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stevewiegenstein

~ News, announcements, events, and ruminations about my books, including Slant of Light, This Old World, The Language of Trees, and Scattered Lights, and about creativity, fiction, Missouri, the Ozarks, and anything else that strikes my fancy

stevewiegenstein

Tag Archives: Festivals

The Pull of the Old

09 Wednesday Nov 2022

Posted by stevewiegenstein in History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

celebrations, English history, Festivals, forests, history, oak

This is from Roger Deakin’s book Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees:

“It was the eve of Oak Apple Day, and the annual reassertion of rights to collect wood in the Royal Forest of Grovely by the villagers of Great Wishford in accordance with a charter granted to them in 1603. The charter affirms that their rights to the wood have existed ‘since time immemorial,’ usually taken to mean since well before Domesday. In all seriousness, it requires the whole village to ‘go in a dance’ to Salisbury Cathedral six miles away once a year in May and claim their rights and customs in the forest with ‘The Shout’ of the words ‘Grovely! Grovely! Grovely! and all Grovely! Unity is Strength!”

I’ll admit that my first reaction to this story was Is-he-pulling-my-leg incredulity. But a quick bit of research soon told me that Oak Apple Day is a real thing. The Great Wishford celebration is unique among the few English celebrations of Oak Apple Day in that it dates back farther, but a few other towns in the U.K. also observe it. If you’d like to hear more about the Great Wishford celebration, here’s a video.

I love a small town celebration and have attended many – some by accident and some by intention. Our American festivals often focus around a local product (the various Apple and Blueberry and Salmon festivals, etc.), or something more generic, like the “Freedom Fest” in my hometown of Annapolis that celebrates, well, freedom I guess. Hey, any excuse for a parade. But few of them could claim anything near the heritage of that festival. According to Deakin, there have been recorded conflicts between the villagers and the local nobility over their right to collect wood in the forest since 1292. So the charter of 1603 sought to lay to rest a dispute that had been going on for more than three hundred years already.

Ancient rituals with obscure origins. Our minds turn to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but perhaps instead we should contemplate the power of the past, the hold it has on our imaginations. Every generation imagines itself to be facing the world in a new way, and to some extent that is always true. But every generation is also the inheritor of its predecessors’ struggles and triumphs, and feels the pull of the old.

And in case you’re wondering what an “oak apple” is, it’s the colloquial name for an oak gall, the hard round protuberance that grows on an oak branch or leaf when a gall wasp lays its eggs there. So it has nothing to do with actual apples at all.

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Bonniebrook

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by stevewiegenstein in History, Missouri, Ozarks

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bonniebrook, Branson, Festivals, Rose O'Neill

I had the honor this weekend of speaking at the Festival of Painted Leaves, which is the annual fall festival at the Rose O’Neill Home and Museum north of Branson, Missouri. It’s a reconstructed version of O’Neill’s original home, Bonniebrook, which burned in 1947.

It embarrasses me to admit how little I knew of Rose O’Neill, who is best known today as the creator of the Kewpie, a cute little cartoon figure that became an immensely popular doll in the first half of the twentieth century. As I toured the museum, I realized that Rose O’Neill was much more than the Kewpie’s originator. She was an artist, illustrator, writer, and determined suffragist at a time when woman suffrage was a distinctly minority view.

rose-oneill-museum

The Rose O’Neill Museum

Between sessions of the festival, I walked a few of the paths and wished I had time to walk more. It was a perfect autumn day, and with the little creek winding below, I could imagine why O’Neill always retreated to Bonniebrook from her trips to New York and overseas.

bonniebrook

Bonniebrook

The museum is nine miles north of Branson, just east of U.S. 65, and if you are there on a vacation, it would make a lovely afternoon respite from the traffic and franchises. I don’t believe it’s open in the winter, though, so  check out the website (see link above) and call ahead.

Trail’s End Festival

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Literature, Missouri, Personal, Slant of Light

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Tags

Festivals, James Bryant, Sedalia, Spofest, spoken word

Here’s a recording of me reading from Slant of Light at the Trail’s End Festival in Sedalia Friday night, courtesy of James Bryant, the organizer of SpoFest. Thanks, James, for your tireless promotion of the spoken word in and around Sedalia!

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