The F___ing Year (and a half) That Wasn't.

12/31/20

Every now and again, someone will poke me and say, "Hey, are you okay? You haven't been writing...?"

I'm always a little surprised, because I forget that people sometimes read what I wrote.

Also.... I have run into a LOT of people (mostly via text, or phone, but a few in person) who have said, “so... what the hell is going on? where do you live? What are you doing? You don't post about your life any more….”

And it's true.

I realized, looking back through the last year (and a half) of my life, I really haven't posted much about ME. I have posted about shows I was working on, when that was a thing we did (sob...), and work, occasionally, and for a while, I shared, if anything, even more "material," that I felt relevant to the daily discourse, than usual, because these really are extraordinary times and I think it is important that we recognize that... After a while, that became too exhausting and soul-crushing, as well, and I haven't done much, at all, lately. But every time I run into someone I haven't seen in, say, a year, I find myself having to do a more and more exhausting recap.

Now, I will just be able to tell them to come read this.

See, the thing is, my 2020 began a long time before the actual 2020...

The last time, as far as I can tell, that I really wrote about what was going on in my life was in May of last year, (to be clear, what with this being the "new year elect" period - I mean 2019) when I mentioned that, as I was heading into the emotional Whack-A-Mole that May has become for me, abetted, at the time, by a couple of funerals that hit much too close to home, I was also, rather precipitously, looking for a situation and a place to live.

On April 29th of 2019, I was informed by St. Mary’s College of Md. that my contract would not be renewed for the upcoming year. There was no reason given at the time. Subsequent inquiries yielded what I have studiously quoted whenever asked - “Not A Good Fit.” Now, let me be very clear: truer words were never spake, and I am, for the record, not just a little proud of that - but it should be said that there is always more than one way to skin... well, anything, and teaching theatre is no exception, and not easy under the best of circumstances. Suffice it to say, SMCMD is not an exemplar of the best of circumstances. I don’t harbor any grudges with regard to the folks at SMCMD (bar one, I'm Irish after all... and they earned it) and they did me a favor, anyway, so even that has faded to a sort of willful disregard. Had it not been for all this, I would have suffered another year being miserable, and, I'm sure making them miserable. I also wouldn’t have wound up where I am now.

However, it meant that I needed to make new arrangements for pretty much every aspect of my life, in very short order. Curiously, this isn't the bad part - I was able to line up my next position in less than a month; I am more grateful, moreover, that my new supervisor-to-be seemed to be a grown, responsible person capable of managing peers and making decisions. In marked contrast to.. well, see above. (This has obviously all been proven false since then - I'm looking at YOU, Shaun Miskell [totally said with abiding love after less than a year and a half ]) This would prove a big upgrade, and I remain grateful to this day that the SMC Powers That Be saw fit to release me a year early from our agreement.

At the end of May, I found myself, however, having to depend on Maryland Unemployment Insurance for the first time in my life; and, this, friends, is a Kafkaesque journey I would have wished, at the time, on no one. I realize full well that since that time, it has gotten exponentially worse - still, if you were new to the experience, it was a dick punch.

I’m also grateful that, while I was leaving the College, I still had some work – I was fortunate enough to design the set for We’re Gonna Die with Flying V, which was a great experience, and to get to work with Josh Sobel, a smart young director who taught me a lot.

Feeling very lucky to have landed a new position so quickly (and one I was very excited about, to boot!) I set to finding a place to live and figuring out how to make it through the summer on substantially less income, for a while, than I had planned on. It would be a much less exciting, remarkable, and challenging summer than the previous one, but you can’t ride back and forth across the country on a sport bike *every* summer. Well, I can’t, anyway…

Nonetheless. There were lots of day trips, and little adventures:

• I got to visit Christopher Murphy at his convention for the first time, and visit with an old college friend at one of our favorite Irish pubs after

• We did regular walks on the trails by the Potomac, and through the Dyke Marsh area, which are right by Bonnie’s house

• Bonnie and I hiked the Va. Side of Great Falls, which I had never done before

• and we even had a nearly-week-long trip to the Outer Banks, which was new for me, and which may have supplanted Lower Delaware as my favorite coastal destination

• In a high point, while at OBX, we visited Kitty Hawk, and the Museum there, on the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing mission.

