We weren't able to travel as far as Ormstown this past weekend, but my husband surprised me by taking me to the 36th Annual Nova Scotia Bluegrass Festival, where we heard some great music and generally enjoyed ourselves. BUT I've just sent the following rant, building for years, to the NSBAssn. BoD:

"I understand that people, having purchased RVs with luxurious options like air conditioning and hot showers, like to be able to use them. Unfortunately, their luxury becomes other people's irritation. Our personal enjoyment of our campsite was destroyed by the owner of a nearby RV, who chose to run his external generator continually from early Saturday morning until after 1 a.m. Sunday morning, at which point I asked security personnel to deal with the situation, which they did. The RV owner then waited until the wee hours of the morning, turned his generator on again, and it was still running when we left at 9:30 Sunday morning. This generator was so loud that I was unable to play my guitar at my campsite, since I couldn't even hear it myself over the noise. At night, we were unable to enjoy hearing the river, or the late night musicians nearby. It was very frustrating.

As we walked around the festival site listening to the many excellent jams, we noticed several locations were so inundated by generator noise that the musicians couldn't be heard properly, and some places where obnoxious fumes were being issued by running RVs.

I have a suggestion, discussed with several other people who also found the situation almost intolerable, which I put forward for your consideration.

The Stewiacke site is large and easily divisible into fields. Some of the fields are more level and suited to the larger RVs which tend to run generators most. It should be fairly easy to estimate how many generator using RVs will attend a festival, given previous experience. Why not set aside an appropriate number of fields, and ask incoming traffic at the gate if they plan on using their generator? If they do, send them to a field designated for generator using vehicles. Ban the use of generators in other fields. If you are worried that estimates will be too far off, retain one last field for mixed (generator using and non) latecomers.

Conversely, you could choose to designate specific fields for people who dislike generators and don't wish to be near them at all. And if nothing else, you could restrict the use of generators for non-medical reasons to a smaller number of hours, since 8 a.m. to midnight seems an overly generous rule, to say the least."

It's unlikely I'll get more than a barely polite response, but how do other camping festivals deal with these Satanic devices?