Pennsic
I arrived at Pennsic on Friday of the first week. This was a day
or two later than normal, but the schedule worked out reasonably,
I think. Besides, I'm told it was sweltering for most of the first
week. This was probably the worst weather year in quite some time:
very hot the first week, then hot and humid with many storms (that
didn't help with heat and humidity) for much of the second week.
If this coming week is nice, remember that that would have been
Pennsic week if they hadn't changed the dates. Anyway...
Performances
I saw several performances this year. I Genesii (the local commedia troupe) didn't do the "offend all three major religions" trio I thought they were planning on; they found other ways to offend the uptight. :-) Hey, they warned people that the show was not for children... There are, I'm told, two major schools of commedia, which are exemplified by the two troupes that perform at Pennsic. I Genesii is more raunchy and slapsticky; I Sebastiani is more intricate and subtle. Both styles are fun, but the person who tried to schedule these performances back to back clearly didn't get it. Fortunately, they were able to change that, so they performed on different nights. I'm glad I got to see both shows. I really enjoyed I Sebastiani, and particularly their 'Arlequino and, err, the woman disguised as a man (blanking on both names!). There was no Doctore this time. (Bummer.)
The Debatable Choir sounded really good. They did a performance of music by Orlando di Lasso, in all his myriad styles, languages, and bynames. (The guy moved around...) A few months ago I saw the music for one of these pieces (something Chromatica); on paper it looked pretty funky, and I found myself thinking "this is di Lasso and not Geswaldo?!". But it really worked, and I hope they do it again.
If I recall correctly, there were ten people in the choir's performance, only three of whom were men. I'm not sure if one of them is a tenor or if the tenor parts were being covered entirely by women. I remember a time when the basses outnumbered everyone else; that was overkill, but we need to find some more men. :-) (I say "we", but I have a class that conflicts with choir practices for one more academic year, so I can't rejoin the choir until June. And if there's an abundance of women singing tenor lines, well, I'm not going to make that better.)
The Known World Choir was bigger than usual this year -- between 70 and 80 people. They had to add wings to the stage to hold everyone. They did a nice, varied performance. Some years they go for themes and some they don't; this year was sort of in between, in that they'd already assembled the music for their non-theme performance when someone noticed that it was Thomas Morley's 550th birthday and they hadn't included anything by him. Rather than disrupt the full choir, they got a subgroup to perform a few Morley pieces, including the ubiquitious "Sing We and Chant It". (There were four, and I knew either all of them or all but one (I've now forgotten what the others were).)
I was sorry to hear that dr_zrfq, a mainstay of that choir, had gotten sick and wasn't able to sing (or talk much). I didn't manage to connect with him this year. Hey, Zrfq, I hope your malady has passed!
At some Pennsic (perhaps the next one), I would like to perform a concert of Salamone Rossi's liturgical music. If the Known World Choir wanted to do that as a theme I'd happily join in, but as someone who's not in the choir, I don't feel I have standing to request it and say "I'd sing with you if...". That's tacky. And hey, I'd like to sing with them some year anyway, but since I started paying attention there has not been a year when they didn't have a few pieces I'd be unwilling to sing, and I'm not going to do that to a new-to-me director. (With the Debatable Choir it's a known, and worked-around, issue.) This problem isn't surprising, of course; there is a vast body of very pretty music from our period that is rather explicitly Christian. It would be a shame not to sing it. But I, personally, can't.
So anyway, it occurred to me that instead of trying to get an existing group to sing the repertoire I want to sing, I could organize a different group for that purpose. I see this as mostly a one-shot, though if the people are all from my area then we could perform the concert at a few other events too. I bounced the idea off of one local singer who likes it; I'd need to find a few more. Specifically, I need to build part coverage with people who want to sing this material, can sing well alone on a part (there won't be much doubling), and who can pronounce, or be taught to pronounce, Hebrew correctly. (That last turns out not to be trivial.) So we'll see.
