[lug] The old Pot Picking days

[Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn]

Very cool!  I'm guessing you hadn't intended to send this to the  
Boulder Linux Users's Group, but I enjoyed reading it!

--Zooko

On Wednesday,2009-09-23, at 11:13 , Gordon Golding wrote:

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> In August I spent a week to go to the Boulder Fringe Festival.  You  
> can go look that up if you want – it started in Edinburgh,  
> Scotland.  Twice I have been to Edinburgh, just before and just  
> after this crazy fest.  So I got to see all the posters and setups  
> and stuff, but you need reservations a year in advance.
>
> So when it came to Boulder, I had to go hog wild.  What it is:   
> some 30 or 40 performances are done over20a week and a half.  So  
> there are several venues and you run from one to the other,  
> catching as many shows as you can.  I bought 2 10-pack tickets – an  
> extravagance, but it really was like going somewhere for a  
> vacation.  Each evening, I’d be out at places that I normally don’t  
> go, and running around, seeing these great shows.
>
> AND – There is a great little British-style Pub right in the middle  
> of where all the action is.  So I could go to a show and then pop  
> by for a pint at the bar while waiting for the next show so it was  
> really very much like getting out of town for a vacation without  
> paying for the ticket.
>
> One show was particularly poignant.  It was the Epic of Gilgamesh.   
> In it, the protagonist searches for “the holy grail” but keeps  
> doing something dumb, and losing it.  The last time, it is the  
> snake who comes and steals it, leaving his skin in its place.  So  
> the snake is forever young, because he just sheds the old skin.
>
> This story was very much a basis of the beliefs of the old  
> civilizations where we were.  The priests would place a snake  
> coiled up in a bowl at the corners of a fortress to guarantee it  
> lasted forever.  And we were always going out in the desert,  
> searching for traces of those old buildings and cultures.
>
> Geoffrey Bibby, the famous Middle Eastern archaeologist went with  
> us out to Gerrha.  And I followed him around while he traced the  
> various levels of the walls.  He found the corner of the old wall.   
> And I helped him dig.  And there was the bowl.
>
> So I was totally enthralled and getting breathless as this story  
> came to its climax.  Holding my breath, holding onto my chair,  
> immersed as much in my own space of so many years ago as in the  
> scene before me.
>
> And the woman behind me suddenly collapsed off her chair.
>
> It was all very dramatic and brought me back to the days when we  
> would go out and search and talk of all the old civilizations, long  
> swallowed by the ever moving sands.
>
> Gordon Golding
> Center for Innovation and Creativity
> aka Golding the Younger DH70
> TASIS 73
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