About a week after we returned from OBX, on Friday, the 26th of July, I woke up feeling funny... – like I had slept wrong. I felt, a little, as if I had pulled a muscle – in my groin. And yes, you chuckleheads, I was sleeping alone. It was annoying, but not really debilitating, so I headed over to Bonnie’s that day, (her birthday had been the day before) and we spent a weekend more or less looking at furniture. By the end of the day, I was really pretty sore; by the end of the weekend, I was VERY sore. Monday morning, it was very hard to get out of bed. It still felt, for all the world, like I had pulled a muscle in my groin somewhere. And I've reached the age where that sort of indignity is just called "waking up".

Now, in the interest of making it through the summer and able to sort of survive, I made a hard choice at the beginning of the summer. My insurance from SMC ran out at the end of May – my new insurance wouldn’t start until September 1st. When I looked at what I could pull down on UI, and what COBRA cost, I made the choice to try and bridge the gap without. Three months – even I could avoid medical disasters for three lousy months, right?

By Monday the 29th, I was using a cane to walk. For certain realy substandard values of "walk". I was supposed to leave for the Pennsic War on the 31st; I was doing gentle exercises, and stretching as much as I could, but it didn’t really seem to be helping. I was also relieving the pain as best I could by taking the emergency painkillers I had to deal with the pain in my bad knee.

Every morning I tried to leave for Pennsic, but couldn’t. At last, on my birthday, August 5th, at Bonnie’s encouragement – I took off, barely able to make the drive. My campmates (bless you) had already set up my tent – all I had to do was fall into bed. Unfortunately, that also meant I had to get up out of it, as well, and even with a cane and a walking staff, I was barely able to do even that. The farthest I made it from camp was 100 yards down the lane we were on to buy a tasting cup. I did, at least, manage to hold the Irish Whiskey Tasting I had promised some time before, and that seemed to go over well. Also – Irish whiskey is a much tastier and more effective painkiller than Vicodin, I don’t care what Dr. House says. I really wasn’t able to *do* anything – I lasted about 72 hours, and then headed for home, after my campmates graciously loaded my car for me. Driving home took me six hours rather than the usual four, and I was popping Vicodin like M&Ms, now.

I called up my orthopedic surgeon – the one who had done my knee - and begged. Through his agency, I was able to work out a payment arrangement to at least come in and be seen, and have some scans taken. At this point, it felt muscular, still, but there was also a “looseness” in my whole leg joint that I can’t account for. When the x-rays came back, it turned out my entire right hip was just … shot. Somehow – somehow, no one (not my surgeon, not a team of specialists enlisted once insurance kicked in, no one) has been able to explain exactly how, I went form walking Great Falls and hiking (if gently) the beach on OBX to not being able to walk, at all, in a matter of less than week. There was no evidence of cartilage in the joint at all. My hip had to be replaced - ASAP.

Now, remember:

• I would start a new job in less than two weeks.

• I would have no health insurance for three weeks.

• I would have no days off, no sick leave, and no personal leave, at all, until Winter Break.

• I couldn’t walk.

• The new job is: as a Technical Director at a school.

• With a New Theatre.

I’m not even going to go into detail. The next three and a half months were the worst hell I could ever imagine.

• During orientation week, another close, old friend died. 2019 really was horrible.

• I was entirely dependent on Vicodin to function. The pain was worse than anything I have ever experienced. And constant. I considered suicide regularly.

• Turns out, when you have to weekly refill prescriptions of a painkiller so you can actually function – THAT’S when people start trying to make it really hard for you to get it. Way too much of my life became built around how I was going to get the next week’s scrip. The way we manage meds is F___ed. Up.

• Long before this whole nightmare started, I had embarked on the set design for Crystal Creek Motel with Flying V. Fortunately the base design was completed before I took lame, but navigating the schedule and final stages of the design with my medical and scheduling needs was a nightmare. FV company members carried me through this process much more than I am comfortable being carried, and so, when the design got nominated for a Helen Hayes Award, I really sort of hoped I would win just so I could really say thanks again.

I didn't; Thanks, though.

• During this time, I outfitted a theatre, built one show, and designed lights for and teched three of them. I did the best job I could; it was nowhere near what I would consider good. But I got us through the opening semester of the new facility, despite at least one vendor/contractor who should never, ever, be hired for a theatre install again.

When the hip replacement surgery finally came, on December 17th, 2019, the surgeon said the part of my hip joint that is ordinarily the “ball” of the ball joint had been worn down to a "peg".

He said I couldn’t possibly have been walking for the month prior to surgery.

I spent Christmas, 2019, learning to walk (again) and didn’t actually miss any classes at the start of the new year.

