Strawberry Moon

The June full moon is known as the Strawberry Moon – and last night was a gorgeous one. I’ve been working with my friend Bryan over the past few weeks on creating a fundraiser for the Montana Artists Refuge, and last night was the event.

We spent the day preparing the gallery, setting up for the abundance (some might even say overabundance) of good food, and of course, grocery shopping. I made chocolate covered strawberries first thing in the morning so they’d be set (two pounds – they were all gone by the end of the evening) and I made a strawberry-cranberry-apricot crunch that turned out so good I thought about keeping it home for myself. I will preen a bit, and say that I really love getting compliments on my cooking.

Two of the current residents of MAR came down from Basin. Cynthia Hilts is a jazz performer and composer and she performed two beautiful pieces. Scott, a young man from Pennsylvania, read a short story and then two poems he’s written since he got to MAR. It was wonderful to have a crowd of friends milling about the gallery, appreciating the artwork on the walls, enjoying the music and the reading, and mostly – appreciating one another.

After the last stragglers toddled on home around 10pm, we counted out the money and were quite satisfied with what we had raised. We headed over to the Pekin Noodle Parlor for a quick, late night dinner and talked about how we could improve the next fundraiser.

Walking home, the moon was huge above a dark bar of clouds – it was too beautiful to just go inside, so we walked around the city over the next few hours – over to Tech to the railtrail and then back through the neighborhoods – enjoying the amazing variety of architectural styles, and the variety of commitment to upkeep of hearth and home. Its interesting to hang out with a woodworker – he sees everything through a very particular filter. If all you have is a hammer, all you see are nails. True.

Today, I’m cleaning up, re-organizing my own life, getting a handle once again on my projects. I ran into Chad this morning at the Hummingbird and we need to touch base on the threads of the projects we’re working on together. This evening is another fundraiser for the Clark Fork Watershed Education Project, these people are doing great work – definitely click on the link to their site. I’m glad the fundraiser is at the Quarry Brewery – their Galena Gold is very good. I’ll get to listen to Justin and David play their music and chat with friends, and enjoy the fact that I’m not responsible for this one!