Dear readers, some of you think it's a serious oversight that I have not posted about Burning Man yet. "Was it not good this year?" you have asked me. No, it's not that at all, it's just that I've been pretty overwhelmed since I've returned. When I got back from Burning Man, we were very much in the midst of covering hurricane Katrina pretty hardcore. It was news, news, news for work. Heather and Allyson were handling the brunt of it, but I had just over 2,000 work emails to sift through while more were still piling up on top of them. I've been working 10-12 hours every day, and I'm just about almost dug-out. (Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Portland for Selena's wedding and then next week to Vail for Ellen's wedding.)
Burning Man was freaking awesome. Out of the past six that I've gone to (the first being 1999), this one was, by far, my favorite of all. Campmates got along, weather was pretty decent (except for Monday which was a raging windstorm that destroyed our shade structure), and my art project was a success.
This year I have *4* sets of Burning Man photos posted on flickr:
Spending hours talking to people inside my psychiatric help booth each day was truly amazing. A lot of people out there just needed to talk. Somehow everyone expects in their mind that Burning Man is this big party where everyone is non-stop ecstatic -- but there really are a lot of people who get to the playa and begin dealing with issues of loneliness, isolation, and sadness. At Burning Man in 2000, I was dealing with a lot of these types of issues myself. There were also people whose boyfriends or girlfriends had dumped them at the event, people who were having marriage difficulties, people who felt like their campmates didn't like them, people who were having problems meeting new friends. I will write a bit more about this whole experience soon. I just need a bit more time to process it.
My two favorite art projects at Burning Man this year were:
posted by Jess at 4:08 PM
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