Monica

Here are a few photos (from Pennsic) of our new kitchen. We brought it back to Pittsburgh to continue to improve it.

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My Pennsic camp, Polyhymnia, is working on a new kitchen trailer. Today we got almost all of the exterior sheathing in place. (We did about half of it today; the other half was done on Saturday, though not by me.)







In case you're wondering about access: we'll have a little porch over the trailer hitch to get to the door you can see, and there's another door on the other side. The side with the two arched windows faces the road; the side with one window and a door faces the camp interior.

Our camp's Pennsic prep is a little unusual:

Me: dials phone
Her: Castle Towing¹
Me: Hi. I'm going to need some towing at Cooper's Lake this weekend. Can I book that in advance?
Her: Oh you don't need to. We offer 24x7 road service; you can just call.
Me: It's a 20' trailer. Probably 3-ton, but we don't really know.
Her: ... oh. Uh, I don't know if we can do that.
Me: For what it's worth, you did it two years ago. That's why I specifically called you. But I understand things can change.
Her: I need to check with a driver. I'll call you back.

Return call:
Her: He remembers you. When did you say you need him?

With luck, this will be the last year we have to do our own towing for the house. The Coopers declared it too heavy for them to tow a couple years ago. A lot of what makes it too heavy is the kitchen structure and furniture we store in it. We are well under way with building a new kitchen trailer, which will replace most of that and store the rest between Pennsics. And that will make the house light enough that the Coopers should be willing to tow it to and from our campsite like they had done for years before the new rules. And hey, kitchen trailer instead of having to build and take down our current structure every year.

¹ Yes, that really is their name, and yes they're familiar with the Pennsic site.

We went up to Cooper's Lake on Sunday to help with Pennsic camp setup. It sure is weird to not have the house in camp. But we're only going to be there for a couple days (middle Sunday and Monday), because we have other plans for that vacation time later in the year.

There is now a solar panel on the pantry roof in our camp. It has begun.

Earlier this summer I finally read Pangaea, a shared-world anthology that also has an overall story. It includes a story by mabfan, which is how I became aware of it in the first place. I quite enjoyed it and wrote a post about it on Universe Factory. A second volume is due out later this year.

I picked up the first three books in Jody Lynn Nye's Mythology series (the first book is Mythology 101) in a Story Bundle a few months back. I almost didn't get it because I see Story Bundle as a way to get exposure to new authors/series/concepts, so having three of the ten (? around ten, anyway) books in the bundle be from the same series was counter to that. But I've now read them all and bought the fourth separately, so that turned out to be a win. The books revolve around an eccentric college student who finds out that the Little Folk are real, and living under his college's library. Antics ensue.

In June my employer sent me to a conference (to work, not to attend) in Las Vegas. Now I know, from TV and general media, that Las Vegas is larger than life. And I was still surprised. I was also not prepared for it to take a long time to get anywhere within the hotel complex, because of course they need to route you through the casinos that are everywhere. Casinos are not smoke-free, so I hurried through. Also, my hotel room -- the base room type, nothing fancy -- was larger than my first apartment.

No, I did not play any casino games. Casinos have two kinds of games: games of chance that favor the house, and games of skill that I'm not good enough at and that favor the house. I don't like those odds.

I've been with my current employer for a bit over two years now and I'm still loving it. My coworkers are great, I get a lot of control over what I work on, and I can tell that even though I am the single remote member of my group, I'm still able to teach and mentor and inspire. I think I know a thing or two about technical writing in the software world, and I am glad that I can flex those muscles and impart some of what I've learned. And they appreciate me (including tangible demonstration of same), and that matters too.

I got a nasty surprise this Pennsic: the person now in charge of trailers at the site refused to move my little house to our camp as usual.

When our land agent had waited most of the day for the delivery and seen others go by who were after us in line, she went to inquire. (They had cell-phone numbers and email addresses for both of us, and she had personally checked in Friday and all seemed fine then. No calls or email were received.) When she asked after our trailer, she was told that it was unsafe, that they'd told us this in the past (not true), and that they would not move it. If anybody had ever suggested to me that my house was endangering their drivers, I certainly would have inquired further about what needed to change -- I would never knowingly create a dangerous situation like that. It took a while, but we eventually learned that the person in charge thinks it's too tall, wide, and heavy (factors that haven't changed since it was built).

He did not care that they've moved it every year for 15 years. He did not care that his predecessor, who'd been doing this for ages, approved the plans before we built. (Dave is ill and no longer involved with the running of Pennsic.) He did not care that he was springing this on us after land grab instead of getting in touch in advance or saying something when I paid the rent (in person). When our land agent said (after checking with the rest of the camp) that none of us had ever been told anything about a safety issue, he dismissed that.