2020 began, for me, as an exercise in physical therapy. My PT seemed pleased – I was, as well, as we seemed to be hitting all the benchmarks we were setting. I had a new man-crush, as my in-home PT turned out to be a middle/older-aged man, with a love for sports touring on motorcycles, who just happened to have painted his BMW bright red as soon as he got it. Rick and I have yet to go on a long ride together, but he was there when I rode for the first time on March, 1st, which was my target.

Unfortunately, I had just been graduated from PT and cleared to go back into the gym for reals when the Covid hammer came down… so I went from relatively active, and having just built the first “real” show in the New Theatre, to, literally, sedentary. People joke about putting on “the Covid -19”; I put on the “Covid -49”. The gyms were all closed. I couldn’t really walk normally yet. And I was cut off from almost all live contact, living, as I do now, alone in an apartment.

The rest of what happened to technical theatre educators is old hat, now – some of you know from experience, some can just imagine, what it was like to take a subject usually taught in close quarters and as hands-on as possible to “virtually.” All my remaining shows for the year were cancelled along with everyone else’s (kudos to Carroll Community College who paid us for our work, anyway, and where I hope to work again, and soon).

The only thing that kept me sane was, after the first 2 months, being able to see Bonnie again, and the occasional motorcycle ride with Mike Patterson, because, how much more social distanced can you get?

I spent my “summer vacation” unemployed, again, but not able to file for it, now, and instead, got my other knee replaced, because that was the surgery we had been *expecting* to do next. Notes for the weary:

• Hip surgery is easy. Knee surgery is NOT. One will give you a false sense of complacency if it too immediately precedes the other.

• July in the Mid-Atlantic is a shitty time to be immobile.

• As long as you can get back on the motorcycle, there is something to look forward to.

Now I am getting into common territory… I envy those who have actually thrived during this time, but I don’t begrudge them. For me, the lack of human contact has almost (but not quite) been worse than the previous physical pain. Not having any gyms open has been a challenge, so I was very grateful when Talley Rec Center reopened, and I feel very safe there.

I have had dozens of friends contract Covid, and some have been badly affected by it, but only a few, and none too close to me, have died from it, so I am lucky, relatively, in that regard. (lucky also, I suppose, that I was already out of relatives). But the isolation has been hard, and I F___ing Hate Zoom. Update, further on - not only have more people died, but I now have a parallel list of people who have taken their own lives in despair for... well, everything.

The two theatres with which I associated most frequently underwent separate traumas, one which also involved the death of a friend, and, so, it remains to be seen whether I will have any artistic homes, at all, when we start doing art things again…

It is later, now, so this is an update: I have gone a long time without talking publicly about what happened at Flying V Theatre and to Jason Schlafstein. I'm not going to get into what Jason did or did not do - I've already beat him up enough about what i believe to be the truth. Which seems, to me, unfair, because as far as I can tell, (and I have talked to a lot of people, on every possible side of the issues at hand) what he lost (or had stolen from him) was far less just and more painful than whatever trauma may or may not have resulted from from what were, undeniably, imperfect or at least dunderheaded acts. The levels of malicious and vicious dishonesty leveled at a member of what is supposed to be a "community" was, honestly, a little shocking to me, and I'm just not easily shocked anymore. Some of it was the moment, because everything else was on fire, and people wanted their torches and pitchforks and were less than discriminating about how they were wielded, but much of it was just shitty. There are many people in the Washington Theatre "community" that I will never trust with adult decisions again. But it's important to me that people know I am still Jason's friend, and I respect his willingness to do the hard work much more than I respect many others' inability to imagine they may require the same.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about any of that. I am also still a company member of Flying V. For now. Time will tell.

I have, lately, been as frequently disturbed by actions to the left of the supposed political spectrum as to the right, and if the current but soon-to-be-forgotten executive is the loudest and most visible symptom of our national illnesses, he is far from the most insidious. I am trying to remain heartened by any small progress near the ground, and hope that the President Elect will prove to be the President we all need, even if he isn’t the President many of us really wanted.

Mostly, I just want to be able to hope again. But, I’m not going to be going outside tonight and banging any pans. I’m going to bed early, I’m going to do my very best not to look 2021 directly in the eye, and not make any sudden movements for a few weeks. I’m going to get up tomorrow, and try to walk further than I did today; I’m going to meal-plan a little, and get back to work.

So:

I live in Frederick, MD, again. If you need my address, PM me.

I work as the Technical Director/Teaching Artist for The Lab School of Washington, and I love it.

I still don’t own a Harley, and I’ve no plans to, any time soon.

And… I wish you all a very happy, peaceful, and improved New Year

If Music be the food of love....

... then what the hell is this?!

