Powwow Season!

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Busy, busy day today, so here's your quick and dirty pointer post to today's entry at The NDN Silver Blog.

The image above is of one of the powwow-style drums in our inventory. There's a bit about it in the post, as well as some information about its maker, Lee Lujan, who is truly a master. [A few years ago, he created an upright drum that I so wanted, but it was out of our reach at the time. Taller than this, and a bit narrower, the handles emerged out of the trunk itself. One of the handles resembled an eagle's head, so he added a very, very subtle bit of carving to make the head obvious, and inlaid bits of pipestone for eyes. Incredible work of art.]

Back to the subject at hand: Today is the opening day of the 2014 Taos Pueblo Powwow. In the post is a bit about powwows generally; the cloudy etymology of the word; the history; the contemporary gathering; the drum as its heart and soul; and, of course, the rules.

No, we don't have a booth there to sell Wings's art. He doesn't do powwows anymore, or other events; the overhead is too high and the return far too low. Art like his doesn't sell at these sorts of events; too expensive.

And, as always, the powwow (which here is an outdoor event) will be partially rained out this weekend, of course. It happens every year. No matter what the year's monsoon season is like, even if it's completely on schedule and no real rain shows up until August, there's always, always an exception for Powwow Weekend. Only a 40% chance today, but tomorrow is upwards of 50%, and that usually means at least a cloudburst. It won't matter. They will simply call a rain delay in the dancing, if it occurs then, and then resume once it passes. And at night, the tow chains will come out to help get tourists with low-slung cars mired in the mud of the Buffalo Grounds out and on their way back to their hotel rooms.

And now, I am off to sprint through my day's to-do list. I'll be back late today to handle messages and comments and FB notifications and what have you (yes, I know I'm already two days behind on that). Likes and shares are welcomed, especially of the main page of Wings's Web site. And if you know of anyone in the market for the literal heartbeat of the dance, we have a beautiful one for sale in the photo above.

[And now our first unannounced visitor has just shown up, so I'm off . . . .]