Pennsic

[cellio]

It was a good Pennsic.

Two weeks ago Sunday most of my camping group went up to Cooper's Lake for setup. It went remarkably quickly, and when I returned two days later all the little tasks had been done. The kitchen was set up, the perimeter poles were all pounded in, the furniture was all out, the flies were up, and so on. Things weren't so far along at that time last year.

I spent a lot of time visiting with friends from other groups, though I still missed people (most regretably, my friend Yaakov from Atlantia). zachkessin and kmelion came by on Wednesday or Thursday with their two daughters, so I finally got to meet Joshua's family. They invited me to their camp for Shabbat dinner, where I met some other members of the new SCA group in Israel, Beit Aryeh. We didn't make a minyan and we didn't have enough siddurim to go around, but it all worked out. The dinner was very pleasant, and included some fresh-caught fish from Cooper's Lake. (Thanks, Alter!)

One day I encountered Joshua and Giovanna as they were headed toward the Drachenwald camp, so I tagged along. (A while back Joshua had declared me an honorary member of Beit Aryeh, which I think is nifty.) Drachenwald is the kingdom that includes all of Europe, and they also get some other overseas groups. They already had the group in South Africa, and now they have the group in Israel. But, of course, travel is expensive, so we had the odd situation of people from Israel coming to the US to meet up with people from Germany and England. :-) Among things, they were hoping to get someone authorized in fencing so they can have practices locally. (I didn't hear if this succeeded.)

I hadn't realized some of the challenges Beit Aryeh faces. They're spread out all over the country, of course, but it's a small country so that's not fatal. But most people don't own cars, so they have to use buses to get to meetings and events and stuff, and that can be a challenge. The security checkpoints aren't surprising, of course, and the thought of explaining armor or swords gives me pause, but I had not previously known that there is also a weight limit for what you can carry on a bus, and SCA armor and weapons could pose a problem there. Fortunately, one can make armor out of lightweight materials, so this should be solvable.

I also spent some time with my friend Baron Steffan, who received a Laurel at this Pennsic (for period heraldic ceremony/protocol/tournaments, and for research in general). I was absolutely thrilled to hear about this. About a month ago on the AEthelmearc laurel list someone had asked what it would take for us to consider a laurel for heraldry, and I described Steffan as my ideal candidate but for the fact that he doesn't live in AEthelmearc so we can't do him. How gratifying to hear that the East did!

We spent an afternoon catching up, talking about religion and SCA philosophy and mundane jobs and lots of other things. He seemed really happy about my enrollment in the para-rabbinic program, and we spent some time talking about that year-long discussion we had about Judaism some years back. He seemed tickled when I said I still reread that mail.

On the way to his vigil (held after dark) I and the person who was accompanying me walked past a stunning addition to the Pennsic landscape: a "marble" fountain made up of several figures of Greek gods, easily twenty feet across or more. Seeing the water flow, illuminated by torchlight, was amazing. (I went back and looked at it more closely in daylight, when there wasn't such a huge crowd gathered around it.) It was actually made out of resin, hand-made by SCA folks in numerous pieces and assembled on site. There was a newspaper article that described the process, but I didn't get a copy to bring home. The article is probably on the web somewhere. I'll try to post pictures soon.

Getting around at night posed some problems for me, especially once the heavy rain started on Wednesday of the second week. Basically, we camp in grasslands punctuated by (mostly) dirt roads; when it rais a lot, especially in a wet year like we've had, things become muddy. Very muddy. Unpredictably muddy, and at night sometimes invisibly muddy. And the mud is slick and sometimes deep. Long story short: if I think the odds are decent of falling on my tush or spraining something because I can't see the surface I'm walking on, I don't go out without a seeing-eye apprentice or the like. (And this year, with the new moon early in the second week, was dark.) This is the main reason I never got to see Yaakov: it's easier to catch some people at night, but by the time he got there and I had nights without commitments, the rains had started. And it's really not practical to just phone him and ask him to come over. :-)

Remember the mud; we'll revisit it later in this narrative.