When I set out from the East, I had grand plans. Including making a whole bunch of new playlists of music that I would painstakingly craft, perhaps one of each region, or even leg of the journey. There is a scene in my head, that has been there for literally decades, which is how my motorcycle film, the film of my life, MY "ZATAOMM", will open: (It is actually the opening scene of the novel I began some time ago. But it involves a very fast sport bike, tears, a departure, winter lighting, and Bach's Der Kunst Der Fugue.) I imagined thousands of perfect "musical" moments like this as I looked forward to my trip.

Yeah, sure. So, let's talk about what actually happened.

As you all know, time was running short, and I was focused on trying to learn the GoPro (no, that has not really happened yet, but it turns out that the best internet connection to which I have access is the one at work, so I have been dutifully loading video to the web while I work on my office, and try to continue to dig it out from the 80's. (no, I only wish I were kidding)...

BUT: I didn't really have time to make all those wonderful playlists. So I was stuck with what I had - but as it turns out, that wasn't the worst thing. First of all, I have pretty good (read: eclectic) taste in music, and second of all, what I listened to was as often dictated by what would be audible at all, as it happened; and third of all, that didn't keep the magic moments from happening. In fact, they may have been even more impressive for involving music with which I was already pretty familiar, as you''ll see.

Before we even talk about the music, I have to make one thing clear: this is the first time I have ever traveled with an actual sound system designed for a bike. Even if it hadn't been for the entertainment value, I would have thought it necessary for this trip, just so I could hear the GPS. Also, it was supposed to let me control the GoPro (hah!) with my voice.* Before this, I have either lived with the sounds of my ride, naturally, or I have worn earbuds inside my helmet (and because when I was doing this, my earbuds were pretty isolating and very high quality, this was a great experience, because they really cut down on the surrounding engine and wind noise, and I could hear the music really well - while still being able to hear traffic sounds around me).

But, everybody said, no, get an in-helmet system, so I did. I had also bought a new helmet, because it well past time, but in retrospect, wish I had spent more on a quieter one. Oh well.

This is the helmet that I bought... and that little thing on the side is the sound system. Yes, that's it. I mean, there are speakers - wafer thin, that velcro to the inside of the helmet, and a microphone, also tiny and wafer thing that is supposed to do the same thing, but otherwise, that's it: amp, preamp, tuner (it has a radio) and Bluetooth circuits - plus rechargeable battery - all in that little thingy. We truly do live in the future...

 

One of the best things about it is that it holds a charge for ... well, for a long time - I could actually ride for a whole day, and into the night without the charge getting low. Which was good, because, the dance of the sugarplum charging cables every night when I stopped got to be a bit exhausting.... pull out the cables, sort the cables, take the sound system off the helmet, take the GoPro off the helmet, find the outlets, plug in first the computer, then the phone, then the big power bank and then the small power bank, then the cameras, then the sound system... Each of these devices helped with the whole journey, but they each took a toll on the "free and easy" part of being on the road. And then there was the time I lost all those charging cables.... I am really glad that the Scala Rider uses a pretty standard cable.

So - listening to music while riding. It's not, it turns out easy to find much motorcycle music, and one of the best motorcycle songs ever written or performed would be a dangerous earwig - Eye of the Hurricane, by the inestimable David Wilcox, is, while a great song, not something one should listen to overmuch before doing what I was doing.

Still - it's lovely, and reminds me of my mis-spent youth:

Eye of the Hurricane

 So, you can see that I might not have wanted this as a theme song starting out... (note: the caption below the picture is a link to the song on YouTube or Vevo....)

And "motorcycle music" has, in general, a decidedly "metal" edge, that is, mostly, not my jam... (top-songs-about-motorcycles)

As it happens, however, a song that starts several different 80's playlists of mine is, although I never really think of it this way, absolutely a motorcycle song. Also a song I like, for all its 80's excess; it maintains, still, a sort of lip-glossy, romantic hold on my perception of myself as a young man, and I always admired the creativity and "out of the box" thinking behind the iconic video. So:

Remember this video?

As a kid who grew up on Speed Racer, and who was totally into the actualized, short-haired women I was meeting in college, (yes, of course, one in particular, thanks, Lorri... ;-) I loved the video, and the fauxquality that it espoused. I imagined us as a team, she and I, navigating what was also the most theatrical environment we had seen yet on MTV, breaking through fourth, fifth, and sixth walls...

More importantly, this song can be heard in its entirety, even with the cycle going full throttle on the interstate. I must have heard it a hundred times on the trip.