Or maybe I could wait another year and talk with the Debatable Choir about doing it once I'm back with the group. We've sung two Rossi pieces in the past; I can't tell whether the rest of the group is open to more. (A previous director agreed to a third, but after another person and I got it neatly typeset and handed it over, it was never heard from again.)
Speaking of one-shot performances, I was interested to see announcements for performances this year of miracle plays from the Wakefield Cycle. Miracle plays are dramatized bible stories (Christian, of course) as street theatre; this particular source is a large collection of scripts (or outlines?). Somebody organized several different groups to each perform one play, and the series was to be done in several locations in the campsite. That's pretty cool, and I was looking forward to seeing them.
There were some snafus, though. First, the published start time (in my favored location) and the understanding that the first group had of their start time did not match, and then, once the error was discovered, they decided to go with the later time so people wouldn't miss out. That's fair, but I had shown up for the earlier time (an hour earlier) and there wasn't a lot of shade. Then, I learned that the plays, each about 15 minutes, would be done over the course of several hours, with buskers in between, so if you wanted to see them all and didn't want to try to chase the groups around the site sans schedules, you had to sit in one place for several hours. If one of the locations had been in the marketplace or in the performance tent I might have done that, but the location I'd chosen (which was last on the tour) wasn't a good one for sitting around. So, alas, I missed these.
I ran into Istampitta, Master Avatar's group, in the marketplace a couple times. I enjoy listening to them, and watching them when I get the chance. (Their stage performance was opposite something else I had to be at, unfortunately.) I picked up their new album, which I've now listend to once; more of a review later, maybe, after several more listens. The album includes some Sephardi (Jewish) pieces, so they titled the album in Hebrew (subtitled in English). They didn't include vowels; I infer that the Hebrew title is "Lagalut", though the first vowel could be something else. The English title is "Exiled"; I would understand the Hebrew to be closer to "to be exiled" or "to [the] exile", but I do not claim a perfect understanding of Hebrew grammar and see previous comment about guessing on the vowels. (Lamed, gimel, lamed, vav, taf.) Anyway, good stuff so far; haven't yet read the liner notes, as I've been playing this in the car.
I also ran into an excellent hurdy-gurdy player and picked up her CD, which I haven't yet listened to. She was playing in the marketplace with some of the people from Wolgemut.
I saw Wolgemut (or maybe subsets) a few times in the marketplace. I didn't try to go to their packed-to-the-gills performance; once we're at the point where I can't see anyway, the value of the performance drops off. I enjoy watching them perform in the marketplace. I'm not one of the gung-ho fans like many people I know are, but they're talented and quite listenable. (I like them better when they focus on musicianship more than schtick. Others disagree.)
People
The rain impeded some of my efforts to see people, but I still made some connections. dragonazure stopped by early in the week to let me know that he and ealdthryth were now on site. I spent a while visiting with each of them (but not together). Their camp has a new kitchen trailer (still in progress) that looks like it'll be quite spiffy; they are hauling it, not leaving it at Cooper's Lake, so they can use it at other events. (They live in Atlantia.) I gather it does a number on their gas mileage, but if you camp a lot, it could sure make things easier.
ealdthryth taught me a Japanese (?) technique for making cords. It produces an effect similar to finger-braiding but is much, much more portable. I have, of course, forgotten the name and where to get the one tool that's needed, but if she doesn't read down this far, I can always send her email and ask. :-) It would be nice to have some portable craft for courts, order meetings, etc; the canonical one is embroidery, but I'm not interested in that. Cords can be used for medallions, for fasteners, and maybe even trim in some cases. I'll have to think about how much practical use I'd have for the results, but right now it's a toy.
osewalrus dropped by camp one night; it was good to see him, though I missed Rivka and Aaron. I found mikekn at the games tent (no surprise); we chatted and he taught me a new trick-avoiding game that was quite fun. I missed jducoeur, unfortunately. (loosecanon, Mike delivered your parcel. Thanks!)
