Many hands lightened load of Folk Festival

The Bangor City Council recently issued a proclamation “recognizing the efforts of the organizers, sponsors, staff, volunteers and city employees who contributed to the success of the 65th annual National Folk Festival,” an honor they certainly deserve, for the work of their hands are what made it all possible.

Everywhere at the Folk Festival, held in August, I saw hands making music, crafting beautiful things or doing something useful.

Let us take a moment, admittedly a bit belated, to praise the scuffed-up, hardworking hands of city workers who moved the earth and put down pavement for weeks beforehand to get the waterfront ready for the influx of people who attended the festival.

Let us praise the capable, happy hands of the ladies wearing orange T-shirts and Mexican hats who passed around the donation buckets.

Let us marvel at the competent hands, so diversely skilled, of the volunteers who strung the lights at the Bangor Daily News, the Maine Times and the Bangor Savings Bank tents and the busy hands of the people in the tents who blew up all those festive, giddy balloons and handed out all those much appreciated paper fans.

Let us celebrate the gifted drumming hands of Kwabena Owusu, the dazzling strumming hands of Dale Watson, the fiddling hands of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and the playful puppet hands of John Styles, who were only a few of the many pairs of hands to give the festival its musical verve, melodious spirit and festive charm.

Let us be awed by the spinning and knitting hands, the carving and sanding hands, the tatting and crocheting hands and the hands that pounded metal into useful and beautiful shapes.

And everywhere in the shifting, flowing crowd, loving hands clasped one another, cradled babies, boosted toddlers into the air, held the leash of a the family dog or steadied the steps of elderly relatives.

Other hands stirred, fried, seasoned, popped, tossed and served so many different kinds of food it was hard to choose what to eat, where and how often.

And after the last note had died away, after the last humming festival-goer had headed home, hard working hands with calluses and dinged knuckles struck the tents, hauled off the garbage, took down the stages, put away the rigging and returned the waterfront to its normal uses.

I don’t know how many volunteers and city workers contributed the work of their hands to the creation of the folk festival. Eight hundred or more? That’s 1,600 hands, or 16,000 fingers. Of such taken-for granted-things was the National Folk Festival made. All by hand. And beautifully so.

Snippets

Many thanks to Terry of Hancock who has enabled my binge crafting by sending lovely scraps of silk suitable for making lavender sachets.

Pieces of Eight, The Knitting Store, in Presque Isle, bills itself as the only book and yarn store in Aroostook County. Owners nurse Florence Zettergeren and Dr. Holly Arato stock wool and cotton yarns, including Dale of Norway and Skacel, which is used for socks.

Zettergeren says there is a renaissance of sock knitting in The County. She thinks women are taking to knitting because of the texture. “They like to come in and pat the yarn,” she said.

The shop, along with most other shops in the world, had trouble getting bamboo knitting needles a few weeks ago. The problem she said, quoting Japanese suppliers, was that, “Bamboo must grow.” Call the store at 762-5437 for information about the store.