When I spoke with him I was respectful and cooperative, taking a "what can we do to make this better?" approach. It didn't help. I'll try to talk with him again mid-Pennsic when things have calmed down, in case he was just fried from a long week of camp prep and said some things he didn't mean, but my hopes aren't high. I am also keenly aware that he holds all the cards.

Pennsic is a large event that requires a lot of work. Thanks to us they are now able to hold other large events, and do. We're less important than we once were because of that. And the individuals who built this relationship are largely absent now, after nearly 40 years of holding the event at this site. To those who came after it seems to be strictly a business relationship, while to the previous generation I think there was also friendship and respect.

Pennsic is large, and I suspect that there is no real harm -- actual or perceived -- in disenfranchising the very small number of people who unintentionally cause them extra work. Towing trailers, especially ones with buildings on them, is extra work. There aren't that many of us, and I've learned this has happened to some other people too. If we stopped coming, even if our entire camps stopped coming, would they care? I don't see that it would damage their bottom line. More than 11,000 people pre-registered for Pennsic this year; they don't need the few homeowners.

There is a Silverwing's law to the effect that only Pennsic is worth the amount of trouble that only Pennsic requires. I don't see why that wouldn't be true for both us and the Coopers. And perhaps both some of them and some of us are coming to the conclusion that it's not true -- it's not worth the amount of trouble that it requires. I'm speculating, of course, but this would not surprise me. The Coopers have a lock on Pennsic (by mutual consent with the SCA) for as long as they want it, but that doesn't mean they want each and every one of us.

I hired an outside tow truck (AAA to the rescue!) to move the house to our camp for this Pennsic, and have booked the highly-capable driver for the return trip at the end of the event. That takes care of this year. As for the future... we'll see.

I never got around to writing up a big Pennsic entry, so here are some highlights in bullet form:

- Seeing osewalrus and family again was very nice -- been a while. Had the beginnings of a thoughtful theological discussion; need to figure out venue for continuing intermittently over time.

- Missed some other distant friends, again. :-(

- Camp meals got more complicated; we now have (different) people who are gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-allergic, and lactose-intolerant. All the cooks did a great job of stepping up to the challenge.

- Tisha b'Av fell during Pennsic. Thank you osewalrus for chanting Eicha (Lamentations) for me. I have complicated feelings about Tisha b'Av but this helped me engage with it.

- Our choir concert was ok. I saw some good performances, and the local commedia troupe (I Genesii) really shined this year.

- T-Mobile completely failed me this year. Last year they had cell coverage (not great bandwidth, but enough to check in with cat-sitters and the like). This year at the opening weekend there was some signal. During Pennsic itself -- nothing, not even basic phone service. (I found this out when calling Dani after I arrived.) I contacted them afterward and they shrugged, saying their coverage isn't good in that zip code. Sigh. (Fortunately, I had borrowed a Verizon hotspot from work "just in case", after determining that nobody else needed it for actual work that week. Verizon delivered 4G signal just fine.)

- The KickStarter that I (and, it turned out, one other camp-mate) supported, for a solar charger for USB devices, didn't make its planned July ship date. In fact, it's now the end of August and they still haven't made it. Next Pennsic, I guess!

- Our camp has some loud people and likes to have loud gatherings sometimes. Further, some of the loud people are late-night folks while different ones are early birds. We set up the house right next to the common area to provide shade, but this does not play well with the noise problem. But my camp-mates are good sports; after last Pennsic one person suggested a coping mechanism, and I was greeted with it when I arrived:

This was my 32nd Pennsic. As best I can recall, we had the best weather I've ever had at Pennsic. That is the opposite of what I was anticipating; late July in western PA is usually hot and sticky, except for brief interludes where downpours turn dirt roads into mud (but with no lasting relief from the heat and humidity). And yet, the weather was nearly perfect -- highs mostly in the 70s (sometimes low 80s), lows mostly in the 50s (maybe upper 40s one night; you did bring blankets, right?), a little rain but nothing severe or that killed a whole day. Nice!

Several friends I enjoy hanging out with didn't attend this year for various reasons, and I never managed to connect with osewalrus (who was there) and his family. Drat!

Attendance was just under 10,000 this year, for the first time in (I'm told) almost 20 years. Between being a week earlier and being truncated (see later in this post), I'm guessing that people for whom it's a significant effort or expense decided that this was a good year to skip.

There were some fun moments and "quotable quotes" in camp this year, all of which I am currently failing to remember. Maybe later.

