Oh, I know we are brothers in ways we both don't know. Parking people are a strange and wondrous cadre, though I must confess, I did not have the same courage and dedication as such truly insane people like Sage, Michelle Joye, Kim Steinman, Rob and the like, who did it for more than one year. People who do parking more than one year are truly a hard core corps.

I also have a bond with crafts directors a group to which I am truly proud to be a member. A crafts director's insanity is usually a private hell of killing children, ruining futures and, in my case, being personally responsible for the world-wide destruction of the crafts fair culture. I don't remember how many children I killed, but it was more than a few. (The joke for those of you who aren't crafts director is that inevitably someone who is rejected will call and tell you their children are going to starve because they didn't get into the Festival. Therefore by my rejecting them, I am killing their kids.) The stars are there, in fact, as my personal homage to crafts directors. You see, when I was crafts director we were in a dark place called lower Freeborn. There was where we held the crafts jury. Now, I don't know how things are done these days, but in my year applicants sent in three slides and a brave crew of volunteers judged each one. I had about 900 applications, which means around 2700 slides. It took all day, I believe. I kind of went insane after it and had this pad of glow in the dark stars and after people had gone, I started putting them up all over the place. (I snuck into 6 Lower Freeborn several years back and found one star remains over where the crafts director's desk was BTW). So...several years later...1992 to be precise, I decided to organize a break-in the night before the crafts jury to give the current crafts director Anika Newell a little surprise to make her jury a little more interesting and entertaining....and with the help of I think around 30 people, snuck into the new digs where you are now...ok we could have used keys, but it was funner to actually break in...and 4 hours later, after belaying three people up the skylight and cavorting generally everywhere...well, you know what happened. I've often thought it needed some touch up for over the years stars have fallen, but never got around to it...especially the skylight, which had almost 1/3 of the stars. My concept for the skylight was the line from 2001:A Space Odyssey..."My God, it's full of stars..."

That's the story of the stars. While they are a gift to all who slave in that place...they are a special gift to the crafts directors/coordinators/whatever they call themselves they know who they are...and if they still have juries, I hope they look up and see those stars and know they are not alone in their insane little reality...there are those of us out here who know, who have killed kids, who have wanted to kill fellow staff members who told someone they could send in their application after the deadline, who have had to endure the rain and the rain policy, and, well, somehow survived.

Anyways, I'm glad the stars are still there. It's been about many years since I've seen them in their glory.

Uh, oops, that was in response to Michael about Tom's Talking Hat.