Cremation of Care

In 1878, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco first took to the woods in Taylorville, California (present-day Samuel P. Taylor State Park) for a summer celebration that they called Midsummer High Jinks.

[3] Poems were recited, songs were sung, and dramatic readings were given; the practice was repeated each summer in other areas, primarily near the Russian River in Sonoma County.

[6] Redding formed the framework of the ceremony but the main actors, including George Tisdale Bromley as High Priest, were asked to supply their own major speeches.

[6] In 1904, the prologue to William Henry Irwin's Grove Play The Hamadryads included text such as "Touch their world-blind eyes with fairy unguents."

[9] The end of the ceremony was signaled by a lively Jinks Band rendition of There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,[10] and the club members sat down to a late dinner and revelry.

In response to member complaints about the unpredictable quality of the opening night fare, Charles K. Field was asked in 1923 to standardize the script for what became the basis for every subsequent Cremation of Care ceremony.

[16][17][18][19] On July 15, 2000, radio host Alex Jones and his cameraman, Mike Hanson, infiltrated the Bohemian Grove and filmed the Cremation of Care ceremony with a hidden camera.