Anthesteria 2015 Recap

Pithoigia

After setting up the festival shrine, I went walking in the river wash near where my husband and I used to live. I had remembered the last time Anthesteria fell late in the year like this it had been such a pretty explosion of flowers, seemingly overnight, in this wash.  But every year is different.  This year, many plants were popping up but not blooming yet.  Still, there was no shortage of blooms… there was the fiery orange flowers on the stalks of globe mallow, the yellow petaled flowers of the brittlebush, and the delicate folded creosote blossoms, as well as the sunny puffballs on the sweet acacia trees.  I also smelled the orange blossoms for the first time this year, which means it is officially spring (in my head).

Things were different in this place though.  Whole trees under the bridge where there had been no trees before.  Unfortunately that was the only pleasant change.  There was much more dirt bike tracks, some encroachment from nearby development, and more trash--more than I could put a dent in on my own.  And on another level, it just… wasn’t mine anymore.  I knew that intellectually, I think, but in coming back I suppose I needed to resolve something about that on a deeper emotional level.  (Like revisiting the park of my childhood on Anthesteria several years ago. Does Anthesteria bring forth the ghost of our past just as it does the ghosts of the dead?)  It did make my heart ache, just smelling the spring from there, though - it’s very particular, and of course particularly reminiscent of the best couple years of my life.  

There is perhaps something about this festival in regards to the intersections of time.  I remember thinking on Lenaia that the more deeply present you are in the moment, the more noticeable the shadow of death (any wonder that our death-fearing culture is all about distraction?)  To be fully present in the moment is to be the witness of the moment constantly dying and birthing the next - every hour, every minute, every second.  And nothing pulls me into the present moment quite like this festival, when everything seems particularly brighter and stranger somehow.

As I walked, I remembered a particular memory from a almost 2 years ago, that may be connected to some healing I’m trying to do now… which I will write about at a later time.  Nevertheless, it was illuminating and I was glad for it.

I found a spot that was nice enough to sit and spend some time in.  I said some impromptu prayers to Dionysos to begin the festival, blew on my bull horn, and poured out some white wine onto the desert floor.

I was happy to see bees were buzzing in the creosote bushes.

As the sun went down, I gathered some flower stalks and creosote branches and made my way home, where I adorned the shrine with these things and began the festival proper.  I put on music, and began working on some art.  In the past, I have made masks or painted.   With no particular art plans this year, I took out my acrylic paints from last year and started opening some books and looking online for any images that spoke to me.  I found one of Dionysos and Ariadne I liked, and although it seemed overly ambitious, I figured I’d give it a try…  I sketched in pencil then began with paints.  (All while drinking, of course.)  I was actually pleasantly surprised how it turned out.  I might do this in the future with other vase images.

(I had playlists of music that I had created last year for each day of the festival - a ready-made convenience which I expected to appreciate, but instead almost completely abandoned this year. For some reason putting things on shuffle seemed to work better.  I think, if anything, I’ll have to create a new set list each year because each Anthesteria has a distinctive feel to it.)

My feast this year was incredible.  I had gone a little nuts at the farmers market.  Cheese, zaatar bread, flat bread, tomatoes, tangerines, grapes, edible flowers, greens, olives, baba ganoush, pomegranate jelly, baklava…. AND goat.  This was the first time I’d tried goat, and I had slow cooked it all day in milk and honey with some fresh fennel tossed in.

I had splurged on a REALLY good bottle of wine this year.  It had been so long since I’d had a bottle like this -- in fact, I’m not sure I’d EVER had a bottle like this -- so complex and aged so well that it was velvety and sensual and it almost made me not want to eat any of the great food I had because I wanted to have that beautiful, unspoiled first taste on my tongue again and again and again...

I shared it in libation and felt grateful to be alive.  (A feeling which is itself a gift.)

 

Khoes

Some part of me was aware of it raining all morning as I slept.

As usual, I spent the day in total silence.

I did some divination because I wasn’t feeling sure about swinging. And indeed, the div was strongly against swinging, and i got the sense that I needed to focus more on the sacred role I would take on in the evening.  Feeling a little sorry I wouldn’t connect with Erigone like I did last year, I instead spent some time finishing my art from the day before, and walking the streets and parks of my neighborhood and communing with the energy of the land.  During my walk (which was very chilly, compared to the temperate weather on Pithoigia and Khutroi) I came across large puddles of water in the park and couldn’t help but be reminded of the marshes of Dionysos Limnaios, and ponder the significance of places where water meets earth.

