Monica

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.

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 )

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

( Read more... )

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.

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.

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:

( music and commedia )