Our Winter Salon

It had been a long while since our last salon - our first was almost two years ago, and our last during the hot summer that followed - so we were long overdue for a gathering of courageous creative people!  We invited a bunch of friends to bring a dish and something performative to share in our living room, and this is what happened...

The evening started with food - chili, potatoes, salads, cookies...squirrel stew - and once more or less satisfied, we dove into an evening of one sweet surprise after another! Poetry...

 Starball songs...

(listening in the momentary darkness)

 Piano...(Eliza and I played a duet too!)

 Our friend from afar was the one who made the squirrel stew - he hunted them yesterday and transformed them into something delicious by party time.  Then he pulled out his banjo to finish off the truly Appalachian experience...it was awesome.

our handsome host

 There was John Cage's Suite for Toy Piano, adapted for toy piano and radio...

Our little friend getting up close for the full vibrational experience

 There was magical glockenspiel, played by 5 yr old E...

 ...and total hilarity from Lizard.

I mean total hilarity...even the teenagers found it funny...

 There were two original plays - one performed as a reading, and one, below, in full costume and theatrical pizzazz...

 There was more poetry and piano, some brave roof-raising karaoke, and then a ceramic cup-making demonstration, using...cardboard and tape?

Voila!

And a bit more Starball by the accordian virtuoso (my husband)...

 ...which ended with us all running outside where we watched him finish his song in the back of a pickup truck, under a crescent moon and a rare twinkly sky.

 It was an amazing evening...ending with a unicycling-hulahooping-flamethrowing-juggling-whistleplaying madman...

 ...and filled us with all good things - good food (yes, I tried the stew!), good friendship, inspiration and so many laughs...

Eliza summed it up pretty well when she said, "I LOVE Salon! It's like Thanksgiving!!"