Hard Rain at Bonnaroo

Mud. It rained last night. Hard. And now we know that why local soils lend themselves to natural building: They are full of clay and sticky. The rain has damped us in many, many ways. The challenge of designing communities for lots and lots of people in a small space becomes more apparent when stresses and oversubscribed systems come into play. Now that everyone is here and the lines at toilets are really, really long we are seeing problems. There is trash everywhere and littering is taken to an art form and level not seen since before Iron Eyes Cody wept in the 1970. I think that much of the unconsciousness is chemically induced and clearly drugs are all around as we have had to ask dealers to not use our camp chairs and awning as a place to conduct business. Watching all this I am struck by what a living laboratory this place is as we contemplate how we might deal with disasters large and small.

The communal sinks look like Bangkok sewers which have become for us an allegory about the lack of folks taking personal responsibility for their environment. The sinks became plugged because the discarded packets from shampoo samples covered the drain. No one was watching. No one wanted to be the sacrificial hand that dove into the muck and solved the problem for all. Perhaps they did not care or did not know how to solve this simple plumbing problem. It really drives home for me how important what we teach, preach and live at Yestermorrow is and will be.