I visited dglenn's camp a couple times but never found anyone home. I had a small item for him but couldn't figure out which tent was his and didn't want to poke around too much. Sorry, Glenn; email me your address and I'll send it off to you.
I ran into hlinspjalda and her sweetie briefly in the market and she told me that her apprentice was being elevated to the Laurel. She gave me vigil information, but one of us got it wrong: when I went to her camp on what I thought was the right night, I found no one home. Bummer. Turns out that night one of Dorigen's apprentices was sitting vigil elsewhere, and Dorigen, Hlinspjalda, and I are all friends. So, oops -- would have been happy to go there too, but nights and locations didn't match up.
I went to visit hlinspjalda and family one other time, but close enough to court time that they were pretty busy. I tried to help them with an errand related to the Laurel ceremony but struck out; I hope they were able to work around the problem. (They had not yet heard confirmation from one of the intended speakers; I went to try to find her, failed, looked for a backup, failed again, and ran back to their camp to relay all this.)
Speaking of elevations, the king and queen of AEthelmearc recognized four peers from my barony this war. That's pretty impressive. The stand-out for me was the Laurel for Baron Leonard the Younger. Len has been around forever (he was the local baron when I joined the SCA), and through research and quiet inspiration he's done a lot for Vikings in the SCA. As I said in my polling response, when Len showed up most SCA people got their ideas about Vikings from Hagar the Horrible; he did a lot to change that. Many of us tried to get the East Kingdom to elevate him 15 years ago, but in a large kingdom the "I don't know him" factor was too strong. Len doesn't get to as many events as he used to, but he's still around, teaching and talking with people, and when the king and queen came into our baronial court to serve him with the writ, I don't think there were many dry eyes in the camp.
I'm also very happy about the Pelican for Filip of the Marche, who may be best known for instigating the Pennsic dance floor and running various mailing lists. He does other stuff too. He had received a writ before Pennsic (as had the other two receiving peerages), so this was not the surprise that Len's was. (Though, actually, there were some leaks on Len's; security wasn't as good as it was probably meant to be.)
We had visitors from Ma'ale Gibborim, the shire in Israel. They crashed in my house one night before I got there; ariannawyn and alaricmacconnal graciously played host. I saw them a few times once I got there and it looked like they were enjoying the event. It would suck to travel that far and then not have fun. :-)
I utterly failed to find baron_steffan, which really bums me out because I really enjoy long conversations with him.
Camp
We didn't make many changes to the camp this year -- two new people (one pavillion), no infrastructure changes. The kitchen and pantry work very well; we've worked out setups that work for them. We need to do some small things for next year; one of the dining tables finally died this year, for instance. Someone was smart enough to start a list of things to do for next year while still at Pennsic.
A couple of lug nuts from the trailer went missing. Someone doing a town run offered to take a nut to an auto-supply place to get more like it. That was when we first discovered that both of the lug wrenches, which I saw on set-up weekend, were missing. These are large, not easy to lose. Today during tear-down we confirmed that they are in fact gone; I'd thought that maybe they were just under something. So that's pretty irritating -- not only could I not get new nuts immediately, but now I have to go buy another wrench. I hope they're a standard size.
I had a few first-time visitors to the house, and two or three asked if it was a synagogue (no, it's a house) and if I held services there for Shabbat. I'd be happy to (I mean, I'm davening anyway); the one year I tried to actually organize that I got no takers, so I took the hint. Maybe I should publish a notice next year and see if anyone shows up. (Consensus among the Pennsic Jews seems to be that you might be able to get a minyan Friday night but not Saturday morning, and certainly not on weekdays.)
Before Pennsic ariannawyn noticed that this would be her 30th Pennsic, and alaricmacconnal noticed that it would be his 20th. We all started comparing notes and figured we had a couple hundred years, cumulative, in the camp. We had a party and asked people to add their years to the tally, hoping to get to a thousand, but in the end we didn't quite reach 500. Oh well; it was fun anyway. (Some people said we should have invited such-and-such group or so-and-so, but if you're going to do that, you can just go door to door counting it up. The point was to do it among a group of friends.)
