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The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there
I woke up this morning in my parents' house to discover that their neighbors across the street were harvesting summer squash from what I had always assumed was a vacant lot, to the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner." They are still trundling wheelbarrows of squash out from the weeds and winter rye; their radio is now playing Harry Chapin's "Cat's Cradle." I have no explanation.
Yesterday was King Richard's Faire, which was fantastic. I will put up photographs when and if my brother ever sends them. It was bitterly cold, which didn't seem to hinder the amounts of cleavage I saw all around me; perhaps half the people we saw were in garb, some with great dedication to historicity, some damn the anachronisms and full speed ahead. There was at least one elf in the crowd, and one faceless Death with a scythe, and a young couple with ivy wound up and down their arms and wreathed in their hair. And a fair number of pirates, of both genders. My brother probably could have been mistaken for one, albeit the more heroic sort played by Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.—the three days of beard didn't hurt him, either. We saw a show of great cats from a conservation institute, including eleven feet of sandy-striped liger named Hercules who this year officially became the world's largest cat; a display of hawking with a red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, and an eagle owl; several rounds of a tourney, where we found ourselves backing the Spanish Champion; there was a booth for archery, which reminded me how much I missed the sport; and we kept passing a seller of wax roses who had elevated heckling to a noble art.
In between, we wandered around and looked at shops and listened to music, and met up intermittently with two friends of my brother and his girlfriend. My brother now owns a swaggering cavalier hat with a plume. He looks spectacular in it. (On our way back, we stopped at a rest area and as he walked past, a small child sitting with its father started up, "Dad! Dad! Look! That's the man from—" and then the father hurriedly shushed the child, so we never got to hear who it thought my brother looked like. The current bets are either on Will Turner or Antonio Banderas' Puss in Boots, neither of which I think he minds.) I am still considering a belt—probably a girdle, in the original sense; a ζώνη—made from chain-link and malachite, that I may have to go back for. The dress I wore had actually come from the Faire a couple of years ago, as a present from my brother, and it had never been worn or washed before: so while I am given to understand that it looked fantastic, the material also developed a distressing tendency to shed black dye all over me, so that I came home and took it off and looked rather like a photonegative suntan or an exhibitionistic coal miner. (Somebody blasphemed the aspidistra.) And my brother's girlfriend dressed in purple and looked totally anachronistic and very lovely, so that I think we fit right in with the crowds around us. I do wonder if any of the people who looked familiar, at whom I waved and who waved back, actually were people I knew: or if they were just polite . . .
Definitely going back next year.
Yesterday was King Richard's Faire, which was fantastic. I will put up photographs when and if my brother ever sends them. It was bitterly cold, which didn't seem to hinder the amounts of cleavage I saw all around me; perhaps half the people we saw were in garb, some with great dedication to historicity, some damn the anachronisms and full speed ahead. There was at least one elf in the crowd, and one faceless Death with a scythe, and a young couple with ivy wound up and down their arms and wreathed in their hair. And a fair number of pirates, of both genders. My brother probably could have been mistaken for one, albeit the more heroic sort played by Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.—the three days of beard didn't hurt him, either. We saw a show of great cats from a conservation institute, including eleven feet of sandy-striped liger named Hercules who this year officially became the world's largest cat; a display of hawking with a red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, and an eagle owl; several rounds of a tourney, where we found ourselves backing the Spanish Champion; there was a booth for archery, which reminded me how much I missed the sport; and we kept passing a seller of wax roses who had elevated heckling to a noble art.
In between, we wandered around and looked at shops and listened to music, and met up intermittently with two friends of my brother and his girlfriend. My brother now owns a swaggering cavalier hat with a plume. He looks spectacular in it. (On our way back, we stopped at a rest area and as he walked past, a small child sitting with its father started up, "Dad! Dad! Look! That's the man from—" and then the father hurriedly shushed the child, so we never got to hear who it thought my brother looked like. The current bets are either on Will Turner or Antonio Banderas' Puss in Boots, neither of which I think he minds.) I am still considering a belt—probably a girdle, in the original sense; a ζώνη—made from chain-link and malachite, that I may have to go back for. The dress I wore had actually come from the Faire a couple of years ago, as a present from my brother, and it had never been worn or washed before: so while I am given to understand that it looked fantastic, the material also developed a distressing tendency to shed black dye all over me, so that I came home and took it off and looked rather like a photonegative suntan or an exhibitionistic coal miner. (Somebody blasphemed the aspidistra.) And my brother's girlfriend dressed in purple and looked totally anachronistic and very lovely, so that I think we fit right in with the crowds around us. I do wonder if any of the people who looked familiar, at whom I waved and who waved back, actually were people I knew: or if they were just polite . . .
Definitely going back next year.
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BTW, I point this out only to share the joy. The other half of the second fun, as it were.
---L.