The first song on my workout playlist is Evanescence's huge first hit, Bring Me To Life. It became pretty iconic for me in the months after my knee-replacement surgery, as workouts became a fight to, not just keep up, but regain, some semblance of health. But it was  great for PT sessions that sometimes began before the sun was up, and usually with pretty severe pain. While riding, I often wouldn't know it was the next song on the list until a bit into it, because that intro is pretty quiet, even with Soundcheck on on the iPhone. (yes, I should have mentioned, all audio was provided, via Bluetooth, from my iPhone - really the most ridiculous multi-tasking tool for a journey like this.*) But when the bass line kicks inin, and my head starts to bang at 90 mph., well, there aren't many feelings like that, even if I HAD remembered to put Born To Be Wild on the darned phone (can you believe it?) Also - my workout mix was the perfect accompaniment for any road that was going to prove to be an actual workout - so I occasionally stopped at the beginning of what looked like a real sportbike run - there were a few - and reset to the top of this song:

Bring Me To Life

That's not the only song from my workout mix that made it onto the hot 100 rotation... many years ago, Meredith Sims fueled my love of Toad the Wet Sprocket, and I still rock out to this song regularly:

Of course, it also occurred to me that "Fall Down" might not be the best title for a song on this particular journey. But, god... I love it.

Leaping forward a whole decade, I listened to this song a lot, and it always takes me back to early Round House Theatre days, when I am sure we watched this video a hundred times on the floor of Veroncia Mariani's Home for Boys and Others;

Funny - no where in the song does she say "what's up...?"

I can remember when, in fact, "25 years and my life is still Trying to get up this great big hill" seemed so F___ing profound... But what I didn't remember is how amazing her voice is. Lisa... something. One hit wonders, as far as I know, but that song... still feels relevant today. And when I look at the band in the video, I am reminded that it's been awhile since the changes we are wrestling with now really started happening, for good - we just forgot when the first plane turned left into the north Tower. This is a great song for musing, and contemplating, and just feeling the vibe when you have a few open miles in front of you. You know, like, say... North Dakota.

Some songs on here should require no explanation. Nuff' said.

Yes, of course she is part of my workout mix. Because she's F___ing Joan Jett that's why. Also - if you let this video play through - it goes straight to the other JJ song in high rotation on my trip (and what used to be my ring tone)

I heard the next song over and over; I love KB, and go out of my way to point out to the ids that none fo their woke female superstars (or mine, for that matter - like the whole damned Lilith Fair) would have ever had a chance if it weren't for people like Joan and Kate Bush. But, somehow, it never occurred to me during the whole Ride that whenever I heard this song, I was almost Always. On. A. Hill. I like the song for what it offers in layers... the text, the subtext, and the lovely, heartrending video.

This really didn't occur to me until I was home...

I was always a Bangles fan, and I was surprised to find that only two songs made it onto the road with me - but they were both crucial to keeping my sanity. The first is on my workout mix, and is a cover, but this one is classic Bangles, and I have to credit it with propping my sagging spirits on some of the harder days, because it is just so damned perky:

Walk How?

Surprisingly, this is the ONLY Simon and Garfunkel I had on my phone when I set out:

But I love this cover so much.

Of course, I couldn't let this be the only S&G I had with me, especially, since one of their songs was the song I kept singing to myself as I prepared for this whole ridiculous undertaking... so one night in a motel (South Dakota, if I remember) I rectified the situation, because one simply cannot go on a cross country road trip without this song in one's repertoire:

"It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw..."

"And the moon rose over an open field..."

In all seriousness, I thought of this song all the time. Whether on my own, on a slightly exhilarating, slightly terrifying 24-hour trek, like when I took that picture, or when skirting the rim of Crater Lake, and marveling that so many others were simply traversing the same land I was, just traveling for the sake of travel and to see the sights that the land affords.

At night, I would often listen to music, trying to get to sleep - it can be surprisingly hard to turn off your brain, even through extreme exhaustion. I know there are some people reading this who can relate... and The Boxer came on often enough. I usually couldn't really hear it on the road, because even the live version (I have both on my iPhone) isn't loud enough, even with the volume all the way up on everything, to hear it clearly, and it is too great a song to not hear it clearly. But: it is one of the songs that sustained me - since sometime in my early youth, lying down to go to sleep, on an overnight with Chris Murphy, when I heard the song for the first time, it has been in the litany of ways I heep from giving up - whatever it is that vexes me.