All during the festival there were some really majestic, dramatic clouds, the three dimensional sort that seemed both far and close in such a way that lent a peculiar vastness to the sky. Sometimes they were like lumbering ships, and sometimes they seemed like distant mountains.

And then the night’s ritual… which can’t be spoken of, except in poetry.

 

Khutroi

Reflecting on Anthesteria now, I see an inversion in mood and energy compared to last year (and past years).  This year, Pithoigia had a sort of uncharacteristic somberness to it.   And where last year Khoes had been busy and full of heart-wrenching and revitalizing epiphany, this year it was calmer and focused and yet left me totally exhausted.  And the usually miasma-filled Khutroi ended up being… well, uplifting.  

A friend had done some divination for me before Anthesteria that indicated I should change how I observe Khutroi, and explore more deeply my feelings for the dead.  

I took some flowers and leftover feast day foods to the cemetery and had a picnic in my favorite spot where the hedges give a bit of privacy.  I took off my shoes so I could feel the cool earth with my toes.  It was peaceful and pleasant and comforting.  I then started making some flower crowns from the flowers I had brought.  A friend sent me a message to check up on me, and I told him what I was doing.  He said something (sincerely) about it being romantic.  And that made me smile, because it was romantic - being present and surrounded by the bones of the dead and the spirits who had joined me, while sharing food and weaving flowers and enjoying the spring day.  I felt much more at home than I had at the river wash on Pithoigia.

I wove a flower crown for myself and one for the dead.  The one for the dead I tossed up unto a tree branch -- throwing it perfectly on my first try, which seemed like a good omen!  

I visited my grandmother’s grave before I left too. We were never close, and I’m not even sure how she felt about me, but I find it easy and natural to send her love now.  I put some of the last flowers and creosote sprigs on her gravestone, along with a strawberry and some wine.

At home, I spent some quality time at my husband’s shrine.  I put on a record of some of ‘our’ music and I shared the remainder of the *really* good bottle of wine with him. And then i did an exercise that my godmother had given me to do several months ago but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do until now - I did some journaling/automatic writing in the form of a conversation with my husband.  The goal being to open myself up to both him-in-memory and hopefully (eventually?) him-in-spirit.

It seems like the simplest thing.  But emotionally, it was one of the hardest fucking things ever.  It was an act which tapped into a huge tangled ball of fear in my chest, with threads like “But what will it say about me, or him, if it doesn’t work at all?”, “But how can I even trust myself….”, “This isn’t enough, isn’t enough, isn’t enough….I need to really hear him and not pretend to hear him...” and “What if I’ll know this is a big joke and he really isn’t okay, or there, at all?”  And other even less rational things that can’t be put into words.

The whole time I cried, a torrent of tears that couldn’t be stopped.  But the words came too.  And even his voice came, in my head, with very little coaxing.  It wasn’t easy, and it hurt so much that I wanted to run away even while I was transfixed.  But it also made me smile a little, and the ball untangled a bit.  I promised I would do this again.

I opened his urn.  Looked at his ashes-that-used-to-be-him.  Put a pinch in the very last of the excellent wine, and drank it down.  

I have a project I’m working on that I’ve been calling “devotional performance art” that will involve the dead and theatrics and fortune telling all at once.  I had realized about halfway through Anthesteria that Khutroi would be a good day to well and truly begin, to try and summon that persona and bless it.  So I did my first version of her in makeup.  She isn’t completely coming through yet, but it is a beginning and it felt right to have begun.

So with my own face made into a mask that would have even the goth kids looking askance.... I said to the dead, “So do you want to go dancing?”  And so we did.

I was aware of them all around me as I danced.  I remember that awareness more than anything, because otherwise I tranced the fuck out.

I stopped at the swings on my way home.  I sat on the swings for a moment, but it still didn’t feel right.  So I walked the labyrinth instead, then went home, smudged and spirit-swept out the Keres, and collapsed.  

Hermes subsequently did not get his panspermia until the next morning.  I’m hoping the dear trickster didn’t mind too much.

