Labor Day Rocked & Our New Floodlight

Joe Harvard
Sep 5, 2017
2 min read

JH here, having a slow day recovering from a great Labor Day weekend that included mucho dancing at Mike Noordzy & Jaclyn Spoleti's Sunday wedding [think: beautiful, creative young Princess weds handsome, freakishly talented Troubadour with a rakish smile], and a gARTen hosting session on Saturday, Sunday until 4 [the fabulous Mark Davis covered the second shift], and twice on Monday. I played for at least an hour at each visit, which I do not always get to do, and began moving around, adding and removing black lights as I continue dialing in the atmosphere.

The day session was busy, with numerous families and couples stopping by after they got ice cream at Cookman Creamery. I managed to do some badly needed trimming and repairs, though, before playing, as well as beginning a new approach to the Rose Garden section (below).

Youngsters are the gARTen's biggest daytime fans. One enthusiastic 5-year old must have asked 20 questions: "Which is your favorite? Which is the best one ... the hardest to make ... oldest ... heaviest ... most expensive to buy ...", and on to cheapest price, rarest, brightest, coolest, etc. He was still asking questions, and sharing his own plans for the found-object art gallery that HE is going to build, as his father led him by the hand. Overhearing me discussing how we stay alive with his father, he offered the advice that I do what he's going to do in his gallery: free to get in, but you'll have to pay to get out. Haha!

Our LED-illuminated black light "Bottle Chains" require that a hole be cut in the underside of each bottle. The plastic is thickest there, so I use a pipe taken from the leg of a discarded chair, heat it with a propane torch, and melt out the hole in each. Below shows the tub I prepped on Labor Day, both before and after blessing them [so-called because it makes them 'holey"]