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Hee. That sounds cute beyond belief. We had a spotted leopard and its melanistic littermate who were more interested in tussling playfully and then curling up in a black-and-gold heap to wash one another's fur than they were in the audience; they were finally gotten offstage with the kind of sulky reluctance that suggested their afternoon off had just been interrupted.
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On my brother's camera; if he sends them to me, I will post . . .
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Frankly, I'm a little terrified to imagine what recipe on earth could require that much squash . . .
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More stars than there are fish in the aquarium
Someone needs his second-declension privileges revoked.
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The peregrine falcon went AWOL, too, and the falconer could be seen for much of the rest of the afternoon climbing very tall trees armed with a radio transmitter and wearing his pumpkin pants. The bird would wait until he was very nearly within range and then move to another tree fifteen feet away. He seemed resigned.
I have odd issues about much of most Renaissance festivals, centered around the bizarre food-ticket system, the quantity of fluffy gauzy pastel fairy stuff, and the fact that whenever I look at an item I have the thought ninety percent of the time (no matter what it is) 'You know, I know how to make that/Thrud totally knows how to make that, and the materials would be cheaper'. Disregarding the fact that I almost never actually *do* make any of them-- I can never seem to remember that when it comes to the practicalities it is often worth paying for labor.
But the animals are spectacular-- there was an albino python there, did you run across it?-- and there are booths like the People Who Make Boots which no one I know could ever do in a million jillion years, that keep me staring in shock, awe, and a desperate wish for five hundred extra dollars. So I keep going.
Besides, when at RenFests Thrud randomly bursts into song.
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Yeah. The introduction of the falcon when we saw it went rather like this: "Now. Would you all like to see another bird?" ("Yeah!") "Would you all like to see this beautiful peregrine falcon?" ("Yeah!") "Would you all like to see this beautiful peregrine falcon fly straight off to Boston"? (. . .) "Because that's what it did last week!" And lo, it did take up residence on a nearby roof and, after much coaxing, strafe the audience and fly full tilt over the horizon. With the falconer shouting after it, "Look at that! My lords and ladies, do you see what a good conservationist I am? I have just released another endangered species back into the wild!" It turned out that this time the falcon hadn't gone farther than the parking lot, but we later saw it madly attempting to fly away despite being securely tethered by its jesses; the beating of its wings was generating sort of a one-bird wind tunnel and mildly disturbing the eagle owl. There was also the woman who assisted with the falconry, whom we estimated was wearing perhaps two square feet of leather at the most, inventively arranged. It was cold enough that we were all huddled up under our various cloaks. She'd discarded hers at the edge of the field: she must have been freezing.
the quantity of fluffy gauzy pastel fairy stuff
Well, yeah. I figured that was endemic to RenFaires. The blacksmithing, however, made up for it.
there was an albino python there, did you run across it?
No; but there was about twelve feet of Burmese python, either slow from the cold or immensely patient with people or both, with which you could be photographed with its coils draped over your shoulders. It was beautiful, all sleekly water-gold and bronze and black. Between photography sessions, it slid muscularly over the ground and explored bystanders' feet with its tongue. There was an older couple behind me discussing the snake: "They must have de-venomized it, huh?" "No, it's not poisonous. It's a constrictor." "Oh, so it'll only crush you to death!" "No, I'm sure it's very well-trained." "I'm sure. Here, boy. Sit up! Fetch! Play dead!"—while the python completely ignored him. Or the girl whose friend was making her have her photograph taken in order to win an argument over the sliminess of reptiles: she squeaked every time the snake moved, and kept shaking her head as though to shudder off her surroundings and exclaiming, "Ew! Gross! It's so slippery!" until the python's handler patiently explained to that snakes don't secrete slime, their scales are in fact very cool and dry, goes along with the ectothermy, and she became so enraptured listening that she absently cradled the snake's head in her palm and stroked its neck gently until she realized what she was doing, at which point she yelled, "Ew!" a few more times, althought not very convincingly. Seriously, half the fun here was the people-watching.
that keep me staring in shock, awe, and a desperate wish for five hundred extra dollars.
You could always sell the things that you keep reminding yourself you really should make and with the proceeds purchase other things: it could be like the water cycle, only with renaissance clothes. I pretty much do this with words . . .
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. . . You're working on "Altarwise," aren't you?
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---L.
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With Venus and the Pleiadean Seven
Between a platform Earth and ceiling Heaven!
And he definitely does not deserve his license to allude. Whose atrocity is this?
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Never heard of him, either.
---L.
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Ich zoch mir einen Valken
mêre danne ein jâr.
Dô ich in gezamete
als ich in wolte hân
und ich im sîn gevidere
mit golde wol bewant,
er huop sich ûf vil hôhe
und fluoch in anderiu lant.
von Kuerenberg, Valkenlied
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When is this from?