There is music that I tried to use, more than once but gave up on: The aforementioned Der Kunst Der Fuge; Mozart's 3rd Violin, which I have ridden to before; Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, one of my very favorite pieces of music - all were simply not "loud" enough, consistently enough, for them to be appreciated, no matter how much I wanted them to be a part fo the experience. Some music, however, was surprising in its utility: either for mood, for a driving rhythm, or for some undiscovered appropriateness to the Ride. Dire Straits was a perfect example... and I played both ends of the spectrum...

As a special present, I am adding this video I had never seen before....

This is one of the songs I played most often - and hearing this song come on when i was nearing Notre dame, where i first heard it, was slightly surreal.

Seriously - just look around....

This song was somewhat ironic, as I rode through Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and back through Nebraska; cowboys were all around. And, to be fair, there was a subtle shift in the dynamic between men and women, as I found my way through the "flyover" Plains; but not so much that i felt like throwing this song around. Whatever happened to Paula Cole? Such a talent...

Alannah Miles has been in my rotation for a while, right along with Melissa Etheridge, in a grouping that I like to play when I feel like rye whiskey or Budweiser, two vices I seem unable to abandon totally.

I mean, I'm not gonna drink it, but I still love the song....

Okay - this is has been growing over the intervening months - and I need to simply decide that it is done. I may add more music from the ride sometime later for those of you, who are not too horrified to discover I am still writing about this...

Like the weirdness of listening to Dawes' A Little Bit Of Everything, after actually riding across the Golden Gate Bridge (I wanted to find a place to stop on the bridge to stop and play it - but that wasn't happening - I am still trying to settle an "EZPass-like" fine from the one time we crossed the damned thing...

Or the experience of listening to Hotel California while actually riding THROUGH the "warm smell of colitas..."  Hearing Annie Lennox sing "Love is a stranger in an open car..." when you are alone on the highway, at night in the dark, with one pair of headlights on I-80 that you haven't been able to shake for an hour. Trying to dance to Love Shack while descending a 77-mile set of twisties down a mountain that is trying to throw you off, because: what the heck. Why not go out in style.

But that will be another story.


*The iPhone 7 served as: Phone (not used often, but once I reached the areas where the Internet really is completely a LIE, I often had to call for reservations....; GPS; sound system source; monitor for the GoPro (it really is cool how that works - so I could see what the Hero7 could see while it was mounted on my helmet - astonishing that I still did so badly really...) Mileage log (I endorse MileIQ); text message manager; wallet; flashlight (yes, it's the one I used to set my tent up); weather lookout, complete with radar; calculator (handy for trig calculations when trying to dodge tornadoes); traffic news source (I was able to get traffic text messages in most states, which saved me a lot of time when a portion of I-80 got suddenly closed in Utah); I am sure I am forgetting a lot of functions, but, while I had backups for some of them, the iPhone replaced about twenty different devices, including repair manual for the cycle itself, and first aid manual. OH: ALSO PRIMARY STILL CAMERA. AND SCANNER FOR RECEIPTS AND OTHER DOCS. Also bookshelf - after wrestling with the idea, I decided not to bring any physical books with me. And sometimes I did that on the iPad, which i did have with me, but mostly as a backup for the phone.

So: Go Apple, at least in this case.

The Minstrel Bo-oy to the War Has Gone...

Some where in one of these posts I mention that I am never so happy as when I am trying to do too much. I am not really sure that that is true, but it seems to be the impression many people who know me have, and they make some valid points. But even I will admit that this whole venture has been a bit of a mouthful to bite off, and I am feeling very lucky and blessed to have made it this far.

And yet...

I mentioned in another post that one of the things I do every year, now, and that really was one of the major turning points of my life when I started it, is the Pennsic War. With the Ride, and all, I knew that I would have to give that up this summer...

Wouldn't I?

So first, I "pre-reged" - pre-registered - so that my land group (household) could have the land my registration would entitle them to. They have been very good to me in past years, and it seemed the least I could do. (For the record - Pennsic is the single least expensive way to go on vacation I have ever seen - assuming you are capable of being frugal and avoiding temptation - it's $175.00 for 17 days on site. If you are adept at camping, have the knowledge to feed yourself for that long with dry goods and preserved foods, and can avoid the siren song of the myriad astonishing vendors of crafts and wares, you need spend little more than that. Of course, almost no one does that.)

But then, since I was pre-reged, I talked to my householder and asked if - just maybe - if the gods smiled upon me - and I made it to the area of War (N.E. PA - Slippery Rock is the closest real "place" to Cooper's Lake Campground, the actual site) with my camping gear intact and enough time to spare - could I possibly camp with my household, even though I wouldn't be paying the full camp fees. Couldn't hurt to ask, right? And so, with his assent, I put it in the itinerary as a "maybe"...