Setup and break-down both took two days this year (Saturday and Sunday of the relevant weekends). I was there for both Sundays, but of course not for the Saturdays. I think we're all moving a little more slowly as the years go by, but it all got done.
We are a sub-group of our barony's camp. For the last couple of years the broader camp has been kind of chaotic, but not this year. The new baron and baroness, and the people they recruited to help them, had things well in hand. Everyone seemed happy.
Food
I got to cook early this year -- that first Friday. That meant I could do fish (among other things) because I didn't have to worry about spoilage. (Once I arrive on site I don't leave unless it's Really Important. Groceries aren't.) Because it was erev Shabbat and because I wanted nice leftovers for the next day's lunch (when I couldn't cook), I cooked more, and more dishes, than I would have otherwise. I made roasted chicken with two different spice mixtures (cooked at home), grilled salmon (also multiple seasonings), red cabbage with apples (an astute observer correctly recognized the trace amount of cinnamon in it), peas and onions, challah, wine, and angelfood cake (with "dipping sauce"). All of the cooked dishes worked fine cold the next day. I had also brought merringue cookies, which we didn't need; I brought them out later in the week when we had a meat meal and a dairy dessert I couldn't eat. So that worked out fine.
We have, historically, had problems with leftovers not getting used, or getting forgotten in the communal coolers. Someone had a good idea this year: we maintained a list of what was in the communal coolers (item, date added, which cooler). This way, instead of digging around in the coolers, you could scan the list. This, in combination with more of an effort to use leftovers in later dinners, made a big difference.
There is one person in camp who habitually cooks much more food than is needed. She got Saturday night -- early enough for the leftovers to get used. We didn't have an organized dinner on Sunday; I suspect scheduling the over-achieving cook the day before was intentional, but I heard that she noticed. ("Hey, there's no dinner tomorrow; I better make extra...") Oops. :-) (I believe she cooked one chicken per person, and a vast amount of couscous and veggies. The couscous made appearances in the next several dinners. It was good couscous -- lots of nice veggies and stuff mixed in.)
We have lots of good cooks in camp. We have a very nice kitchen setup, but it's still camping-grade. Cleaning cookware to what I consider an acceptable level is a lot harder than at home. This gives me pause both for hygeine and kashrut reasons. People are already going out of their way to accommodate my kashrut needs, so I feel bad about bringing this up, but, once again, I find myself thinking about dropping out of the meal plan rather than impose. I don't want to, but I don't think it's fair to ask that people always cook my food on foil when using the grill, for instance, and not use wooden serving dishes.
Miscellaneous
The same day that I failed to see the Wakefield Cycle and failed to find people for a peerage elevation, I also failed to go to a class. Not my day. :-) I went to the right tent at the right time, and the people filing in were there for a different class, and when I went to find out what had happened I was told "oh, that instructor never showed up for his other three classes, so we're assuming he won't for this one either". They said if he did show they'd find a place to hold the class -- but, of course, students had already been turned away without that information. Given that they publish a list of cancellations each day, I'd've thought they'd've included this.
A friend had asked me to drop in on a different class, on Spanish clothing in the 13th century, because the instructors (friends of hers) had good information for Christians and Muslims but not for Jews and she figured I could help. Broadly, though, (1) not my century and (2) Jews mostly wore what everyone else wore. I told my friend that I knew of a good web site but didn't have its contents (or URL) in memory; she asked me to go anyway. So I did, but the instructors didn't seem to be looking for more input and another student was already bringing up issues for them to deal with, so I didn't butt in. I did get the instructor's email address, though, so I can send her what little I have.