*

I have a deeper understanding of how this festival allows me to put myself into accord with the seasonal shift.  In the weeks preceding it, my mood had been lagging behind, in a lull of grief more suitable for winter -- so much so, that I felt resistant to seeing some of the first flowers the week before Anthesteria.... That thrust of life, of warming up and speeding up, of moving forward-ness, of involvement and engagement, it can be jarring.   Anthesteria is the crossroads where past meets future, life meets death, spring meets winter, and where we learn how to say yes to all of it at once.

Herbfolk Gathering

I figured I'd throw it out there that I plan to attend the HerbFolk Gathering in my home state in September.  I attended last year's event and enjoyed it immensely, and this year's looks to be shaping up to be even better, with longer classes and two nights of dancing and music.  Obviously the focus is on herbalism, but it has a pagan- and animist-friendly feel to it, so if anyone else reading this plans to attend, drop me a line! 

Arachneia the First: Plants, Dreams, Stars

[The Arachneia is a festival in the Bacchic Orphic tradition I am involved with called The Thiasos of the Starry Bull.  The festival celebrates the weaver Arachne, who is considered a Dionysian heroine, and her transformation into a spider.  You might notice this cross-posted at The Boukoloen, which you should definitely check out for more about the tradition, our deities, and writings from others!]

On Friday night before the Arachneia (being our devotional day for the Dionysian Heroines), I braided/wove some purple yarn into a long bracelet while saying an impromptu prayer to Arachne under the stars. I had initially planned to hang this in a tree once I finished, but instead I was compelled to wear it as a bracelet as a reminder of her throughout the weekend.

Saturday was a bit of a wash.  I got very little sleep that morning in order to transition from my usual graveyard schedule.  I needed to be able to manage a 3 hour drive very early on Sunday morning to attend an herbal festival up north.  I don't know if that's why I ended up dreaming so vividly.  Is it better to dream at night, to receive messages from spirits and gods?  I had honestly never thought of this until now, but I've been doing the better part of my sleeping and dreaming during the day for the last ten years.  For the first time, I'm seriously considering the ramifications of this.  On the flip side, always being awake at night may be a boon for ritual/divinatory work and cultivating altered states of consciousness.  Regardless, on Saturday night, I had a very significant, vivid and lucid dream, which I shall type up just as I journaled it that day:

Dream of [my husband]. Heard him talking and his voice was so resonant and beautiful and familiar that it snapped me into being lucid in the dream. And when I knew, he knew that I knew. I reached for him, touched him, took him all in. I wanted to absorb every bit of him to fill in all the deepest holes of my grief, but the moment was both timeless and exquisitely not-enough at the same time. He was SO present, SO vivid, impossibly so!  How is it that it could be so hard to conjure his image, laugh and voice in waking moments, but here he was perfect?  I can’t remember everything we said, as I write this later in the day and after additional sleep, but if I’d woken right after I think I would have remembered every word. I know that he apologized, and without thinking, I told him it was okay, it’s all okay. I was desperate to reassure him so he could reassure me. (And how could it not be okay in THAT moment? It's the moments without him that are not.) I asked him, “You’re okay, right?” It seemed a silly question (self-evident) as I asked it, but then his lack of answer made it seem more ominous. “Please tell me you’re okay.”  I can’t possibly describe everything in his expression, the way his eyes looked away for the briefest instant as if trying to insinuate a thousand things he wanted to say but could not, a soft desperation and compassion mixed with peaceful resolve.  Yet I knew without being told that I didn’t have to worry about the dream disappearing within seconds (as my lucid dreams usually do.) I knew that this time was given to us. I know he said more, I know we had some time together, maybe even a kiss, but the details are lost -- there’s only the sense of a space of time and basking in his presence. Too soon, he was standing to leave. I asked him to stay, to do something more with me, and he made as if to do so, but then he said he could not - with a strain as if he was being physically pulled elsewhere. I walked with him only a few steps, and I realized as the distance between us grew that he followed two guides whom I hadn’t noticed before. Even in that moment I was grateful for our time but it could never be enough. I called after him, “I will see you again, right? Please tell me I will see you again!” This plea, like the other, went unanswered, and I realized with a pang that as much as this moment was a gift it was probably also a goodbye. 