I also bumped into dglenn at a class and invited him back to visit for a while. He had the draft of Homespun Celeidh Band's new CD and I got to hear a track; I'm looking forward to the release. Their first CD is awesome, and by talking about it in front of her I caused a camp-mate to buy a copy. (Well, she did listen to a sample track first.) It's nice to be able to help spread good music, at least a little.

Glenn had wanted to try out my digital camera, which I thought noteworthy for being lower-end (now) and thus inexpensive while still having features that seemed like they would be useful to Real Photographers (in which group Glenn is included). Real photographers often shoot lots of film, and developing it is expensive, and sometimes you need to do that but other times a quick shot with a digital might be good enough without incurring that expense. It didn't have everything that is considered fairly basic, as it turned out, but Glenn did show me how to use a couple features for which I had insufficient background in jargon.

Late in the second week I visited Budgardr, home of my friends Dof and Thora. They strive for an authentic (mostly-viking) camp, complete with brick oven and toys -- specifically looms and lathes. They taught weaving and woodworking classes out of their camp. The lathe is a lot of fun, and they now have three different ones (based on different exemplars). I'm not sufficiently lathe-literate to speak to the differences, but they're still nifty.

My house continues to get tourists -- it's the fifth year for the house so you sort of figure everyone's seen it who wants to, but then, every Pennsic is someone's first Pennsic. A couple people asked me for the plans, which I'm not going to distribute for multiple reasons, but I should huddle with my civil engineer to see what general information I can safely give, like the spacing of the 2-by-whatevers and the thickness of the walls and flooring, and stuff like that. My real advice to anyone who wants to build, though, is to (1) get a real engineer to draw or vett your plans and (2) assume you have all of the disadvantages of both permanent structures and mobile structures and plan accordingly. Granted, my engineer kind of comes from the school of "there are no over-engineered solutions, only under-engineered problems", but still.

The Pennsic Homeowners' Association had another class / round-table discussion this year. We heard about some new buildings and compared notes about what works well and what doesn't, including sharing DMV horror stories. I picked up one interesting tidbit, which I passed on to the camp plumber: one group doesn't chlorinate their water at all, but for $50 per year they rent a water softener and that takes care of all the gunk in the water, such that it runs clear. The plumber's eyes lit up at this. (Cooper's Lake uses well water that isn't really designed to support 12,000 people for two weeks, so it gets rather crunchy by the end. No one drinks it unfiltered, but you still want to be able to shower and wash your dishes.)

I should mention something about our camp. I mentioned Budgardr, who do something approximating real period camping. We don't do that; our camp assumes that Pennsic is a re-creation of a small city, not primitive camping, and we do things accordingly. So we have some buildings rather than tents, with more coming in future years, and we have a shower and assorted furnishings, and so on. Yes, we have some decadent modern stuff, though we try to at least hide it somewhat, but we're not about to get rid of it. We like our hot running water and propane grill. I do worry that we might eventually lose a couple members in our group who use the "camp" model rather than the "city" model, though, as we add more buildings. (For next year, we're thinking of replacing the pantry tent with a break-down building like our kitchen, and one of the members of the group wants to build such a building to replace her tent.)

One of the visitors I got to the house is from a camp that built a new structure this year (on a flatbed) that will be stored at Cooper's Lake. She wants my help in finding a local who she can hire to check in on it next summer, perform minor maintenance (caulk, fix flat tires, that sort of thing), and generally prevent them from being surprised by problems. (They live a good distance away.) I took her contact information and promised to look for a caretaker for her. (If anyone reading this is interested, let me know.)

