Birthday month/Boomeria
So for this my birthday month (which included December as the preview/trailer) I'm trying to do enough new things to try/accomplish a bunch of cool new things, but not so many that it drives me crazy. One of these was that on December 17 I finally made it up to Boomeria.
Back in the mid-eighties Preston Boomer was an occasional user of my BBS under the alias "The King". A legendary chemistry and physics teacher at SLVHS (where some of the BBS teens were members of his Natural Philosophers club), he invited me to come up anytime to see his famous castle, pipe organ, dungeon, lab, catacombs, and so on, but being as it was way off in the hills of Bonny Doon somewhere I did not actually meet him in person until 2010 when I was performing in the "Jefferson's Jigge" Santa Cruz Baroque Festival concert at UCSC, and recognized him at the reception afterward.
Then on December 17 I got a last-minute ride offer to the 50th-annual (though as last year's seems to also have been billed as the 50th annual I am somewhat dubious about that) carol sing at Boomeria, and so there I was!
If you like to sing carols then you can sing them basically inside a beautiful giant pipe organ, while the organist plays away and a room full of excited and friendly people yell out the carols they want to do next.
Or if you had enough of carols long ago (or get detoured by one of the people you came with) you can explore the grounds. Only two of the pictures I took -- the guillotine and a roundabout -- came out worth anything at all, but it was really just too dark (and in many areas, crowded) to be taking pictures anyway. Better just to look at the Tour of Boomeria page if you're interested in such things.
The castle in particular has all sorts of secret passages and trapdoors and tunnels leading to different parts of the grounds and narrow openings going up and down ladders, but when I went in there it was so dark and packed with people that I thought it would be better to come back in the daytime sometime for one of the daylight concerts or other events, and just went back out the front door. I did, however, follow some people through the laboratory and into a room full of cookies.
Back in the mid-eighties Preston Boomer was an occasional user of my BBS under the alias "The King". A legendary chemistry and physics teacher at SLVHS (where some of the BBS teens were members of his Natural Philosophers club), he invited me to come up anytime to see his famous castle, pipe organ, dungeon, lab, catacombs, and so on, but being as it was way off in the hills of Bonny Doon somewhere I did not actually meet him in person until 2010 when I was performing in the "Jefferson's Jigge" Santa Cruz Baroque Festival concert at UCSC, and recognized him at the reception afterward.
Then on December 17 I got a last-minute ride offer to the 50th-annual (though as last year's seems to also have been billed as the 50th annual I am somewhat dubious about that) carol sing at Boomeria, and so there I was!
If you like to sing carols then you can sing them basically inside a beautiful giant pipe organ, while the organist plays away and a room full of excited and friendly people yell out the carols they want to do next.
Or if you had enough of carols long ago (or get detoured by one of the people you came with) you can explore the grounds. Only two of the pictures I took -- the guillotine and a roundabout -- came out worth anything at all, but it was really just too dark (and in many areas, crowded) to be taking pictures anyway. Better just to look at the Tour of Boomeria page if you're interested in such things.
The castle in particular has all sorts of secret passages and trapdoors and tunnels leading to different parts of the grounds and narrow openings going up and down ladders, but when I went in there it was so dark and packed with people that I thought it would be better to come back in the daytime sometime for one of the daylight concerts or other events, and just went back out the front door. I did, however, follow some people through the laboratory and into a room full of cookies.