Peg Kerr's Journal

May Day at Powderhorn Park has been revived, although the experience is changing.

Our Mayday celebration began in 1974, initiated and shepherded by In the Heart of the Beast Theatre (HOBT) as an annual event with broad community participation. For nearly 50 years HOBT enacted the Mayday Parade, the Tree of Life Ceremony, and the Festival in Powderhorn Park. In April 2023, HOBT announced that it would no longer produce Mayday, and “released it” to the community.

Now, in 2025, there is no single organization producing Mayday; the Parade is built by decentralized community groups hosting puppet-making workshops and the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts is sponsoring an artistic cohort and workshops to create the Tree of Life Ceremony. Festivities in Powderhorn Park following the Parade will be quite different than in HOBT years, with no organized food trucks or large music stages. You are encouraged to bring picnics and enjoy the beautiful park.

I was thrilled to have May Day back, although I wasn't able to attend as much as I usually do--I was in Eden Prairie assisting my mom with some things last Sunday, and so I missed the parade and the Tree of Life ceremony.

I got to the park by about 2:30, and there was still plenty to see that delighted me and reminded me of May Days of yore. This day is always like an explosion of color. I first learned about May Day in the park from an email that a friend sent out years ago. It was simply a stream-of-consciousness description of the sights that could be seen in the park that day, and it intrigued me so much that I decided I had to check out this event.

May Day is flower crowns and bicycles and dreadlocks and Morris dancers. It is a drum circle that pulses out all afternoon into the evening. It is brass instruments, belly dancers, face paint, ribbon skirts, kilts, laughter, and elf ears. It is bared shoulders, swirling capes, and picnics and booths set up around the lake, where the crowd circles along the path, not in any hurry. It is blankets on Blanket Hill, and the call of the horns as the boats row across that lake, bringing the grinning Sun. It is signs with urgent messages, and children in elaborate paper mache costumes pulled by their parents in decorated wagons. Sometimes it snows, and sometimes the sun in the sky overhead roasts everyone. But either way, everyone is having a wonderful time.

It is Beltane. It is the earth coming alive and saying, yes, we are still here. We are a community, and we take care of each other.

I love May Day. I am so happy to see it back.

This week's design is perhaps a bit messy and confusing, but I was trying to capture that explosion of color sensation that May Day always brings.

A collection of images from the Powderhorn May Day festival: a stage with musicians playing is set up in a street, silhouetted against a brilliantly blue sky. Above the stage, paper mache birds surround a giant Benjamin Franklin puppet holding a sign that reads 'Well, Mr. Franklin, have we got a Republic or a Monarchy? A REPUBLIC IF YOU CAN KEEP IT." The May Day Sun puppet is over to the left. Below it is an alebrije, a snail constructed on a bicycle. Center: a woman in a red tulle skirt and wearing a red top hat, holding a saxophone. To the right of the woman is a giant paper mache head with closed eyes. To the right of that, a couple dances in the street to the music of the band, standing in front of deer-like alebrije. Lower center: the fire birds and drums that are part of the boats that traditionally row the Sun across Powderhorn Lake. Lower left corner: the head of a large paper mache rabbit.

May Day



Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Because I am a giant nerd, I went out to wash my face with the May Day dew this morning. You may not need it, but at my advanced age, I need all the magical help I can get.

Happy May Day, everyone.

Man, I am going to miss the May Day Parade SO MUCH this year.

May Day, after several yucky years in a row, was beautiful and magical and just what I needed. Fiona and I went and basked in the sun and admired the puppets, the dancers, the stiltwalkers, and human-powered floats. I love that all sorts of people, all ages, all ability levels, participate. Then we went and joined the Minn-Stf picnic and ate grilled hotdogs and cheered from the sidelines as the Sun crossed over the pond and brought the Tree of Life back for the spring (I took pictures of that part, too, but my ipod touch camera couldn't handle the focus at such a distance, so those all got deleted. Oh, well. Just click on my 'May Day' tag and you can go back and see my pictures from other years.

Given what's going on right now, I just don't have the energy to do a full report. But I am stuffing a bunch of my favorite images behind the cut. Warning: graphic intensive. I may sprinkle a comment here or there if I have time later. But what I mostly want to say is that I loved the Pete Seeger puppet, I loved (as always) the marching band that lies down in the middle of the street. I love May Day.

I need its magic this year more desperately than ever.

( Many, many pictures behind the cut )

Fiona and I came back home exhausted and with dreadful sunburns. But happy.

It was a gorgeous weekend. Delia struggled a fair amount with the decision when we asked her, 'What do you want to do for your birthday?' We suggested movies, and there were some she wanted to see, but that didn't seem special enough for a birthday. Yesterday, she decided she wanted to devote a day to art, and so we came up with an itinerary of various places we could visit: the Northern Clay Center, Wet Paint, an independent art store, and a place where people go to sketch the fourth Sunday of every month.

Today, she decided to throw all those plans out the window, and we went instead to the annual Pride Festival at Loring Park. It's attended by about 100,000 people in the Twin Cities. This year was the 40th anniversary.

Now, I've been to the Gay Pride Parade a couple times before, which is part of the weekend events, and even taken the girls (it's held on Sunday morning). But I've never been to the Minneapolis Pride Festival at Loring Park before.

I hear your gasp of surprise. I know, I know! I wrote The Wild Swans. How is it POSSIBLE that I have NEVER been to Loring Park on Pride Weekend?

I haven't. It certainly not that I'm not interested in the subject, as all the research I did for The Wild Swans triggered my interest in the topic of gay civil rights, an interest that has never diminished. It's not as close and convenient as the May Day Festival, and the crowd is much huger. But this year, yes, we went.

