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lrstrobel
I'm not sure how to interpret this question. I haven't left the SCA, though I'm much less active than I used to be. Some of that is for SCA-related reasons but a lot of it is mundane life.
I miss an SCA that doesn't exist any more -- a group of independant thinkers who could get together and have fun and all work together, and that didn't seem overly concerned with exerting power or counting dollars or saying "you are 'out', not 'in'". Maybe that never existed and what has changed is my awareness of it, but I really don't think corporate bloat, mindless subservience to same, and deliberately creating a second class based on money were a big part of the SCA I found almost 25 years ago. Back then, the contributions that mattered were in effort and time, not in dollars, and people were willing to say "let's try this new thing" without first asking Milpitas if there was any possible objection.
In a way I miss fighting. I wasn't very good and it fell off the bottom of the list when I was doing too many things, but it was fun. It doesn't beckon to me enough to get back into it now, and frankly I'm not sure that I'd be up for competing at the level it's gotten to now anyway, but it was fun while it lasted.
I hadn't realized it until now, but I kind of miss late-night dancing at Pennsic. That, however, is something I can do something about. :-)
2) What makes you laugh most?
Clever jokes or stories or dialogue. I like humor that appeals to intellect rather than physical humor or the vapid humor often found in, e.g., sitcoms. (I'm having trouble characterizing that, and might have missed the mark. But you asked what I like, not what I don't like, so I'll stop struggling with that.) A few examples of what I like: the snappy dialogue in West Wing when Sorkin was writing; talmudic-style humor; Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; fun character moments (drama, books, role-playing, whatever) that are unexpected and that really nail the character (our D&D game has had some of these).
And in a completely different vein, silly cat antics can really make me laugh. :-)
3) Shofar: love it or hate it?
Context is everything. :-)
At the end of Yom Kippur, during that final long blast? Love it. Listening to children who aren't very good? Hate it. Sounding it myself? Would like to be better but enjoy trying.
4) What frustrates you most about your faith journey thus far?
Resistance (in various ways) from unexpected sources.
You know the expression "anyone to my left is a heretic; anyone to my right is a fanatic"? I try not to hold that opinion myself, but I find myself as other people's heretic or fanatic more often than I'd like. It's particularly offensive when it comes from people who claim to be open-minded.
I've run into several Reform and secular Jews who say the expected things about making one's own decisions but who think that people who do things they don't do are "crazy" or "brainwashed by the Orthodox" or the like. One of my in-laws -- a kind person, not snarky at all to my knowledge -- was recently going on about how "those fanatics" fuss overly much about Pesach -- and proceeded to list some things that I fuss about too, like using different dishes and selling the chameitz. She thought it was ok, I guess, because she latched onto one absurd-sounding point to mix in with that and safely assumed I'd agree there. How am I supposed to respond to that? Sometimes I take the opportunity to educate and sometimes I just shrug it off.
At the other end, I will never be acceptable as a Jew to some people -- people who would welcome with open arms an athiest born to the right mother. C'est le vie; I'm not going to let them change my behavior. But it can be a little annoying to encounter the attitude head-on. Mind, most of the flak I get comes from my left, not from my right.
I said resistance from unexpected sources. I expect extremists on both ends to behave that way; it's when I encounter situations like with that in-law that I really notice that we are on Very Different Wavelengths sometimes and I wonder if they realize it too. This is the unintended, unthinking resistance -- it honestly never occurs to the person that a rational human being could believe or behave in a certain way, and you wonder whether it would be beneficial to try to change that.
5) If you could have a brand new instrument in your house when you get
home, what would it be?
A viola da gamba. I love the rich sound of deeper bowed strings (not so much the higher-pitched ones like on a violin), and it would be nice to have an instrument to try to learn on at my own pace without shelling out the big bucks.
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A viola da gamba.
Just as long as you realize that you'd then be subjected to all the gamba jokes. (Most of which are frighteningly accurate.) Example:
Q. How do you know if a viola da gamba is playing out of tune?
A. The bow is moving.
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That said, I agree with you that the lower range bowed-string instruments sound better than the upper range ones.
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Get a gamba with geared pegs. Life is too short to play with friction pegs.
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Absolutely. I learned the lesson about friction pegs fairly cheaply, via an appalachian dulcimer. If I were a stellar player and had already perfected everything else about the authenticity of my performance, I might try friction pegs -- but until then, I'd stick with the not-too-obtrusive modern pegs that stay in tune.