brief Pennsic
Short takes from Pennsic:
- At the A&S display we casually walked past high-quality displays just because we couldn't see everything and there were other high-quality displays. Well, that and crowds. Nifty. No musicians in evidence, but I'm not surprised -- that kind of setup doesn't work well for performance arts.
- Our camp was visited by Duke Cariadoc, who entertained us with poems about William the Marshal. For all our years at Pennsic this is actually the first time he's visited a camp while I was there. I had the impression he didn't get up to the Serengeti much, but maybe I've just been unlucky.
- The choir concert went pretty well, I thought. We had a pretty good audience, too -- something I always worry about with a 30-minute performance, given people's tendencies at Pennsic to have a pretty approximate relationship to time.
- A couple months ago I'd seen a note that Yaakov HaMizrachi was going to be performing (storytelling), right after the choir concert but across camp. I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to attend (or, at best, would miss the first 15 minutes getting there). But I was in luck -- the performance immediately after the choir was cancelled, so they moved him to the main tent from the smaller stage he was to be on, so I got to hear him. He told a single hour-long story with nesting (three levels deep). I enjoyed it. (Alas, I didn't get to talk with him after.)
- Day-tripping Pennsic (we were only there for two days) is a PITA, mainly because of the parking. The first day we happened to catch a bus up to the parking lot, but they'd stopped running by the time we were leaving on the second day, which was also my first experience with the overflow area.
- Also, the food court has basically nothing to offer a vegetarian. I always take my own food to Pennsic, but that requires a cooler and we were just day-tripping and I figured maybe it's gotten better in the years that I've been ignoring the food court, so I hoped I'd be able to find a tossed salad or something. Eventually I found tuna salad at the Coopers-run place up by the barn (where one can also buy produce).
- Note to future self: if you ever day-trip Pennsic again, which you shouldn't because it really stinks, bring a flashlight. Walking along an unfamiliar, rock-strewn, uneven dirt road just a couple days after the new moon was difficult. Because of the aforementioned unevenness and rocks, I wasn't really interested in carrying an expensive cell phone in my hand to use its flashlight app.
- The weather cooperated the days we were there -- on the warm and humid side, but not unbearable and it didn't rain.