Delia's interest in these topics has certainly grown this year. The GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) at her high school is extremely active (in fact, at her school the bathrooms turn unisex for a block of time every day to accommodate the transgender students). She also appeared in her school's production of '8,' which has also made her think about these things.

So what did I think of it? My base of comparison was, undoubtedly, May Day. Both are held in a Minneapolis park, with a lake, and booths for the event circle the lake. Both are colorful, both are a beloved ritual for many in the city, both are shot through with a certain feeling of the removal of restraint, an opening, a flowering. For May Day, it's winter that we're shaking off, for Pride, it's the closet. Both offer (expensive) food and bands on stages. At Pride, there is an extra layer of bureaucracy: none of the food booths accept cash. You have to purchase food and beverage tickets. If you neglected to bring cash, they have ATMS, but this means waiting in THREE lines: for the ATM, for the food and beverage ticket booth, and then for the food.

More naked skin: Pride, but the weather is much warmer by then, too, which is probably a factor.
More dreadlocks: May Day.
More glitter: Pride.
More corporate: Pride
More environmental: May Day, by far (May Day sold no bottled water at all this year. Instead, they had water stations set up all over the park, and people were encouraged to bring their own containers. They also recycle everything; even the food is separated out to be composted. It was certainly startling to me to see all the plastic bottles in the trash at Pride.)
More nonprofit: I'd say May Day is more nonprofit oriented. But Pride has probably a bigger nonprofit presence, simply because of its bigger size.

We parked at Uptown and then bused there, which worked well, and then the girls cheerfully informed me that they were ditching me. We checked in by phone every hour or so. I wandered by myself. Although it was my first time there, I didn't find much that surprised me; I've very familiar with many of the gay-oriented businesses and nonprofits in the city. (One thing that did was a whole avenue of booths, at least ten or so, all devoted to pets, mostly dogs. I guess they figure that gays luuuurrrrve their pets.)

It was hot. I debated between bringing a hat and something I purchased at the last Renaissance Festival: a big, sturdy Japanese paper parasol. I chose the parasol, and I'm very glad I did. This worked splendidly as a sunshade, and I was very glad I had it. I think it kept me much cooler than a hat alone would have done.

One nice thing: the girls encountered the Gaylaxicon 2012 booth where they saw some local SF/Fantasy fans that they knew. There was a white board up with trivia questions: and MY NAME was the answer to one of the trivia questions. (Fiona, they said, was the only person, however, who knew the answer to the question, which was a little lowering). Anyway, when the girls ran into me again, they told me this, so I stopped by the booth, and was very graciously told that if I wished to attend the convention, they would be delighted to comp my membership. So I will probably attend the Gaylaxicon in October of this year.

So: a very fun day, albeit exhausting. Happy Pride, everyone!




{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

From the Heart of the Beast:

Hello everyone!

Unfortunately, due to standing water in the park and poor weather, we have decided to POSTPONE the MAYDAY FESTIVAL until the rain date next weekend. The MayDay Festival will happen on SUNDAY MAY 13. The parade will kick off at 1:00 PM and all other details will remain the same.

PLEASE help us spread the word- SHARE this with your networks. See you next Sunday and Happy May Day.

I'm both sad and relieved. Sad not to be going to May Day today, but relieved I won't be sitting in a puddle.

Saw this link on Twitter: some great, arty shots from the May Day Parade. Credit: @DirtyHairHalo.

All week, I've been troubled by the news that in attempting to kill Gaddafi, Americans instead killed his son and three of his grandchildren. There seemed to be very little discussion, much less abhorrence, of this fact in the news, just a general impression of, oh yeah, bad guy, let's kill him. If innocents get in the way, hey, that's war.

I kept thinking about the fact that Obama's been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a fact that seems more embarrassing and awful the longer various conflicts drag on.

And then there was last night's news regarding Osama Bin Laden.

A great ethical trap which we have not managed to avoid is the danger of becoming what we oppose. I keep thinking of the exchange in The Lord of the Rings between Gandalf and Frodo:

Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him [Gollum] when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.

I don't think that America has much pity any more. Osama Bin Laden didn't, of course. He reveled in the deaths of many. But in answering the threat that he presented and in responding to the actions he set in motion, we have followed the path and the role he deliberately manipulated us into assuming: we have done much to present ourselves to the world as pitiless, cruel and oppressive, and consequently, we are loathed through much of the world. We have rivers of innocent blood on our hands, and the blood of the guilty, even those as guilty as Osama Bin Laden does not wash it away.

I am not excusing or minimizing what he did, heaven knows. At the free speech section in the May Day parade yesterday a contingent was marching with signs proclaiming that 9/11 was an inside job of the U.S. government, and I was so angry at such a pack of lies that I left the parade route and didn't watch any further. But I will not gloat or rejoice in Osama Bid Laden's death. I would rather see us turn our efforts to re-finding the country's soul, which we seem to have lost along the way.

A very nice picture of Fiona (lying down on the blanket) and me at the May Day picnic, taken by barondave.

Good heavens, that's quite a bit more cleavage than I ordinarily display.

(THAT will undoubtedly make everybody click the link)

See the rest of barondave's great May Day pictures here and here. I'm glad to see the pictures, although they make me even more keenly sorry I missed the parade. I particularly get a kick out of the dungbeetles.

From my post 5/5/08 "The Tree and the Sun." Click to see close up:



This was sure pretty when I printed it out. I'm going to hang it above my desk at work, and add it to my Trees collection.

Found this on YouTube; it's a video taken of the Tree of Life Ceremony from two years ago (the year Fiona was a sunrunner). It'll give you a good taste of what the ceremony is like.