I brought a few bottles of mead for tasting, all around 9-10 years old. They've aged reasonably well. That's good to know -- I can still serve these to people. (I haven't brewed anything new in ages.)
All of the cats seem to have been fine in my absence. The person who took care of Erik said she'll be happy to take him any time -- and would probably give him back. :-)
Performances
I saw several performances this year. I Genesii (the local commedia troupe) didn't do the "offend all three major religions" trio I thought they were planning on; they found other ways to offend the uptight. :-) Hey, they warned people that the show was not for children... There are, I'm told, two major schools of commedia, which are exemplified by the two troupes that perform at Pennsic. I Genesii is more raunchy and slapsticky; I Sebastiani is more intricate and subtle. Both styles are fun, but the person who tried to schedule these performances back to back clearly didn't get it. Fortunately, they were able to change that, so they performed on different nights. I'm glad I got to see both shows. I really enjoyed I Sebastiani, and particularly their 'Arlequino and, err, the woman disguised as a man (blanking on both names!). There was no Doctore this time. (Bummer.)
The Debatable Choir sounded really good. They did a performance of music by Orlando di Lasso, in all his myriad styles, languages, and bynames. (The guy moved around...) A few months ago I saw the music for one of these pieces (something Chromatica); on paper it looked pretty funky, and I found myself thinking "this is di Lasso and not Geswaldo?!". But it really worked, and I hope they do it again.
If I recall correctly, there were ten people in the choir's performance, only three of whom were men. I'm not sure if one of them is a tenor or if the tenor parts were being covered entirely by women. I remember a time when the basses outnumbered everyone else; that was overkill, but we need to find some more men. :-) (I say "we", but I have a class that conflicts with choir practices for one more academic year, so I can't rejoin the choir until June. And if there's an abundance of women singing tenor lines, well, I'm not going to make that better.)
The Known World Choir was bigger than usual this year -- between 70 and 80 people. They had to add wings to the stage to hold everyone. They did a nice, varied performance. Some years they go for themes and some they don't; this year was sort of in between, in that they'd already assembled the music for their non-theme performance when someone noticed that it was Thomas Morley's 550th birthday and they hadn't included anything by him. Rather than disrupt the full choir, they got a subgroup to perform a few Morley pieces, including the ubiquitious "Sing We and Chant It". (There were four, and I knew either all of them or all but one (I've now forgotten what the others were).)
I was sorry to hear that dr_zrfq, a mainstay of that choir, had gotten sick and wasn't able to sing (or talk much). I didn't manage to connect with him this year. Hey, Zrfq, I hope your malady has passed!
At some Pennsic (perhaps the next one), I would like to perform a concert of Salamone Rossi's liturgical music. If the Known World Choir wanted to do that as a theme I'd happily join in, but as someone who's not in the choir, I don't feel I have standing to request it and say "I'd sing with you if...". That's tacky. And hey, I'd like to sing with them some year anyway, but since I started paying attention there has not been a year when they didn't have a few pieces I'd be unwilling to sing, and I'm not going to do that to a new-to-me director. (With the Debatable Choir it's a known, and worked-around, issue.) This problem isn't surprising, of course; there is a vast body of very pretty music from our period that is rather explicitly Christian. It would be a shame not to sing it. But I, personally, can't.
So anyway, it occurred to me that instead of trying to get an existing group to sing the repertoire I want to sing, I could organize a different group for that purpose. I see this as mostly a one-shot, though if the people are all from my area then we could perform the concert at a few other events too. I bounced the idea off of one local singer who likes it; I'd need to find a few more. Specifically, I need to build part coverage with people who want to sing this material, can sing well alone on a part (there won't be much doubling), and who can pronounce, or be taught to pronounce, Hebrew correctly. (That last turns out not to be trivial.) So we'll see.
Or maybe I could wait another year and talk with the Debatable Choir about doing it once I'm back with the group. We've sung two Rossi pieces in the past; I can't tell whether the rest of the group is open to more. (A previous director agreed to a third, but after another person and I got it neatly typeset and handed it over, it was never heard from again.)
