To make the weekend a special occasion, I asked the band members to participate in a spoken word stage after seeing a similar event at the Terrapin Station gathering a couple weeks earlier. They all agreed despite how uncomfortable they felt about being on stage without playing. Grandfunk did a great job asking some interesting questions and I think everyone would agree it was cool to hear them talking about the music and our scene.
Another unusual special event that was suggested on the message board was to have a poetry reading. Jay 'The Guy With The Hat' gave us a treat of a few of his writings including one written specifically for Juggling Suns.
One of our brainstorming ideas during the planning stages was to have a Shakedown Street with some Juggling goods for sale. This idea morphed into a chinese raffle that was used to offset the additional expense of the extra night of music. Thanks to the generosity of several family members donating merchandise and almost everyone that attended buying raffle tickets, we raised $250 to help break even for the weekend. What started with me creating a collage of my black and white pictures eventually included 2 large Galactic art pieces from Burt, home made candles from Beth, hand made wire art from Thom and an assortment of concert pictures from Brad! Thanks to everyone for making this idea a huge success!!
Maybe it was a karmic reward for his gift of poetry or a prize for achieving the highest cosmic state, in any case Jay (now 'The Guy With No Hat') won the most coveted prize - the large Galactic Art piece!
The one other extra special event for me was my grand daughter Sierra coming to her first Juggling Suns show! It was wonderful to watch her and her mother be welcomed into our Juggling family. Although I didn't get to spend much time with her because she was having so much fun with the other kids, I did get to dance with her while Juggling was playing. Here she is with one of her 'best' friends. She met Julie and Emily last year and never forgot them and always wants to talk to them when she hears their name.