So, "War" is the largest function of the SCA - The Society for Creative Anachronism. It is basically a medieval siege village of over ten thousand souls that is set up for more than two weeks - after day 8 or 9 they usually have to open a federal post office, it's so big. (10,000 plus). There is everything you can think of - armored combat, sword fighting, archery, crafts, a University with hundreds - literally - of classes, about forty different ways to volunteer to help the whole thing run, and of course, at night, the parties. Oh, the parties.

Even this photo doesn't quite show the whole thing... it's A Lot.

For info on the SCA, go here:

Society for Creative Anachronism

Here is a really good, quick news piece done on War a while back:

Meet The Scadians

Also:
Pennsic Official Page

The 50th anniversary of the SCA was just a few years back; the 50th Pennsic is only three years off. The stories are rife, and entirely apocryphal, but phrases like "the king who declared war on himself and lost" and "Loser gets Pittsburgh" give you a sense of the event. Unike most SCA events, which tend to take, at most a long weekend, War is huge, global (I have several Pennsic friends who come from Australia) and... a little less SCA than most events. Because of the scale of the event, Pennsic draws folk who might be really denizens of other cultures, but who want to fight in the War, or just hang out with Scadians and enjoy the culture and parties. There are serious, very academic reenactors, more than one entire clanne of early period Celts, Romans, and even the Tuchux, who actually predate the SCA at Cooper's Lake Campground (the formal name of the site) by most accounts, and are a fictional society of caveman-like "dogs" from an early 20th C. series of fantasy novels.

I first came to War in 2007, (Pennsic XXXVI) when, after young friends in FRDNX, having badgered me for years to come try this thing they did - "we're pretty sure you'd really like it..." - forced my hand by being married there. The MD Shakesfest 2.0 was taking a summer off, and I had been riding motorcycles with renewed vigor, and had just discovered camping off of one, so there was no reason for me not to go, and as a cost-saving measure, I determined to stay in the camp instead of in a hotel like most of the "mundane" guests chose to do. 

My very first night in camp (after "trolling in" - registering - I was promptly put in charge of "cutting these into a rough dice" in the outdoor kitchen, taught to play Tamerlane's Chess, introduced to the very cute young minister, who immediately made me feel old as hell by announcing "wait: you're Joseph Musumeci? I studied you in college!" (remember, this is over a decade ago...). By the end of the next morning, I had my first set of real (if weak) garb, knew how to tie a ring belt, and had stolen a bridge from another camp for the ceremony.

The actual wedding was lovely, and brief. It involved a procession of actual knights, a lovely exchange of vows, and the bride's brother in law reading, rather drunkenly, from Shakespeare. It lasted 20 minutes. 

Max.

The groom and best man

The bride and her parents

The actual ceremony. Seriously - see how cute the minister is? She is also an entirely lovely person, but nothing kills a flirt like, "Hey, I studied you in college..." Yes, the BIL is definitely drunk, and reading from Shakespeare. In a Russian accent. Yes, I stole that bridge.

The reception... well, that was a different matter. It was no more than a hundred strong, probably less than 60 - we all fit under the newly expanded dining fly of House Hedgehog - but the feast and the entertainment were unparalleled in my experience. There were seven courses, all of meticulously documented period recipes, several courses of which I remember to this day, including sausage stuffed "hedgehogs" of fire-roasted meal, and a pear soup that was to die for. Each course was separated by a different flight of mead, and entertainment, ranging from a troupe of very seriously talented belly dancers to a woman of indeterminate but advanced age reading, from memory, Icelandic Eddas.

I miss that henna tattoo.

Two of the best cooks at an event that has a lot of them...

This is probably around course 4 or 5. I still don't know quite what to make of all this, but I already know I like it. And may, by this time, have secreted a bottle of buckwheat mead between the bride's mother and myself.

But this was only the private portion of the reception. At the end of the meal, and an approximately one-hour "honeymoon" for the bride and groom to catch their breath, the camp was opened to... well, War. HH is not a large household, by any means, but the yard and the street in front held at least 500 people, all clamoring for drink simultaneously, while constant musical and dancing entertainment went on around the fire pit: ATS dancers, Turkish, Gothic you name it, drumming, drumming, drumming, harps, sitars, brass instruments I didn't recognize. 

I don't know if I had ever seen live fire spinning close up. 

If you look closely, you can get a sense of how crowded the yard in front of the dining fly was... that's about 60 feet deep, and much wider than our (well, then, "their" camp...)

