepared eleven songs but only sang ten. The emcee gave us the old vaudeville cut off. It's too bad that he spoke for three minutes at the beginning and stole time from our set.

But we received a loud standing ovation from the audience, who were amazingly enthusiastic about our singing. I grabbed some business cards and with Dina, handed them to people so they would join our mailing list and then know about our summer CD release party.

After all that musical high, I was hungry again. We walked back to the main entry to the Seattle Center for a fabulous crepe with chicken and artichokes. (Rik had his with strawberries, Y had the vegetarian). We found a wall to sit on and enjoyed our dinner immensely.

Then it was back across the Seattle Center grounds to the Balkan dance, where I actually danced two dances!

I am so thankful to my doctors, my own body, and to God for giving me back enough health that I could enjoy Folklife to this extent. I can hardly believe that a little more than two weeks ago I was in the hospital, and last night I was singing and dancing, the things that bring me the most pleasure in life.

It was an amazing day. I came home totally exhausted, could hardly wait to get into my pajamas, and fell soundly asleep at 10 PM. What a great day!