Last year, after seeing this in another of the buildings, I bought myself a fake cat to nap under one of the windows. (It's not stuffed; it's a mold with fur on it, and the result is fairly realistic from a few feet away. One of the Pennsic merchants sells them.) This year, apparently, the cat had kittens: one day Johan handed me a small one of these cats that he said he found in our common area, and the next day another one appeared on the bench. Alas, the kitten deliveries then stopped, and I never found out who was behind it. It was a fun hack, though. Maybe there'll be another litter next year. :-) (Ironically, I had actually bought a kitten after the first one appeared, with the intention of adding it on myself, but I lost it on the way back to my camp. No, the second one wasn't that one.) Johan swears he didn't do it but wishes he had.

I took a few classes this year. I attended one on finger-loop braiding that went too quickly for me to catch more than the absolute basics, a good dance class (Gressley) taught by lyev, and a couple so-so classes on church history. I was especially looking forward to a class called "Hispano-Arabic Song", but it was cancelled (sigh). Another was described as a class on music of the Iberian peninsula from the 10th to 13th centuries, which got my attention, but it was mis-labelled in the catalogue: it was mostly about poetry and literature and didn't talk about musical settings at all, though the instructor played some musical examples without talking about the music. (There's a discography; the group on it that you've possibly heard of is Altramar, which does interesting music that I suspect they haven't documented.)

An acquaintance's mother was in that class, and later she asked me what I thought of it. I said I thought it was well-done as a text class and lamented that it's so hard to document music of this period. This was a mistake; this woman seems to be a member of the "it's traditional so of course it's old!" camp, and felt personally affronted (because she's Hispanic) that I didn't buy that argument. She also ripped into the teacher on some of the text stuff, but seemed to be attributing claims to the teacher that the teacher didn't actually make (about the Spanish language). Sigh. At least I don't see this person often, and now I know.

Dani (and also Arianna) spent a couple hours each day practicing for the Known World Choir, a group that instantiates each year at Pennsic, practices for a week, and then gives a concert. (They distribute the music in advance, but it's not clear how many people study it in detail.) This is not trivial, and it looks like fun. Some year when they're not doing church music (that I won't sing) I might join them. I'd really be there if they did a Rossi program, but I suspect they won't. (I did make the suggestion.)

This year's choir had about 65 people and performed seven pieces, including the "Exultate Deo" that our choir has done in the past. (Lovely piece, but not a quick one to learn.) The performance was solid overall; with only a week you don't really get to work on polish and dynamics and stuff like that so much, but it was a very nice concert anyway. They didn't have enough tenors, but what else is new? :-)

Our choir's performance was better than I thought it would be -- which is to say, servicable. We had some good pieces and some good moments, but we lacked any sort of polish. That's not surprising given some of the circumstances of this summer, but it was still disappointing to me. Mind, I knew it was coming; I was expecting much worse. But still. Oh well. I guess it was neither a bang nor a whimper.

As I mentioned before, the jack on my trailer broke this year while they were moving it, so I had to go get a replacement, ideally before the end of Pennsic. After one dead-end of a lead we found ourselves at Tractor Supply in Lyndora, which had exactly what I needed. (I'm writing this here so I'll remember where that place is in the future.) Johan was kind enough to install it for me, so it should be good to go now. I got a chuckle out of one aspect of the transaction: while buying the jack I also asked for new mounting hardware (some of the old hardware was rusty or gunked up), and the sales guy put it all into one plastic bag. When we got to the checkout I expected the cashier to have to dump it out to see what was there, but she didn't -- she threw the bag onto a scale. Assorted hardware by the pound is a new concept for me. I'm used to buying, say, nails by the pound, but not random stuff.

This outing was combined with Dani's grocery run for his night to cook. He is never, ever allowed to complain about me taking too long in a store. It's a good thing we don't routinely grocery-shop together; our styles are very different and, probably, mutually irritating. :-)

(Aside from this excursion; New Country Buffet in Lyndora is an inexpensive all-you-can-eat buffet with useful fish options.)

