WE ONLY GOT TO GO to two days’ worth of Bumbershoot this year, but will stretch our pix of the weekend out to three days, just to extend the joy.

We begin with Mass Productions, who turned the Space Needle into a giant harp last year. This year’s production was somewhat more modest.

Also back this year: Flatstock, the art show and sale by rock poster designers from across North America.

Claudia Mauro, who runs the local indie publisher Whit Press, introduced contributors from her poetry anthology In Praise of Fertile Land.

I love fertile land. I’m just not all that fond of nature poetry, particularly in the ’70s Port Townsend/La Conner style, which Mauro’s book includes much of. All that sanctimonious worship of a selectively-described “nature” in which farms never smell like manure and in which human beings other than the poet are never mentioned.

I used to dislike nature poetry because its sensibility was at odds with my young-adult cantankerousness. Now, I dislike it because it posits a Rousseau-esque romantic longing for a “simpler time” that never was.

In the real world, farmers have always been out to make a buck, have always been pressured by corporate and/or governmental powers, and have always bent and shaped the land to suit their ambitions. Rural life has always been frustrating and/or lonely. Young adults have longed to get the heck outta there since the age of Playboy of the Western World, and likely before.

I won’t even get into the PoMo philosophical construct that “nature,” as nature poets imagine it, doesn’t even exist except as a theoretical opposite to “civilization,” whatever that is.

Liz Phair, as you may have heard, has reinvented her look, from indie-rock bad girl into blonde quasi-waif. As long as she still plays and sings great, I don’t care.

In other apparel topics, fashion shows were held at regular intervals next to the “Fashion Alley” concession booths.

At one such show, we finally learned what’s worn underneath a Utilikilt—another Utilikilt.

The Bumbrella Stage, again this year, held a pair of strange banner-fellows on its sponsor flags. Last year, America’s most widely read lefty magazine shared the stage with Captain Morgan rum. This year, its logo appeared beneath that of Miller Beer, which was recently sold from Philip Morris to South African Breweries.

On the left, James Brown-esque vocalist Bobby Rush. I’ve seen James Brown impersonators on stage before, but they were always white.