In my next dream, I looked into a sink and saw what I thought were baby king snakes, although they were too thick and too short. I picked one up to show someone, wondering if it would bite. I looked down and saw a spider crawling on my hand, then fall to the ground and walk away.  The snake bit my finger, but I kept holding it even though it hurt, and starting walking down a flight of stairs...

As you might imagine, the first dream especially colored my entire day and added a bittersweet quality to my solitude.  (The round-trip was a good six hours of driving with only myself and my ipod for company.)  Yet, if someone had offered to go with me I probably would have declined their company.  The bone tablet words which I have been least familiar with seemed an appropriate phrase to focus on today.  "Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos."  To me, this one is the most stark, because it includes words that we tend to classify as negative - war and lie.  And since I use them as mantras of sorts, a part of me cringes at the inclusion of these words. But I started exploring it anyway.

The Native Herb Festival I attended was nice. It was all held outdoors, and the weather was very pleasant in the shade, unlike the 110 degree weather we've had at home.  The first class I attended was about incense-making.  Much was not new to me, but I did take some inspiration out of it, especially regarding making kyphi.  I used to think of this as overly difficult, but when she made a simple version on the spot, I felt inspired, and had an idea of making a version with wine soaked figs instead of wine soaked raisins (or both) with some pine resin and honey.  And also, using creosote (chaparral) for incense.  As much as I've used that plant for other sacred purposes, and recognized its resinous leaves, I don't know why I haven't done this yet.

The 2nd class was on kitchen witchery. There was less witchery involved, and more about mixing about what we think of us spices versus medicinal herbs in the kitchen.  I took some notes about herbal-infused honeys and simple syrups.  The 3rd class had caught my eye because it mentioned connecting with our ancestors, and it involved a sort of weaving.  It was a workshop for making rope and cord out of yucca leaves, the way that native peoples in this region would have.  It was completely hands on. We started by pounding out a yucca leaf (that had been soaked for several days) with a large smooth rock until all the fibers started to separate, then separating the fibers by hand, and then we were taught a basic weave and how to splice more fibers in so you could make it as long as you like.  It was a lot of work, but at the same time simple and remarkable that we could all end up with at least one strand of cord -- which was insanely strong, by the way!  I'm still delighted by acquiring this random bit of knowledge.  A few people I've mentioned it to have asked if I plan to use this and what for.  Honestly, I have no idea, but I'll figure out something.  It's a scratchy fiber, not unlike hemp, but a friend of mine suggested treating it with beeswax and I think that's a great idea.

At the festival there were a handful of vendors, and the arboretum itself was selling native plants in pots.  I went a little nuts and bought 6.  These were: coyote tobacco (nicotania attenuata), sacred datura, comfrey, Canyon grape (Vitus Arizonica), New Mexico Vervain (verbena mcdougalli), fringed sagebrush (artemesia frigida).

I had no idea there was an Arizona grape, or that you could cultivate datura (usually I see them die off every season in the desert). And how could I resist a nicotania that is named after Coyote?  I fully admit that my patio is getting a bit ridiculous at this point, with all the cactuses and plants.  Everything is in pots because I don't want to plant in the yard of the rental house I'm in.

On my way home, I stopped in Sedona to have dinner. I really wanted to see the stars while I was there, so I killed some time before sunset and then found a good spot to lay some blankets out on a slope, meditate and enjoy the view of Cathedral Rock.  The spot I picked had a spider web next to it, so I figured that was a good sign.  There is also a dead tree there -- a good hanging tree, I think.  I smoked an herbal cigarette and drank a kombucha beer (an actual 7% alcohol kombucha -- brilliant), pouring out a good portion for libations, of course. The edginess I had felt all day had brought me here, to an edge, literally.  In this quiet, numinous place-time, I could let it come to a head. 

A hyperreal state settled in, the sort where my mind rebels at the absurdity of life (absurd! absurd! absurd!) like a knock on the door, one that the things on the periphery start answering to with restless movements.

The stars are slow in their reveal.  But the first sense I make of them is the corona borealis directly overhead.  I had had trouble spotting it this last year, but there it was.  I remember how when I had planned my own version of an Ariadne festival that this was my one confirming marker for placing Her festival sometime just after midsummer, because that is when the crown was highest.  I still feel that Her energy is the strongest in the summer - specifically, the height of summer and the descent into the autumn.