Our camp meals tend to involve a lot of grilled meat, so for my night I decided I wanted to do fish. (I was feeling deprived.) I seasoned one salmon filet with ginger and black pepper, one salmon filet with rosemary, and a bunch of tilapia with sage and lemon juice. (Seal in foil, cook on grill until done.) Everything seemed a little under-spiced to me compared to what I get in the oven at home, but it was still tasty and there were very few leftovers, so I'll count that as a success. :-)

I left on Friday afternoon. We got a lot of rain Wednesday night, Thursday, and Thursday night, but it let up on Friday. So prospects looked good for the usual tear-down on Saturday (which they do without me). Instead, when I came home from Shabbat morning services I found Dani already home; they had had lots of rain Friday night and Saturday morning and postponed tear-down to today. There was a lot of flooding in our part of the campground -- and the Serengeti (as it's known) never floods like that. The people who were there described calf-high standing water. I assume some photos will start showing up in a couple days. The group next to us was the kingdom of Atenvelt (from Arizona), and everyone was referring to "lake Atenveldt". It must have been a shock to them. (I also overheard a conversation today in which someone asserted that it was really an ocean, because it also touched two other kingdom encampments.) Some people in our camp got some water, but it wasn't nearly as bad. We got our car stuck in the mud today, but people pitched in to help and it didn't take long to rescue it. (Heh. Dani got gas on the way up and cleaned the windows; I told him I would have done that if I'd thought it wouldn't be invalidated in an hour, but he was optimistic.)

So we went up this morning to break down the camp. It took a little longer than I expected but it went fairly smoothly. That is, until we discovered the huge pile of trash left by the main barony camp. (We are a subgroup of that camp.) The rules specifically state that groups who do that can be penalized in future years, so our group could be damaged by anonymous slobs in the next camp over, and they had all gone home, so we ended up cleaning up their trash. They will hear about this. A couple barony folks from a different group (who thus had no stake in this) helped us out, which was very kind of them.

Aside from the rain at the end the weather was very pleasant. I don't think the high temperature ever got much above 80, though this did mean some cold nights (especially in the first week). But hey, that's what blankets and spouses are for. :-) (Ok, the midnight privy run isn't fun, but hey, we're roughing it, right?) We didn't get any significant rain the first week, and the allergens seemed to be remarkably well-behaved this year -- I took my daily Allegra and had no problems at all.

So I had a good time, didn't get to do everything I wanted to (no surprise there), but had fun and saw no major problems. All in all, a very pleasant Pennsic.

Now as for the email and LJ... that will take a while. :-)

Edited to add: I also saw paquerette briefly, but didn't have much time to talk. (So much for getting all the LJ mentions right in the first pass. :-) )

Comments

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I got your postcard! I feel ... well, *homesick* for Pennsic. I will definitely want a long sit-down, face-to-face conversation next year. Perhaps we can put together some Rossi, too, if you send me music? I think I have some on CD, if I can find it after unpacking ... :)

I love to sing. I'm a common soprano, but I'd love to do some singing with you, provided I have the translit and a recorded example to work with. :)

[rectangularcat]

What a great update - I almost feel like I was there!

I hope to come to Pennsic next year and see you again.

I read about the fountain on line last week from the Pennsic Independent online - here is the link http://pennsicindependent.com/book/view/75

From your description, I guess the mud was worse than the first week of Pennsic last year where they closed off the parking lot. I cannot imagine how bad the bog was if the Serengeti was flooded. Some advantages of camping in a house I guess.. you can tie off a canoe and get around!

I didn't notice your stuffed cat last year. I entertain the idea of getting my cats stuffed when they naturally die off. Nice bookends? Taxidermy actually somewhat creeps me out so it probably won't happen but it's a funny idea nonetheless.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Just curious -- have you ever visited Israel?

[jducoeur]

The people who were there described calf-high standing water.

Wow. No wonder so many people packed it in early. I mean, the Serengeti, for all its mud, has pretty decent ground drainage -- it's fairly porous soil, so water usually soaks on through decently quickly. (Which is why the Serengeti was all dust at the end of last year while we on the clay of Hangover Hill were still ankle-deep in mud.)

I can't imagine the amount of rain they had to get to saturate that. Scary...