Performances

I saw performances by three commedia del'arte troupes this year. I Verdi Confusi, the newest (I think this was their third Pennsic), had an ambitious plot. It's good to reach beyond your grasp; it's how you grow. I look forward to more growth. Their Capitano had the audience reciting his trademark long name along with him (multiple times), which is a good sign. I Sebastiani went in a different direction than I'm used to from them -- more slapstick and an all-out food fight at the end. The chef was a new character and well-done; did they invent that character or is it a stock commedia character I haven't seen before? I'm guessing the former. I Genesii gave a really good performance, and I'm not just saying that because they're the local troupe. They've really gelled as a company and their show was a lot of fun.

The Debatable Choir concert went well, I thought. (There exists a recording, though I haven't heard it yet.) We had one song that, in its original form, was theologically problematic for me (a messianic text in past tense, from some gospel), but fortunately we were able to change two syllables to make it future tense instead. (Thanks baron_steffan for the Latin assist!) I figured that was a good solution as everybody who believes in a messiah at all believes one's coming in the future, though it might have offended some Christian purists. Since it makes the difference between me being able to sing it and not, I can live with that.

I've never sung in the Known World Choir; there's almost always at least one religious piece that I would have a problem with, and while I can negotiate such things with the choir I sing with every week, I'm not going to try to deal with that for a once-a-year choir. It turned out that this year's concert, as best I could tell, contained absolutely nothing objectionable (some pieces weren't translated but sounded secular). And they even did a Salamone Rossi piece! (Though not one of his better ones.) So I should have sung, had I but known. But on the other hand, this year's director made the justifiable-but-inconvenient decision to forbid gender-inappropriate voice parts, meaning no women singing tenor. (I get it; it's a timber thing. Male and female voices just plain sound different, with vanishingly few exceptions.) I usually sing tenor because that's where my comfortable range is, but also because many alto lines are uncomfortably high. (Why is it ok to expect altos to hit a high D but not ok to expect a high A, a fifth higher, from sopranos?) So eh, but lesson learned -- I'll check out the music next year and consider singing. Meanwhile, I enjoyed this year's concert.

Last year I sang in Chorulus Pennsicus, a new, by-audition small group that practices and performs at Pennsic, so I was minded to sit out this year (not be greedy) unless this year's music really grabbed me. It didn't, so I sat out, which should let me join next year (depending on music, of course). I enjoyed listening to them, though I don't envy them trying to learn that big long French piece with animal sounds in just a few practices. :-)

Scheduling

In addition to being a week earlier (one-time change) this Pennsic was also shortened by a day at the end. I failed to judge just how much this would affect things; by the time I got there (Thursday of the first week -- only Thursday!) classes that looked interesting had already been taught and wouldn't be taught again. It used to be that many classes taught in the first few days were repeated later.

There were also effects at the other end. Since the event closed (a) on Saturday and (b) at noon on Saturday (rather than the 3PM that is the traditional close time), a lot of people left on Friday, some on Thursday, and even on Wednesday the patches of brown grass where tents had been were appearing. (Noon isn't late enough for canvas to be dry before packing -- no small matter if you're going to drive all day to get home.) I always leave on Friday due to Shabbat, but this year we packed the camp on Friday. It felt weird.

There's also something abut this change that angers me (even though, as noted, I wouldn't be there on Saturday anyway). Everybody has been assuming that this one-day shift came from the Coopers, because of the convention coming in after us (that also led to Pennsic being a week early). But no, that's not it at all -- the Pennsic staff decided to end the event a day early, and did nothing to correct the popular misimpression. That's poor form: they should own their decision, first off, and I think they also owe the attendees and all the people who work hard on the event an explanation. There is a rumor going around that they intend for this to be a permanent change; I'll be writing to the seneschals of the three governing kingdoms about that, and I hope others will join me.

Finally...

There was a really gorgeous sunset one night in the second week. These photos don't do it justice (there was less yellow and more orange), but have some pictures anyway:

Wednesday night as we were preparing dinner a mighty storm came roaring down on us. It started with high winds, during which we dropped the canopies and made sure tents were secure. As the rains started, most of us headed for the house and a few instead headed for the pantry and kitchen, the other buildings (rather than tents) in camp.

In the house we opened the camp-ward windows (which were not wind-ward) to watch the storm. After a few minutes someone spotted an impending visitor, and a moment later we opened the door to alaricmacconnal, bearing an umbrella and a mischievous smile. He noted that they in the kitchen/pantry were well-stocked with food and drink and they were concerned about us. We requested goldfish crackers and water and he headed back across the camp.

A few minutes later he returned, bearing a box of crackers, a jug of water, and a bottle of white wine. (Fish calls for white and not red, right?) We thanked him and he returned to the pantry rather than joining us. We went back to watching the storm and listening to Lucetta tell a Russian fairy tale.

