It is so strange to try to condense all the thoughts, feelings, and excitement of a festival into words. Somehow, it’s never quite enough. (The TL:DR is Volunteers! Performer/Teachers/Leaders! Vendors! Community Representatives! And, our community is goddamn amazing in a storm.)

“Gratitude” is first. Although I am the recognizable, public face of the festival, the Frederick Pagan Pride Day simply would not happen without a huge group of people ensuring that it does so. Our festival takes a team of roughly 30 people to run well, and this year we were blessed with extra help. From community members showing up at Oh-Gods-Why o’clock in the morning to help us make up for lost Friday setup time, volunteers jumping in to lend a hand, offer direction, support “on the clock” staffers, and more, the line between festival attendee and volunteer got VERY blurry at times. To all the helpers, wearing a purple shirt or not, THANK YOU. I can’t run a festival for 600 people by myself. Without *us*, without this wild team of mystical marvels, the festival does not happen.

And, special gratitude to Jeff, who is the co-lead of Frederick Pagan Pride Day. There is an entire world of the festival that I do not have to even think about because Jeff organizes those areas, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Along with everyone who worked so hard behind the scenes are the wonderful folks who provide the content of our festival: our ritual leaders, performers, and presenters. It takes a lot of work to prep an hour-long workshop, provide entertainment in the hot summer sun, or offer an opportunity for spiritual connection and devotion for a group of mostly unknown people. THANK YOU. Our programming was excellent because of your work, dedication, and love. I wish we’d gotten to the last couple offerings of the day – hopefully we can make up that labor to you in a future festival or gathering.

And, no festival is complete without vendors. I’ve been an entertainer and teacher in the Pagan community for a very long time now. As a member of Revel Moon, then Cassandra Syndrome, and now Kindred Crow, I’ve been to a LOT of festivals. One thing I learned over the years is that the vendors truly make the event. If you have a good vendor village, it’s a good festival, and Frederick Pagan Pride Day has an INCREDIBLE vendor village. So much love and gratitude to our vendors! Our vendor village rolls in from every direction – local businesses but also those whose homes are several states away – and each vendor sets up an entire outdoor “shop” in roughly two hours before the festival opens. It’s an insane amount of work, and I am just so grateful to all of you. From crystals and candles to handmade besoms to cauldrons to hand-forged knives to pottery to books to clothing…it’s such an amazing gathering of talented makers and market-folk.

Deep gratitude as well to our community representatives. Among the businesses in the vendor village are booths selling nothing at all but offering outreach for the various organizations they represent. Thank you all so much for your hard work, networking, and outreach at Frederick Pagan Pride Day. Our community is stronger when there are strong friendships among us. This form of connection is some of the most important weaving we do.

“Community” is next. Being in community is easy when everything is going smoothly. The place where a community can truly show its beauty (or its fissures) is when things go sideways, though. The storms held off for most of the day yesterday – we had glorious (hot!) sunny weather til right around 4 PM. Thor just couldn’t hold back any longer and came rolling in FAST. This meant that we needed to get two workshop pavilions with tables and chairs, a stage with full sound system, water filling stations, trash cans, and THIRTY-SEVEN booths off the field FAST amidst high winds and a downpour.

Y’all, I’ve been the lead community organizer of Frederick CUUPS for many years now, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Every volunteer, every community member who wasn’t even supposed to be working yesterday, our siblings in the Wyoming Valley CUUPS chapter, and tons of folks who’d come out as attendees jumped in and made absolute magic happen. It was glorious, loud, soaked, compassionate chaos.  And it worked. The many hands helping to carry, pack up, support, and then dry off and clean meant that everyone got out safely and at rapid speed.

I’m sorry that we lost the last couple hours of our festival, but I am weirdly joyous about it as well. It was magnificent to see the greater community come together and work so hard to support and protect each other. To everyone who dropped whatever they were doing to help, THANK YOU. You’re absolutely amazing and I’m so grateful we’re part of the same community.

Our final totals were:

• 600 people (give or take – there are always a few that get missed)
• 802.14 lbs of food for the Frederick Food Bank
• 320.98 lbs of food for the Animal Shelter
• $1399 in raffle tickets and donations toward next year’s festival

What an exhausting, exhilarating, magical day. Every muscle in my body hurts, but the soul-deep glow more than makes up for it.

Let’s do it again next year. Hopefully without the storms this time 😉

In service and gratitude,

Irene Glasse

Frederick Pagan Pride Day Coordinator