cellio | Pennsic

Pennsic was quite good for me this year -- not for any big reasons, but for a lot of small things that went right.

We added five new people to our camp this year: devreux, cayeux, Angus, Lucetta, and their three-year-old daughter. That all worked out splendidly; they're all good folks to camp with and I got to know some of them better by the end of Pennsic. I camp with a really good group of people.

When we got there on the Sunday of land-grab weekend some people pointed out a new issue with the house: there seemed to be a small tree growing out of the roof. *boggle* When I came back several days latter it seemed to have withered some, but during the rains of the first week it became quite clear that I had a small leak in about the same place. devreux graciously agreed to climb up there (we offered to distract cayeux, who kept saying things like "no health insurance"). It turned out that the "tree" was really just a branch (no roots), but she applied caulk in that spot and several others that looked iffy to her. She found several loose or cracked tiles, so before next year we'll want to do some more repairs. Since the problems are mainly near the ridge, one possibility is to lay a bigger ridge down right over top of the existing one.

In a change of pace, this year our camp had a cocktail party on the final Thursday. Someone (I'm not sure who) decided that we should each have a drink named after us, so people could order (from the menu) a Pavel or an Arianna or a She'erah or whatever. Since most of the members of the commedia dell'arte troupe I Genesii are in our camp, the commedia characters also showed up. My favorite (not that I would drink it, mind) was the Arlechino (he's kind of the fool): cooler water on the rocks. This is Arlechino, so those are real rocks, not ice. :-)

The camp has a meal plan, so each person will cook or clean up for one dinner and not have to do anything the rest of the time. ariannawyn's sons aren't old enough to be included in the rotation yet but they're old enough to do chores, so this year one of their duties was "bus-boy", setting and clearing the table for each meal. One night their family wasn't there for dinner, so alaricmacconnal stepped in, declaring himself our "bus-peer" for the evening.

We have enough people now that we tried assigning three people per night this year. lefkowitzga, my apprentice Degan, and I shared a night. We had grilled skewers of chicken and tuna with veggies (and some all-veggie ones too), roasted carrots and parsnips, couscous with stuff in it (pine nuts, sliced scallions, broccoli, currants), and fruit for dessert. I marinated the tuna in a blend of olive oil, lime juice, garlic, and peppercorns (black and white); I forget what lefkowitzga marinated the chicken in beyond that it involved ginger. Everything was tasty, I thought. My only regret is that I failed to set aside some of the couscous before the scallions (which one camp member couldn't eat) got added. This especially frustrates me because other people, including that person, went out of their way to accommodate my dietary needs. Sigh. (I knew about the issue and had said we would set some aside; that word didn't get to the person manning the pot. I'm not used to having co-cooks at Pennsic.)

Encountered in passing: a group calling itself "will eat for food", to help camps with their leftovers problems. :-) I was promised a vegetarian franchise if I joined.

I went to a few classes this year and only had one cancellation (instructor didn't show). One class was called "algebra without the X" and was about Fibinacci's system of equation-solving. (Noted in passing: the guy did lots of stuff and most of us only remember him for one sequence of numbers.) The instructor of this class has apparently been doing a different math class each year for a few years. This one was pretty nifty, so I'll watch for future ones. At first it sounded like his system was just successive approximation (postulate a value, try it out, see where you are, try again, etc), but the key insight here is that once you've done two approximations, you can compute the correct value based on those guesses and how far off you were. I hadn't realized that they'd figured that out in the 12th century.

I went to the Boreal Master Symposium again this year. I saw osewalrus briefly there, but he left before the end so we didn't get to talk. This was also true of Mr. hlinspjalda, and I never got to see either of them otherwise (sigh). The symposium is hard to describe and it appears that the URL I had is dead now, though someone there said a new web site would be going up soon. I'll post separately about this at a later time.

There seemed to be a lot more classes being held in private camps this year. Sometimes that's clearly necessary, e.g. if your class involves a forge, a cooking fire, a warp-weighted loom, or the like. Some of the others appeared to be more portable, which made me wonder why they weren't being held in the classroom tents. Did the instructors have mobility problems? If so, what can the event do to help with that? Classes in private camps are convenient for the instructors but a burden for the students, so I hope the folks running the university are encouraging instructors to use the class tents.

