An overcast and rainy day for the Mum Festival, a history lesson and some reading

Posted By: David Fortier September 24, 2023

By David Fortier

Come Sunday morning, the Mum Festival will be well underway and, for the first time in years, will be operating under cloudy and rainy skies, complements of Storm Ophelia. TBE set up our tent early Saturday morning and we spent most of the day chatting with some of the Mum Festival diehards, who grabbed their waterproof jackets and headed out to see what they could see—and of course eat what they could eat.

There were plenty of food trucks—we settled on Ted’s Steamed hamburgers and cheeseburgers, some fries and sodas. While Saturday was slow, the word was Friday nights turnout was terrific. Fleetwood Macked provided the music and the food lines were long, which is all good for everyone involved.

At one point Ron Tessman, who runs the bristolct.net website which has been around a while, stopped by for a conversation. Ron caught us up on his latest photography project, which is to document Bristol thoroughly. He has, literally, hundreds of thousands of photos. His latest project is to go through old photos and then photograph the same location.

TBE’s Rit Carter, left, gestures to Ron Tessman, who presents an envelope with a postmark from the 1965 Mum Festival on Saturday at this year’s Mum Festival. Bristol Health was our neighbor at the festival. | David Fortier

Tessman is also a bit of a history buff. On Saturday he was carrying an empty envelope with a postmark from the 1965 Mum Festival, Oct. 2, specifically. The return address was the Breen Oil Company. It is the kind of thing history people get excited about. And Ron is one of those amazing people that populate Bristol, people going about their days quietly making their contributions.

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As for reading and listening for the week, first up is reading.

Reading has been mostly long form articles from the New Yorker. “Holy Matrimony: George Eliot’s secular sacraments,” by James Wood is one of those wonderful, exhaustive book reviews. Wood is reviewing, Clare Carlisle’s recently published, “The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life.”

Eliot is the penname of Marian Evans, author of such novels as “Middlemarch,” “The Mill on the Floss” and “Adam Bede.” I have a copy of “Middlemarch” on my bookshelf. I glance at it once in a while, and then I decide that it might be better to wait.

And yet, that I haven’t read the book doesn’t stop me from learning about Evans/Eliot. The kicker is that she lived with another writer, who was married and estranged from his wife, in the mid-1800s when this arrangement was the subject of scandal, and yet, she accomplished what she did.

For a podcast, there is the “This is Democracy” podcast, “Episode 244: Auschwitz-Birkenau.” The hosts, father and son Jeremi and Zachary Suri, discuss the history of the death camps and lesson to be learned with press and public relations officer of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Pawel Sawicki.

The podcasts begin with a poem by Zachary and a brief discussion about the poem and how it ties into the conversation. Whether you like poetry, or not, should not deter you from listening. Click here for the segment.

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The week ahead takes us into October. Time flies. Enjoy.

“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org. 

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