Speaking of one-shot performances, I was interested to see announcements for performances this year of miracle plays from the Wakefield Cycle. Miracle plays are dramatized bible stories (Christian, of course) as street theatre; this particular source is a large collection of scripts (or outlines?). Somebody organized several different groups to each perform one play, and the series was to be done in several locations in the campsite. That's pretty cool, and I was looking forward to seeing them.
There were some snafus, though. First, the published start time (in my favored location) and the understanding that the first group had of their start time did not match, and then, once the error was discovered, they decided to go with the later time so people wouldn't miss out. That's fair, but I had shown up for the earlier time (an hour earlier) and there wasn't a lot of shade. Then, I learned that the plays, each about 15 minutes, would be done over the course of several hours, with buskers in between, so if you wanted to see them all and didn't want to try to chase the groups around the site sans schedules, you had to sit in one place for several hours. If one of the locations had been in the marketplace or in the performance tent I might have done that, but the location I'd chosen (which was last on the tour) wasn't a good one for sitting around. So, alas, I missed these.
I ran into Istampitta, Master Avatar's group, in the marketplace a couple times. I enjoy listening to them, and watching them when I get the chance. (Their stage performance was opposite something else I had to be at, unfortunately.) I picked up their new album, which I've now listend to once; more of a review later, maybe, after several more listens. The album includes some Sephardi (Jewish) pieces, so they titled the album in Hebrew (subtitled in English). They didn't include vowels; I infer that the Hebrew title is "Lagalut", though the first vowel could be something else. The English title is "Exiled"; I would understand the Hebrew to be closer to "to be exiled" or "to [the] exile", but I do not claim a perfect understanding of Hebrew grammar and see previous comment about guessing on the vowels. (Lamed, gimel, lamed, vav, taf.) Anyway, good stuff so far; haven't yet read the liner notes, as I've been playing this in the car.
I also ran into an excellent hurdy-gurdy player and picked up her CD, which I haven't yet listened to. She was playing in the marketplace with some of the people from Wolgemut.
I saw Wolgemut (or maybe subsets) a few times in the marketplace. I didn't try to go to their packed-to-the-gills performance; once we're at the point where I can't see anyway, the value of the performance drops off. I enjoy watching them perform in the marketplace. I'm not one of the gung-ho fans like many people I know are, but they're talented and quite listenable. (I like them better when they focus on musicianship more than schtick. Others disagree.)
People
The rain impeded some of my efforts to see people, but I still made some connections. dragonazure stopped by early in the week to let me know that he and ealdthryth were now on site. I spent a while visiting with each of them (but not together). Their camp has a new kitchen trailer (still in progress) that looks like it'll be quite spiffy; they are hauling it, not leaving it at Cooper's Lake, so they can use it at other events. (They live in Atlantia.) I gather it does a number on their gas mileage, but if you camp a lot, it could sure make things easier.
ealdthryth taught me a Japanese (?) technique for making cords. It produces an effect similar to finger-braiding but is much, much more portable. I have, of course, forgotten the name and where to get the one tool that's needed, but if she doesn't read down this far, I can always send her email and ask. :-) It would be nice to have some portable craft for courts, order meetings, etc; the canonical one is embroidery, but I'm not interested in that. Cords can be used for medallions, for fasteners, and maybe even trim in some cases. I'll have to think about how much practical use I'd have for the results, but right now it's a toy.
osewalrus dropped by camp one night; it was good to see him, though I missed Rivka and Aaron. I found mikekn at the games tent (no surprise); we chatted and he taught me a new trick-avoiding game that was quite fun. I missed jducoeur, unfortunately. (loosecanon, Mike delivered your parcel. Thanks!)
I visited dglenn's camp a couple times but never found anyone home. I had a small item for him but couldn't figure out which tent was his and didn't want to poke around too much. Sorry, Glenn; email me your address and I'll send it off to you.