I thought the Debatable Choir's performance on Monday night went quite well. I know that both audio and video recordings were being made, and I look forward to seeing/hearing those. The concert theme was "dancing"; we sang: "We Shepherds Sing", "Belle Qui Tiens Ma Vie", "Tanzen und Springen", "Il Ballerino", "Pearce Did Dance" (which is now stuck in my head), "Chi la Gagliarda", "Arise Get Up" (possibly my favorite), and "See See the Shepherds' Queen" (other candidate for my favorite). These range from three to five parts; one audience member later commented that everyone but the basses seemed to be doing some part-switching. I'm a little surprised; most people wouldn't notice, I think. But it's true: the sopranos and altos sometimes had to collectively cover three lines, the three-parters were SAB (so tenors went up or down), but everything has a bass line so those guys tend to stay put.

I've heard that there are three or four people who said at Pennsic that they want to join our choir. Nifty. I hope one of them is a tenor, since the other tenor told us that his work schedule is changing and he won't be able to stay in the group. I spent a fair chunk of the summer being the only one on that part (he was sick for a while), so I know I can, but it's better balance to have two or three voices on the part given how many there are on other parts. And while I sing a pretty good tenor line (if I do say so myself) and find some alto lines uncomfortably high, there is a difference in timbre between male and female voices, so it's better if there's at least one male voice on the line.

ariannawyn, our director, also directed the Pennsic Choir this year. This is a group that rehearses every day at Pennsic and does a concert at the end. The music is available in advance and people are supposed to look at it ahead of time, though not everyone does. This year they had a big turnout; I'm not sure of the final count, but somewhere in the range of 70, I think. They sounded really good and did some challenging pieces. (I don't have the list.)

I mentioned I Genesii, our local commedia troupe, earlier. They've lost a couple people recently due to schedule/life complications (new kid, new kingdom office, that sort of thing), so they were operating with a bit of a challenge this Pennsic. Nonetheless, they pulled off a fun show, in which Doctore attempts to marry off his somewhat-loopy son Virginio to a daughter Pantelone claims to have but doesn't. One of the servants tried to steal the show by brazenly robbing Pantelone and pulling the wool over Doctore's eyes.

The other commedia performance I saw was by I Sebastiani (cue audience: "the greatest commedia dell'arte troupe in the entire world!"), based in Carolingia. They usually do a more complex show (typically in three acts); this year's was a little simpler than usual and used two child actors (one minor), which I haven't seen them do before. I enjoyed the show, though I missed the more-involved plots of years past.

Last year I encountered a new music group called Teribus. This year I missed their concert (up against a baronial gathering) but saw them playing in the marketplace. I was surprised to see Master Avatar (of Istampitta) playing with them; it turns out he's in both groups. (Good; it would be a shame if Istampitta had folded.) Both groups are geographically challenged; they get together at festivals, events, and such, practice intensively, and then perform. It's obviously working for them, but that does sound challenging. It also means that the festival or event becomes much more of a gig than something you can attend; instead of enjoying the event you're practicing for your show.

I'm used to the occasional low-flying plane over Pennsic; we're weird and sometimes pilots want a closer look. One afternoon this year, though, we were buzzed by a pair of (I'm told) Apache helicopters for a good 15 minutes, sometimes coming within (I'm told, and I don't disbelieve) 100 feet of the ground. They circled over and over again and sometimes hovered. They were really loud; we had to shout to have conversations, and I can only imagine what it did to the poor folks teaching classes at the time. It was rude and inappropriate, and I find myself wanting to complain to someone in charge, if only I could figure out who that is.

I spent a lovely morning catching up with baron_steffan and auntie_elspeth, who were also able to join us for dinner one night. I also got to spend some time with jducoeur and msmemory and a couple of their apprentices, and I didn't even have to find their camp to do it. :-) (They were sitting at a table in the marketplace when I walked by. Convenient.) Both of these visits included introductions by LJ handles and the phrase "so you're so-and-so...". It brings back memories of the Rialto parties of yore, when LJ handles were replaced with email addresses.

I also got to see paquerette and laid and their new Pennsic house. I'd met her before but I don't think I'd met him, and of course I hadn't seen the house. And I got to meet kyleri and Loiosh.

I managed to miss several other people I wanted to see, alas. The event is pretty big (about 11,000 this year), which makes finding people hard. I visited people's camps to find no one home, and I'm sure people came looking for me and found us empty too. It's the way of these things.

I took some pictures (not a lot), but haven't downloaded them yet. I'll post some later, probably.

Pennsic

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