Several minutes later Alaric was back, this time bearing a bottle of red wine, mere moments after we had finished the bottle of white. He also offered us uncooked pasta, but we declined that offer. The storm ended not long after; I don't know what the next round would have been.

The next night, at about the same time, another big storm came through. This time the people heading into the house brought sustenance -- and it's just as well, because I don't think the pantry folks would have sent an emissary out into a hailstorm.

I posted some Pennsic pictures here. Most are from the homes tour, including several of this nifty new Tudor shower house:



I didn't take any pictures in our own camp (but have in past years and you can find them in other Picasa albums). We're planning to do some exterior work on our house this year, so look for new pictures of that next year.

This was a good year for performances. I participated in one and attended several others, including two that exceeded all my expectations.

( music and commedia )

Dear LJ brain trust, help me figure out what to feed my camp-mates at Pennsic. :-)

We take turns cooking dinner for everybody, where "everybody" is around 25 people, give or take. Cooking facilities are propane-fueled stoves and grills; it's camping, so no electricity, and our camp doesn't build a firepit (especially this year when we'll probably be packed like sardines). We do also have a small propane oven, big enough to bake a dozen muffins, but I'm not sure what role it could play in dinner for twice that many people.

My night is late this year and I don't like to leave site once I'm there, so my usual of grilled fish (and/or grilled meat) doesn't work (I wouldn't trust either in a cooler for the better part of a week). We tend to be a meat-heavy camp, more than I'm used to eating, so I personally lean toward vegetarian (or fish, if that worked). We have a couple people in camp who are lactose-intolerant.

Dry goods (or canned) can obviously be stored for the week with no problem and there is a vegetable stand on site.

I prefer to make food that is period or plausible as opposed to modern.

Any suggestions? I'm currently thinking that something with chickpeas could provide protein, and I could have rice and grilled veggies, but can I improve on this?

The interview meme is going around again, and in starting to respond to my questions from hrj I stumbled upon a way-overdue set from ichur72. Oops! And, ironically, there's some overlap. :-)

( hrj's questions )

( ichur72's questions )

The conventions ("rules" is such a strong word :-) ):

• Leave a comment asking for questions.
• I'll respond by asking you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
• Update your journal with the answers to your questions.
• Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions.

Fair warning: you might not get your questions from me until after Pennsic, so turn on that notification email or check back here.

The big new bit of stupidity -- this time not from the SCA board of directors -- is a new Pennsic rule that minors, meaning people under 18, cannot attend classes without being accompanied by an adult. I guess it's just too dangerous for a 16-year-old to learn Italian dance or a 17-year-old to learn how to spin wool, or something. This is totally bizarre, as there is not a general restriction on teenagers at Pennsic. They can go (unaccompanied) to shop (even to the blacksmiths!), or to shoot archery, or to watch the fighting, or to any private camp they choose. (Kids under 12 are more restricted.)

Sadly predictable is the reaction of many people in the face of the ensuing discussions. The original rule said minors had to be accompanied to classes by a parent or legal guardian, which is totally crazy, and in the face of much protest they "clarified" that they really meant a responsible adult, meaning any adult appointed by the parents, and not something involving legal process. And today, with that change, people are saying "oh, well that's not so bad then" and "that's reasonable" and "we can find people to take our kids to classes, then". It's as if they've forgotten that the fundamental policy itself is broken. They're saying "oh, if you're just going to take an arm rather than costing me an arm and a leg, that's ok then". Hello? And it only took a day! Amazing.

I'm not saying people need to Stand Up And Do Something Now, because I don't know what we can do. Yes, I want to fix it, but I don't know what to do today to do that. (I can think of small, tactical things to do to mitigate the damage, but that's not a solution.) It seems obvious to me that there is something deeper going on, and I'm not dialed into it. But I do know that it's a short step from "well, that's less bad" to "that's ok" (we're seeing this already) to "of course that's reasonable and you're a reckless idiot if you don't agree". We've seen this before from the SCA (mandatory membership, no wait an unjust tax instead, to point to biggest but not sole case) and it's certainly not unique to this organization. Heck, we see it in marketing too; remember New Coke?

Regardless of where it happens, its success depends on people focusing on the here-and-now and not taking the longer view. I guess hill-climbing is a popular algorithm. (For the non-geeks, this means you take an alternate path if it will directly improve on where you are, but you rule out paths that make it worse -- even if those paths then lead to something much better.)

I'm talking here mostly about process and meta-issues. As for the base question of how we treat children (of all ages), the best comment I've seen has been from Cariadoc, who wrote: "I have long held that there are two fundamental views of children: That they are pets who can talk, or that they are small people who do not yet know very much. The wrong one is winning." This non-parent says: yes, that.