Once again May Day

The weather today is absolutely ideal for the 35th May Day Festival! I have tried to go every year since I moved to the Twin Cities 20 years ago, only missing it when I was out of town. Every Year there is a theme, and this year's is Our Common Treasure: Dig It.
Each year's theme is chosen as the artists of The Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater meet with neighbors and members of the community to talk, brainstorm, make art. Then, once the theme is chosen, they all go to work to make the story that is each year the same and each year different. Here's how they explain it:

Our Common Treasury— Dig It

HOBT’s MayDay Parade, Ceremony, and Festival has always been rooted in two important traditional celebrations—the celebration of the Green Root of Earth’s green energy rising in Spring, and the Red Root of human work energy rising from mind, heart and hand.

Our theme this year celebrates the merging of the red and green energies of the world.

We cheer on the great merging of the human social justice movements with the environmental movements to remember humans as responsible relatives of the earth.

As we experience the failure of our economic systems built on debt, consumer waste, the theft and sickening of earth resources, we gather to rebuild an economic system that protects and sustains our Earth as a “Common Treasury for All.”

The first May Day I attended with my daughter was when she was seven months old. This year she is 14, and we'll both bring our cameras! I'm not a great photographer, but I have great memories of each year's festival: of the kids and families, the costumes, the music, the joyous energy, the birds and flowers and water and sun of Powderhorn Park, the affirmation of life and the renewal of commitment to solidarity, change, and beauty. We will watch the giant puppets, the musicians and dancers, and then the performance of the festival story: the May tree and the Sun are reunited. The Morris dancers and pagans will be there, the lefties and hippies and artists will be there, the anarchist kids on bikes will be there, and we will be there.
We will sing "Down By the Riverside" and "You Are My Sunshine" and I will probably cry.