I ran into hlinspjalda and her sweetie briefly in the market and she told me that her apprentice was being elevated to the Laurel. She gave me vigil information, but one of us got it wrong: when I went to her camp on what I thought was the right night, I found no one home. Bummer. Turns out that night one of Dorigen's apprentices was sitting vigil elsewhere, and Dorigen, Hlinspjalda, and I are all friends. So, oops -- would have been happy to go there too, but nights and locations didn't match up.
I went to visit hlinspjalda and family one other time, but close enough to court time that they were pretty busy. I tried to help them with an errand related to the Laurel ceremony but struck out; I hope they were able to work around the problem. (They had not yet heard confirmation from one of the intended speakers; I went to try to find her, failed, looked for a backup, failed again, and ran back to their camp to relay all this.)
Speaking of elevations, the king and queen of AEthelmearc recognized four peers from my barony this war. That's pretty impressive. The stand-out for me was the Laurel for Baron Leonard the Younger. Len has been around forever (he was the local baron when I joined the SCA), and through research and quiet inspiration he's done a lot for Vikings in the SCA. As I said in my polling response, when Len showed up most SCA people got their ideas about Vikings from Hagar the Horrible; he did a lot to change that. Many of us tried to get the East Kingdom to elevate him 15 years ago, but in a large kingdom the "I don't know him" factor was too strong. Len doesn't get to as many events as he used to, but he's still around, teaching and talking with people, and when the king and queen came into our baronial court to serve him with the writ, I don't think there were many dry eyes in the camp.
I'm also very happy about the Pelican for Filip of the Marche, who may be best known for instigating the Pennsic dance floor and running various mailing lists. He does other stuff too. He had received a writ before Pennsic (as had the other two receiving peerages), so this was not the surprise that Len's was. (Though, actually, there were some leaks on Len's; security wasn't as good as it was probably meant to be.)
We had visitors from Ma'ale Gibborim, the shire in Israel. They crashed in my house one night before I got there; ariannawyn and alaricmacconnal graciously played host. I saw them a few times once I got there and it looked like they were enjoying the event. It would suck to travel that far and then not have fun. :-)
I utterly failed to find baron_steffan, which really bums me out because I really enjoy long conversations with him.
Camp
We didn't make many changes to the camp this year -- two new people (one pavillion), no infrastructure changes. The kitchen and pantry work very well; we've worked out setups that work for them. We need to do some small things for next year; one of the dining tables finally died this year, for instance. Someone was smart enough to start a list of things to do for next year while still at Pennsic.
A couple of lug nuts from the trailer went missing. Someone doing a town run offered to take a nut to an auto-supply place to get more like it. That was when we first discovered that both of the lug wrenches, which I saw on set-up weekend, were missing. These are large, not easy to lose. Today during tear-down we confirmed that they are in fact gone; I'd thought that maybe they were just under something. So that's pretty irritating -- not only could I not get new nuts immediately, but now I have to go buy another wrench. I hope they're a standard size.
I had a few first-time visitors to the house, and two or three asked if it was a synagogue (no, it's a house) and if I held services there for Shabbat. I'd be happy to (I mean, I'm davening anyway); the one year I tried to actually organize that I got no takers, so I took the hint. Maybe I should publish a notice next year and see if anyone shows up. (Consensus among the Pennsic Jews seems to be that you might be able to get a minyan Friday night but not Saturday morning, and certainly not on weekdays.)
Before Pennsic ariannawyn noticed that this would be her 30th Pennsic, and alaricmacconnal noticed that it would be his 20th. We all started comparing notes and figured we had a couple hundred years, cumulative, in the camp. We had a party and asked people to add their years to the tally, hoping to get to a thousand, but in the end we didn't quite reach 500. Oh well; it was fun anyway. (Some people said we should have invited such-and-such group or so-and-so, but if you're going to do that, you can just go door to door counting it up. The point was to do it among a group of friends.)
