Hey, just a quick one – oh, Anna-Liza here, as you’d probably figure out in a sentence or two. The Longmont Festival on Main was last night, the fire show was awesome, baby! That’s not just me being biased – it really was. We haven’t had a chance to review the video yet, but I’ll post whatever I can for you soon (I hope).
In the meantime, however, here’s a clip that was taken by my knitting buddy Sam, of her daughter and Mr. B and Mr. R playing with fire in front of the crowd.
Millie’s dad and Darlin’ K were right there spotting, but poor Mr. B still managed to give himself a burn. He had a sparkler, and he forgot it was in his hand and put it on his leg – poor little dude. So that was all the fire spinning for him that night, but he was really good at it – thought of some crowd-pleasing moves all by himself – I hope he decides he’s willing to try it again a little more carefully! He’s got stage presence, and that’s not easy to achieve.
Millie did great with her palm torches (and she’s just so cute!), but I have to say I’m especially proud of Mr R, who has been practicing and practicing to get ready for this show. He got a lot of “Hey, man, that was cool!” from his school friends after, so I’m pretty sure he’ll be doing this again.
Knitting Sprite and Zombie Son are both fire spinners, too, so this is pretty much a family thing. We should do a Partridge Family thing, with a bus and tours … Darlin’ K’s already got a name – Burning Hot Lava!
Oh, yeah, the video! Here ’tis:
Edited to add: There’s also a nice short video showing bits of the whole festival here, including the aerial dancers, Casey, Holly, Will and Chase, all from the fire show.
Pollyanna Rainbow Sunshine and the Needles of Doom 
FYI from K, Mr. B’s dad: I’d had Mr. B practice w/ sparklers several times in our yard so that he knew not to touch the hot end, but during the show he got inspired and spontaneously did things that we were not expecting, like lying down, putting it between his legs, and over his head. I’m both proud that Mr. B was so joyfully, innocently uninhibited, and heartbroken that such joy was so abruptly and painfully squelched. He was back to his normal self the next morning, but I don’t know if he’ll ever play with a sparkler w/ such wild abandon. 🙂 & 😦
They were all so cute and talented! Personally I deeply admired your Mr. B’s composure…*I* would have freaked out but he totally held it together until he was on the sidelines. Such a brave kid!
Sorry Mr. B got burned – up until then he was awesome! And Mr. R was incredible!
But the whole time I was watching I was thinking “Child! Fire! No! Must rescue!” and then laughing at myself because I KNOW they were safe and didn’t need my guard-dog reflexes to protect them.
Which reminds me of a story… (of course it does.) Once I was at an open house at a metaphysical store, and I was getting an ear coning, which involves a professional putting a special cone in your ear and lighting it. (They light the end farthest away from your ear, and the fire doesn’t come anywhere near your head.)
While this was happening, someone came in with a seeing eye dog. As you can imagine, the dog had the properly trained response, even when his owner told him it was okay, he kept saying to us: “Stupid humans, FIRE!”