Monica

skies over Pennsic

2022-08-15T01:02:16Z

This isn't the Pennsic entry; this is the "you can see nice things when there isn't city build-up in your way" photo post. :-) Mostly sunsets, interesting clouds, and the full moon. ( Read more... )

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the last original Cooper is gone

2021-12-21T03:11:31Z

Betty Cooper, who with her husband Mack founded Cooper's Lake Campground and worked with the SCA to build Pennsic, has died at 96. Betty, Mack, and their son Dave were true friends of the SCA, dealing honorably and fairly and with a smile. They seemed to enjoy the SCA's wacky brand of unusual fun. We lost Dave a few years ago and Mack a few years before that, and now we have lost the last Cooper with that long history.

Cooper's Lake is a different place in recent years -- more corporate, less human. Nothing lasts forever and this is to be expected; heirs and successors who never saw their customers as anything other than another convention need to pay the bills. But I feel like we've lost not just another good person, not just a piece of SCA history, but also some of the values that made Pennsic what it once was -- a place of honor and friendship and camaraderie and experimentation and innovation.

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Pennsic

2021-04-20T01:27:14Z

Friday morning the Pennsic staff announced that Pennsic 49, postponed from last year, would be postponed again to next year. This did not surprise me; I figured a 50-50 chance this year was optimistic, given the uncertainties involved. Our camp had already been discussing the possibility of holding "Little Pennsic"; one person has enough land for our 25 or so vaccinated people to camp for a week.

A few hours later, Cooper's Lake Campground announced that they would be holding "Armistice" during the Pennsic timeslot, and that they need this event to succeed or they might not be around in 2022. As a business that relies on events -- except for this year, they no longer host plain old camping, only large events -- they are certainly hurting, but there was something about the language that felt off-putting to me. (More on that in a few paragraphs.)

The event announcement has the basic information: not an SCA event but designed to resemble Pennsic in most ways. No battles, but groups can "check out" list fields or archery ranges for their own use (and presumably at their own liability). Tents will be available for classes. Merchants are welcome. There will be some semblance of "land grab" for camping spots. You can register now (prices are higher than Pennsic). But they don't yet say anything about pandemic-related restrictions, like whether vaccines will be required and whether, even with vaccines, masks will be required. They'll follow state guidelines but, in April, nobody knows what those will be in July/August. That makes it hard for people to commit.

Pennsic has, over the last several years, felt more and more like a Cooper's Lake event and less and less like one controlled by the SCA, so in a way this is a natural step in the evolution of the event. For most events, the SCA rents space and is responsible for running the event; with Pennsic, Cooper's Lake has much more control, particularly over the financial aspects of the event. It's kind of a weird hybrid.

Pennsic has been at Cooper's Lake for about 45 years. The original Coopers (and Wilvers), who were friends of the SCA and shared its values, are gone. A new generation is running the campground now. They don't have that history and they don't share those values, so it's not surprising that they run things differently. The old Coopers could have said "hey folks, we're in trouble" and help would have flooded in from their friends in the SCA. The new Coopers have not maintained that close relationship, focusing on the business over the people (sometimes at the expense of the people), so it's hard to predict what will happen now. I think this is why I react to their plea the way I do; they moved from personal relationships to a business model, which is a valid decision for them to make, but this is the kind of appeal one makes with personal relationships. It feels out of place, given the changes in direction.

I suspect that when (if) Pennsic returns in 2022, the SCA will own less of it than it did in 2019. Only time will tell what Pennsic will look like in a few more years.

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Pennsic photos (mostly of the kitchen)

2019-08-26T00:41:19Z

Last year I posted pictures of our new kitchen trailer, but (1) I failed to take interior pictures at Pennsic and (2) we've made some improvements in the last year. So here are some more pictures from this year. ( many photos behind the cut )

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Pennsic short takes

2019-08-14T01:53:27Z

Brief Pennsic notes in the form of pluses and minuses:

+ Debatable Choir concert went very well! I hope I get to hear a recording (or, better, watch a video.) One person who doesn't usually comment on our performances described our last song (Ecce Quomodo) as "exquisite".

- Despite a sudden attack of Pennsic crud causing a coughing fit.

+ Saw two fun commedia shows. (Would have been more if not for dinner conflicts, ouch.)

- Cooking dinner on the night of both the Pensnic Choir concert and the commedia all-stars show was not, in retrospect, a good idea.

+ But it was a very nice dinner, if I do say so myself. (Teriyaki salmon; teriyaki tofu with snow peas, carrots, and ginger; stir-fried vegetables in a red chili sauce; white rice; fruit for dessert. No meat, no gluten, and everything except the salmon was vegan.)

+ Many improvements to our kitchen! (I need to organize pictures for a separate post.)

+ Not too much rain, though what did fall led to instant large mud puddles in the roads because the ground is saturated.

+ Our block really came together to work through land problems -- swampy patches and two drainage ditches made parts of the block uncampable.

? Being on the corner was good for middle-of-the-night privy access and bad for noise.

+ We doubled our solar power this year. We can now charge not only phones but the electric scooters of the two camp members who require them and one other camp member's CPAP machine. (Not all at once and only during the day.)

+/- I got to see some friends but missed others.