Setup and break-down both took two days this year (Saturday and Sunday of the relevant weekends). I was there for both Sundays, but of course not for the Saturdays. I think we're all moving a little more slowly as the years go by, but it all got done.
We are a sub-group of our barony's camp. For the last couple of years the broader camp has been kind of chaotic, but not this year. The new baron and baroness, and the people they recruited to help them, had things well in hand. Everyone seemed happy.
Food
I got to cook early this year -- that first Friday. That meant I could do fish (among other things) because I didn't have to worry about spoilage. (Once I arrive on site I don't leave unless it's Really Important. Groceries aren't.) Because it was erev Shabbat and because I wanted nice leftovers for the next day's lunch (when I couldn't cook), I cooked more, and more dishes, than I would have otherwise. I made roasted chicken with two different spice mixtures (cooked at home), grilled salmon (also multiple seasonings), red cabbage with apples (an astute observer correctly recognized the trace amount of cinnamon in it), peas and onions, challah, wine, and angelfood cake (with "dipping sauce"). All of the cooked dishes worked fine cold the next day. I had also brought merringue cookies, which we didn't need; I brought them out later in the week when we had a meat meal and a dairy dessert I couldn't eat. So that worked out fine.
We have, historically, had problems with leftovers not getting used, or getting forgotten in the communal coolers. Someone had a good idea this year: we maintained a list of what was in the communal coolers (item, date added, which cooler). This way, instead of digging around in the coolers, you could scan the list. This, in combination with more of an effort to use leftovers in later dinners, made a big difference.
There is one person in camp who habitually cooks much more food than is needed. She got Saturday night -- early enough for the leftovers to get used. We didn't have an organized dinner on Sunday; I suspect scheduling the over-achieving cook the day before was intentional, but I heard that she noticed. ("Hey, there's no dinner tomorrow; I better make extra...") Oops. :-) (I believe she cooked one chicken per person, and a vast amount of couscous and veggies. The couscous made appearances in the next several dinners. It was good couscous -- lots of nice veggies and stuff mixed in.)
We have lots of good cooks in camp. We have a very nice kitchen setup, but it's still camping-grade. Cleaning cookware to what I consider an acceptable level is a lot harder than at home. This gives me pause both for hygeine and kashrut reasons. People are already going out of their way to accommodate my kashrut needs, so I feel bad about bringing this up, but, once again, I find myself thinking about dropping out of the meal plan rather than impose. I don't want to, but I don't think it's fair to ask that people always cook my food on foil when using the grill, for instance, and not use wooden serving dishes.
Miscellaneous
The same day that I failed to see the Wakefield Cycle and failed to find people for a peerage elevation, I also failed to go to a class. Not my day. :-) I went to the right tent at the right time, and the people filing in were there for a different class, and when I went to find out what had happened I was told "oh, that instructor never showed up for his other three classes, so we're assuming he won't for this one either". They said if he did show they'd find a place to hold the class -- but, of course, students had already been turned away without that information. Given that they publish a list of cancellations each day, I'd've thought they'd've included this.
A friend had asked me to drop in on a different class, on Spanish clothing in the 13th century, because the instructors (friends of hers) had good information for Christians and Muslims but not for Jews and she figured I could help. Broadly, though, (1) not my century and (2) Jews mostly wore what everyone else wore. I told my friend that I knew of a good web site but didn't have its contents (or URL) in memory; she asked me to go anyway. So I did, but the instructors didn't seem to be looking for more input and another student was already bringing up issues for them to deal with, so I didn't butt in. I did get the instructor's email address, though, so I can send her what little I have.
I brought a few bottles of mead for tasting, all around 9-10 years old. They've aged reasonably well. That's good to know -- I can still serve these to people. (I haven't brewed anything new in ages.)
All of the cats seem to have been fine in my absence. The person who took care of Erik said she'll be happy to take him any time -- and would probably give him back. :-)