Clearwater Festival, Part 3: Sunday

We start our second day of musical and environmental adventure at the crafts fair, buying gluten and casein free banana bread, coffee cake and chocolate chip cookies, an ocarina and wooden bendy dinosaurs for Mikro to paint and play with. Listen to African drums at the World Dance Stage. Tour the Green Living Expo and learn about solar power. One of the exhibitors gives Mikro a small solar panel and motor with a propeller attached. He loves it. We walk through the activists area and find some cool recycled materials for projects at the Hudson Valley Materials Exchange.





Then we settle into spots for Arm of the Sea Theater's puppet show, Henry Hudson and the River That Discovered Him. The big surprise is Pete Seeger pulling up in his golf cart right next to us and staying to enjoy most of the show. Mikro and I loved it, and it fits in so well with all the Quadricentennial studies we've done this school year.





Next, we wander to the other side of the park for a sing a long with the Clearwater Educators at the Circle of Song. And then we revisit the Tideline Tent, where Mikro hogs the microscope and looks at all sorts of aquatic life.



It starts to rain, and we get drenched and very nearly leave, but Mama wants to see Pete Seeger sing with the children, and manages to convince the guys to stay. Fifteen minutes later, it is bright and sunny. We head back across the park to the Discovery Tent in the Children's Area, where Mikro is in heaven looking at aquatic macroinvertebrates (like caddis fly and dobson's fly larvae) under the microscope and checking out sea stars, striped bass, flounders, sticklebacks, silversides, barnacles, blue crabs and hermit crabs in a large tank. You know you're a homeschooler when you leave the Clearwater Festival with the name of a cool book on aquatic insects to add to your Amazon wishlist...







It's time to look for a seat at the Family Stage, where Pete Seeger and Tomorrow's Children (aka The Kids From Room 12) will be singing soon. We get there just in time to watch the hysterical antics of Roger the Jester, who pulls Mikro out of the audience several times to participate. Mikro was a total ham and very funny.



And next up are the children, who were simply awesome, and Pete Seeger, who was, as ever, inspiring beyond belief. What an experience!





Afterwards, we cross the park again for the Hudson River Sloop Singers Reunion at Circle of Song. Pete Seeger accompanies them on guitar. Mikro and I wind up standing right behind him, singing our hearts out. The session ends with Rick Nestler's "River That Flows Both Ways", which is sort of an anthem to Mikro and me. Mr. Seeger is approached by someone for an autograph, and Mikro decides he wants one too. I hand him our copy of the brand new "Tomorrow's Children" CD, and he goes up and asks Mr. Seeger to sign it, which he did.




The Circle of Song closes, and we sit watching Clearwater and the Mystic Whaler sail in, and discover a tree swallow feeding her babies in a nest in a woodpecker hole. Again, a peaceful ending to a near perfect day, sitting and enjoying nature by the river that Pete Seeger help to rescue from disaster.

Thank you, sir.