+ Nice arts & sciences exhibit, including someone who wrote (calligraphed and illuminated) a book of Tehillim (Psalms).

+ After the Coopers declined again to tow my house-trailer, the person who towed the kitchen for us agreed to do so, saving us a bunch of money.

--- Toward the end of Pennsic I got email from the Coopers (the first written communication I've received from them about any aspect of my trailer). It contained an eviction notice. I am very frustrated; all this time, the (verbal) discussions with them have been about them (not) towing it, and now they're saying they don't want to have any oversized trailers on their property at all. I wish I'd known that earlier!! I'll probably write more about this separately. Meanwhile, I can keep it through Pennsic 50 (two more years) and then it has to be gone. :-(

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Pennsic: new kitchen trailer

2018-08-16T01:42:36Z

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

( Read more... )

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making progress on the Pennsic kitchen trailer

2018-06-25T03:48:40Z

It's been a while since I've given an update on our Pennsic project. The exterior is mostly done (just some small touch-ups left), and the interior has insulation, flooring, walls, cabinets, and -- today -- shelves. The electrical panel is complete (lights aren't in yet, but soon) and plumbing is in progress. Things are looking good! ( pictures )

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[SCA] kitchen trailer

2017-09-05T01:56:13Z

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.

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Pennsic

2017-08-13T21:44:50Z

I'm home from Pennsic. Brief notes in the form of bullet points:

My good friend Yaakov HaMizrachi was elevated to the Order of the Laurel! Yay! The Laurel is the SCA's highest award (peerage) for arts and sciences. He's also now known (additionally) as Yaakov HaMagid, Yaakov the Storyteller. The ceremony felt like a reunion of old friends, and it was a nice touch that they had his son chant the scroll (in Hebrew).
The part of Atlantian court that I attended (because of the previous) was very well-done and engaging. I don't live there, I don't know most of those people, and yet I was not bored. They moved things along without it feeling rushed, and everybody speaking from the stage could be heard clearly. They also mixed it up, instead of doing all recipients of one award and then moving on to the next. Sprinkling the peerages throughout the court works well and, really, it's not a big deal for order members to get up more than once in an evening. (Also, if peerage ceremonies are burdensomely long -- theirs weren't; ours sometimes are -- it's nice to be able to sit down between them.)
I don't think I've ever heard "we're ahead of schedule; let's take a 10-minute break" in the middle of court before, though. I wonder if someone on the stage had an urgent need?
They elevated another bard to the Laurel, and that one sang his oath of fealty. While he was doing so I wondered if the king would respond in song -- and he did. That he used the same melody suggests some advance coordination (beyond "we're singing"), I wonder which of them wrote the king's words.
I had long, enjoyable conversations with both Yaakov and Baron Steffan. I miss the deep email conversations I used to have with both of them, before the great fragmenting of the digital-communication world (some to email, some to blogs/LJ/DW, some to Facebook, some to Google+, some to Twitter, some to places I don't even know about). It's harder to track and stay in touch with people than it used to be.
No I am still not going to start using Facebook. It's frustrating that by declining to do so I miss more and more stuff, but I'm not ready to let yet another thing compete to be the center of my online life. Also, Facebook in particular is icky in some important ways.
SCA local group, that means you too. Plans for a baronial party at Pennsic were, as far as I can tell, announced only on Facebook. (I've checked my email back to the beginning of April, so no I didn't just forget.) And thus I did not bring a contribution for your pot-luck. I do not feel guilty about that.
The Debatable Choir performance went very well. I conducted a quartet singing Sicut Cervus (by Palestrina), which I think went well. Two of the four singers had not previously done a "one voice to a part" song with the choir, and I'm proud of them for stepping up and doing a great job. I hope we got a recording.
I went to a fascinating class on medieval Jewish astrology (taught by Yaakov in persona). I've seen zodiacs in ancient (and modern) Jewish art and in synagogues, and a part of me always wondered how this isn't forbidden. It turns out that astrology is more of an "inclination", a yetzer, than a hard-and-fast truth -- there are stories in the talmud where astrology predicted something bad but the person, through good deeds, avoided the bad outcome. Also, in case you're wondering (like I did, so I asked), the zodiac signs get some solar smoothing, so if there's a leap-month (Adar Bet) there's not a 13th sign in those years.
Our camp has two wooden buildings (besides the house on the trailer, I mean), which we wanted to sell this year because we're making a new kitchen trailer that will replace both of them. We succeeded in selling the larger one (yay!). Maybe we'll be able to sell the other next year. (We'll set it up and use it for something else, because potential buyers would want to see it set up.)
Overall the weather was good. There were big storms on the first Friday ("quick, grab snacks and alcohol and head for the house!" is our camp's rallying cry), but only occasional rain after that and it wasn't sweltering-hot, which makes a huge difference.
The last headcount I saw was around 10,500.

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oh, you

2017-07-28T02:14:05Z

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.

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Monica

skies over Pennsic

the last original Cooper is gone

Pennsic

Pennsic photos (mostly of the kitchen)

Pennsic short takes

Pennsic: new kitchen trailer

making progress on the Pennsic kitchen trailer

[SCA] kitchen trailer

Pennsic

oh, *you*

oh, you