Darkover

[cellio]

I'm back from Darkover. I had fun, and the two new members of On the Mark had fun at their first Darkover.

It seemed as if attendance was down substantially this year. I don't have any facts, but it felt like we were down 25% or so. I hope that either I am wrong or the con recovers from the slump next year.

I missed Harold and Becky Feld this year (they were doing Thanksgiving with family in another city). I did get to see dglenn, which was fun. I also saw assorted other friends I mostly only see at this con, including Crystal Paul (who is employed again! yay!), Dorigen and Paul, and Cliff Laufer. (Cliff runs the music program, and he's also in Clam Chowder. He tends to be very busy at this con.)

Our concerts went fairly well, aside from disappointing attendance. We're still working out some warts when performing on a small stage with sound equipment, but we did well and the music was good. The audience seemed to like it. They particularly liked a last-minute addition to the set, Salaman Rossi's "Halleluyah Halleli". (We were a few minutes short, and we have part coverage from the choir that learned that piece recently, and this con is more receptive than most to choral music in foreign languages, so we went for it.) I want On the Mark to learn another Rossi piece that we don't have to "steal" from the choir.

Our sound engineer (for the concert in the larger room) did an amazing job with limited resources. A bunch of equipment, and one person, did not show up, and he pulled it off anyway with basically no fuss. (Well, I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but if it happened it stayed there.) Kudos to Kludge! (The other concert was in the smaller room, which does not require sound reinforcement.)

There was one unfortunate moment during our concert in the big room, and I'll have to figure out how to prevent a similar problem in the future. We were on a long, skinny stage, and during one song the instrumentation was keyboard (at the far end), bass (near the center), and me on bowed psaltery way down at the other end. (And there were a couple singers.) The bass had been having tuning problems (they're like that, and there were drafts in the room). We started playing and I could hear that I was out of tune with the bass. I could not hear the keyboard. I saw that the bass player was trying to adjust, and I also tried to adjust to the very limited extent that one can on a bowed psaltery. Unfortunately, I later found out that both the bass and the psaltery were out of tune with the keyboard, so there was no saving it. If I had known that, I would have just stopped playing the psaltery (it wasn't essential to the piece). Sigh. I guess we need to develop some "hey, your tuning sucks!" hand signals or something. :-)

The Homespun Celeidh Band was there again (this was their second year, I think). That's dglenn's group. They are a lot of fun to watch and hear! They have a CD now, which I failed to score a copy of. (Their concert was on Shabbat, and I figured I'd just grab Glenn later, but I never saw him that night or the next morning.) They also hadn't sold any to White Hart, the dealers who carry many folk and filk recordings. Oops. Now I guess I have to pay shipping. :-(

Clam Chowder's concert was really good this year. It was fun to sit in the audience with Clam Chowder "virgins"; Ray and Jenn had never heard them. They had a blast, near as I could tell.

The Clams' fans are fun, warped, and twisted people. It's not completely surprising if someone pulls something during a concert; we've had pirates bearing car bumpers during "Lincoln Park Pirates", flat stuffed cats during "Nobody's Moggy Now", seductive female zombies during "Zombie Jamboree", and so on. This year there were two pranks, a Jacobite invasion during one song (I don't actually know the name) and an invasion of costumed vegetables demanding liberation during "Carrot Juice is Murder". This second was especially funny.

(The pirate incident was about 15 years ago. At this con I ran into Jim Williams, who I haven't seen in a long time. He said "I don't know if you remember me" and I said "Of course I do! You're Pirate Jim!". He got a giggle out of that.)

I also saw concerts by Perygrine (the person, not the group), John Huff, the "Cambion women" (which included Bob Esty), and Ellen James (a tiny bit -- she was right before us and we were off tuning). There was a lot of good music at this con.

I was surprised to find a note from Andrea and her husband Cliff when we got there; I didn't know they were coming. We spent some time chatting with them (mostly over breakfast Sunday). I also ran into Robert and Martha, who are actually from Pittsburgh but who I rarely see. I didn't spot any other Pittsburgh fans (aside from our group, I mean), though I did bump into an ex-Pittsburgher who I last saw in the SCA about 20 years ago.

I had forgotten how odd the environment in this hotel is. Between a near-absence of humidity and some weird temperature variations, the hotel can be challenging. Our room didn't have a thermostat, only a pair of dials -- one to control the fan and one that ran from "warmer" to "colder". The problem was that the fan was on or off, and it was on heat or on cold. There was, in short, no way to set a constant temperature in the room. Yuck. I thought all the rooms were like that until I discovered Saturday that Robert and Kathy had a thermostat in their room. Next year we'll request it! Sheesh.

The program listed Shabbat evening services, but the description was weird. I lit Chanukah and Shabbat candles in my room (the service was listed for well after sundown), but held off on praying ma'ariv. I decided to take my siddur (I'd brougth Sim Shalom to the con) and poke my head in to see if it was going to be weird (in which case I'd leave) or fairly normal. There were two people there when I got there. They asked me to come in, but there was no way we were going to get a minyan. (One other person showed up a bit later.)

When I got there they had unlit Chanukah and Shabbat candles. The person who seemed to be in charge asked me to light the Shabbat lights and I declined because of the time. Eventually he did so himself. I considered pointing out that he should do the Chanukah lights first (once you light the Shabbat candles you've accepted Shabbat and can no longer kindle fire), but I figured he was already violating halacha and I wasn't in charge and I didn't know if he'd listen to me, so I left him alone. The fourth person showed up about this time and pointed out the error, but then she lit those candles for him. Ok, whatever.

No one present knew more than a couple of lines of "Maoz Tzur". Then we discovered that we did not know the same melody for "Shalom Aleichem" either. (Well, the fourth person and I knew the same melody, but the other two knew two others, not well enough to teach.) Then the person in charge started chatting and munching on gelt, and it seemed that the service was not going to continue. So I stayed to chat for a bit, ate some gelt, and then returned to my room to daven. Saturday there was nothing on the schedule, and I didn't go looking.

Traffic on the way home was good until Breezewood, when I called Dani to let him know I'd be home in a couple hours. Shortly after getting onto the Turnpike, traffic slowed to a crawl. It alternated between crawls and moderate stretched (I mean 35 or 40, not 60) for much of the rest of the trip home, which took about three hours. Oops. It's a good thing we'd decided on the phone that we weren't going to try to go to Sunday dinner; by the time I got home and unpacked it was after 5, and I needed some unwinding time this evening. Darkover is a fun con, but I wish it were less of a strain to get home from! (Holiday traffic. Whee.)

And now I am home, catching up on email and LJ and placating the cats I so cruelly abandoned for two whole days.

Comments

Harold and Becky

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

You may have missed Harold & Becky, but that meant that gnomi and I got
to see them!

Re: Harold and Becky

[cellio]

Families can be so demanding sometimes. :-) Seriously, I'm glad you all got to spend the holiday together! Being 10 hours or so apart has got to be a pain even without the complications of a small child...