As it got darker, I heard a pack of coyotes yipping in the distance.  I realize my state is a bit more altered than I thought, when I feel that instead of having a sky suspended above me, that I am myself suspended above the sky.  Strapped to the earth for now, I hang, but when the earth lets me go I will fall into the heavens like a pool of water.  I see a shooting star just below the corona, and it seems to last forever.

Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos.  Eirene. Polemos. Aletheia. Pseudos. Dionysos.  εἰρήνη. πόλεμος. ἀλήθεια. ψεῦδος. Διόνυσος.  In Greek, all strung together, you'll find it actually sounds harmonious.

I had an epiphany a couple months back, and I think I was reading Rhyd Wildermuth's blog at the time, where I realized that even though during much of the last year I have prayed for peace, I am actually not even sure if that's what I want.  I find myself bouncing back and forth between extremes, peaceful and emotional wreck, grounded and then ecstatic, depressed and then inexplicably happy.  Do I want peace?  No, not always.  In the thrill of these extremes, and in-between them, as difficult as the transition can be, is where I find myself, and the god...

The god who is the tension between opposites, the god who is behind the mask and is the mask.

When I eventually go to leave, I almost forget but then remember, to take off the purple bracelet and hang in on a tree with whispered thanks.  I don’t know if my dreams are true, and I still don’t know Arachne too well, and it’s a long drive home alone.  But there are innumerable stars for company.

The gods are real and they send you dreams...

Things have been a bit hectic, but not uneventful!  First of all, my epithet project of sorts was very illuminating.  Even though it didn't quite come out to one epithet per day.  One of our cats got very sick (but pulled through, thank Bast!), not to mention that sometimes I simply felt I needed more time with one.  Even then, such a short time devoted to an epithet is by no means enough to explore all the sources, significance, aspects and nuances for each one.  I mainly trusted on the tarot card and what chanced to comes up in the resources available to me as far as what focus to take.  It was almost eerie how well some of the cards related to the epithets, even if it didn't seem that way at first glance.  I enjoyed it, and expect I'll be doing it again sometime.

In the midst of that devotional project, something else significant happened.

 

Somewhere between Dionysos Agrios and Dionysos Bromios, my husband and I were talking of gods, tricksters, archetypes, god consciousness... At the same time, he's drawing tarot cards as I work on blogging about epithets.  He draws the 7 of Cups as I'm trying to research it, so we share thoughts about it.  He mentions being an incidental Dionysian, which makes me smile.  The topic changes and meanders.

 

That night we both woke up at the same time from dreams that seemed very significant, and became all the more significant when we shared the similarities later that morning.  In mine, I was in a dry creek bed at night.  There was a lot of foliage, and the sense that we were staying there, my husband and I.  We were planning and preparing for a Dionysian ritual.  But when I tried to speak to him, there was an emotional distance between us, the kind that I was uncertain how to breach.  A group of women charged through the foliage, to join us perhaps.  I remember thinking I would rather it would be just the two of us.

 

In his dream, I was putting on and starring in a Dionysian play.  He was there with me the whole time, but not a part of the play itself, and felt distant and sad that he was not included... yet he wasn't sure how to ask since it was my "thing".  Dionysos himself was present as the play was going on, weaving among and watching the performers.

 

After thinking about the two dreams, I asked, hesitantly, "Do you think its a message that we should be doing things together, spiritually, as far as Dionysos goes?"

 

This question was even hard for me to say.  I'm not sure why, exactly.  I think part of it is that I feel so damn lucky to have this person who I love so much, who loves me in return, share a spiritual belief system with me, that I would never presume that he would want to worship the same god.  It is such a personal thing, after all.  Which is another reason, I suppose... It is so close to my heart, that I'm a bit self-conscious about it sometimes.  (Not for any good reason, just stupidly so.)  

 

But when I asked, he agreed, and admitted that he has wanted to but did not wish to intrude.

 

So it seems we got a couple gentle smacks upside the head from the god for something we have both wanted but were afraid to ask each other.

 

The idea is still so novel, though, that I still feel baffled.  I told my husband, I really don't know what I'm doing most of the time, so I'm not sure where to start trying to cultivate a concurrent practice...

 

And a deep part of me is still scared, even when all evidence points to the contrary, that he is just doing this for my benefit.  Although I don't know why that's so frightening, because that isn't a BAD thing, even though it isn't something I'd want or expect.  It's really hit me, consciously anyway, that my relationship to Dionysos feels intimate.  Talking about him, specifically how I feel about him, or my experiences with him is as difficult (if not more difficult) than talking about how I orgasm or what I like during sex.  Intimacy equals vulnerability.  Which follows that my deepest, irrational fear is that if I let someone in to those experiences, then they can, hypothetically, try to discredit what is meaningful to me.

 

I have a specific memory of the first time I opened Otto's book, Dionysos: Myth and Cult.  I was intrepidly, shyly beginning to explore Dionysos and my attraction to him.  The prospect was new and a little scary, and my life was not quite ready for it (which is to say it needed it.)  I mentioned a section in the book to the person I was with at the time, now my ex, wanting to share something that intrigued me, that seemed mysterious and promising, to see if we could have a discussion about it.  But instead, he said something critical and dismissive.  (Though that was often his way of "discussing", he loved to argue for the sake of argument.  He was also a very cerebral couch-pagan, who occasionally practiced, seemingly for my sake.)  But I just shut down and moved on.  For whatever reasons at the time, I put down the book and didn't pick it up again for a couple years.

 

My husband has only ever been sensitive, interested, open-minded, and on the same page as me regarding the spiritual and mystical.  So my hang-ups are all my own.  And to some extent, it's also just hard to speak of what's hard to put into words.  But I must work on unsticking my tongue, releasing old fears, and opening myself up to whatever the god and the future has in store for us.  It's not an entirely new concept - he celebrated Anthesteria with me last year and the occasional devotional day - but now it feels as if it will be more together, hand in hand.

 

 

 

For the Haloa, we did a simple feast in honor of Demeter and Dionysos.  We got local produce and locally made foods from a nearby farmer's market, as well as a bottle of sparkling blackberry mead and a bottle of "Dionysos" wine.  The beverages were from Total Wine - the Dionysos wine was even from Greece.  It was very good!  I expect to be getting it again for devotional activities. (The same label also has a "Hermes" wine that I want to try.)  The food was all wonderful, although the carrot and acorn squash soup I made was a little spicy!  We shared the food with the gods on a temporary altar... Dionysos was represented with the statue usually on my shrine, Demeter with some sheafs of wheat.  We played a variety of music, including some of the early (especially otherworldly) songs by múm, and selections from Stereolab's Not Music and Wisp's We Miss You .  It was quite lovely.

 

I have so more to blog about, including a devotional day to Dionysos we had last week, the dream I had last night, the Lenaia that we're celebrating tomorrow... not to mention other things I've been meaning to talk about, including ecstatic postures and Ariadne.  Things are buzzing... 

 

 

 

Dionysia in the Desert

 It was pointed out to me that the First Annual Dionysia in the Desert Street Festival is planned for this December in Tucson, Arizona!  

 

"The goal of the event is to highlight the local Arizona economy through artists, performers, vendors, and sponsors from all over the state of Arizona while as they help raise funds that will support community developed and managed education programs that serve as supplemental alternatives to the current programs whose funds are drastically being depleted by our state leadership."

And from their Facebook event page:  "Come join us in this effort as we re-create the atmosphere of ancient Greece and Rome with a modern day feel and decompress our modern day cares and worries away with four stages, street shows, interactive art, a barter and trading village, beer and wine from our own brewers and vintner, and much much more!"

It is a fundraiser event put on by an organization called The Foundation of L.I.F.E. (Limitless Ideas for a Free Environment).  I'm not familiar with them, but it appears to be a worthwhile organization.  Their website defines them as a "charitable, educational, non-profit foundation...with the purpose of teaching people to love themselves, to love others, and to love the planet.  It represents Arizona citizens who are concerned with the direction that the economic and political structure in the U.S. has taken in terms of limiting the ideas, liberties, and freedoms of individuals, which has resulted in the abuse of human rights throughout the world and in the abuse of global resources."  They also add that they support not only local interests of Arizonans, but also "the interests of 'Gaia'".

Tucson isn't too far from me, and I'd love to go down there to show my support, but due to holiday plans with my family, I won't be able to unless they change their tentative date.  Nevertheless, very cool to see something this big being planned in the name of Dionysos!   Hopefully it will be successful enough to become an annual event.