I was also introduced to clove cigarettes at this war. It still makes me smile to smell them.

I don't know whether i slept that night. But I spent the next day exploring all the rest that this Ridiculous, Amazing "event" had to offer. All I remember of Monday is watching my first battle - the Field Battle - with a soup tureen of mint juleps. And then I had to ride home.

Learning to play Tamerlane's Chess

I also wasn't kidding about the soup toureen. Just out of the frame,  thousands of people are whacking each other with sticks.

I came home with two new shirts, a pair of pants, a hat, a hat pin, a hangover, my first tribal tattoo (temporary, but it scared the shit out of my colleagues on Tuesday ;-) and a more than passing interest in a particular redhead. I have never looked back. This is the part of me that I had stuffed down for too long, that had almost died inside. I have been back, for at least a long weekend every year since, and I was proud to be made, a few years later, an official member of House Hedgehog, and to make my own contributions over time - for Pennsic, while for many the only and longest vacation of their year, is never easy, and requires an ungodly amount of prep and care to pull off each year.

A few years after the wedding, the HH household, ever eager to improve, turned their dining flies into a full-on pavilion, that bore the household badge; a few years later, our householder was lamenting around the fire one evening that he feared the pavilion was on its last legs, and he would have to dispose of it soon, as the canvas was no longer able to be repaired economically. As the legend goes, I piped up (possibly, adult beverages were involved) and said, "Milord, if that happens, I can design you a longhouse that will flat pack into our truck and go up in a day."*

Jaysus.

Needless to say, he threw the old pavilion away at the end of that war. So, I was stuck...

The story of the House Hedgehog Long House is an involved one, but it can be pretty much summed up in two words: Mission Creep. The original concept was something that would be, in essence, a glammed-up version of our main pavilion, with the appearance, at least, of solid-ish sides. The end result was a 24x36 foot adaptation of an amalgam of Norse longhouse styles adapted for the Pennsic weather, pushing the site-specific limitation of 16' tall, with a second floor on both ends.

The original dining fly - which had actually been more than doubled in size for the wedding.

Behind us is the new and improved main pavilion, sewn out of the dining fly canvas.

Go Big or go home. The gentleman to the right is one of the two other principal carpenters, and the one in charge of getting it up without me this year. I am very proud of him.

Still in process: the shutters, half closed and half woven with wattle, that will make it look much more like an actual lomghouse/meadhall.  Notice the old banners flying from the ends of the ridge poles. Nothing wasted. And rarely anything thrown away ;-)

For the first three years of the longhouse, I arranged my attendance so that I could be there for setup weekend, including attending War Practice the first year so I could survey our land. This year, because of the Ride, HH was going to have to erect the house on their own, and without my help (there was ONE phone call, pretty desperate, mid-afternoon on setup Sunday, which, very fortunately, caught me on a rest stop. More accurately, caught me after the completion of the Iron Butt run, and just as I was checking into my room. Because otherwise, I would have been dead asleep.) We did a class beforehand, and I reid all the drawings, and lent them all the tools I had usually brought along. (I invested in some lightweight surveying tools the first year we did it - hard structures are less forgiving than tents...

Anyway - part of my interest in attending this year, if only for day or two, was to see how they had done.

But really - there are a few people I only ever see at War, and moreover, only see in their "natural state." When you know someone primarily as a professional pirate, or an ironmonger, or a belly dancer, or the renegade owner of a turkish coffee house, it's more interesting than knowing them as an IT security pro, a state house admin, or a corrections officer. So i was really trying to make at least a day at War happen, on the way home. Kudos and thanks, here to Chris and Elspeth (who is, herself, or: was? - baronesses stay baronesses, but not landed, I guess - nobility in the SCA) for letting me stay with them a second time, as I altered my homeward path from Des Moines, since that is where I wound up rather than Ames. It was a long-ish day to get to them, but so good to see them again, and one more long-ish day put me in Slippery Rock. 

It. Was. So. Much. Fun.

I haven't been for less than 10-14 days in at least seven or eight years - but even the almost exactly 40 hours were just enough to prime my pump and give me the energy I needed to get home again, refreshed, and re-entered into something like my homeworld. I saw friends I hadn't seen in ages, ate food I hadn't realized I missed so much, bought a new short tunic (because I hadn't been able to pack a change of garb - although I had some "bog pants" that would suffice for the short time I was there) and spent real quality time, if not as much as I would have liked, with most of the people I wanted to see. The household had done a great job of getting the LH up, although, not, apparently, without some soreness, and angst - and had added a kitchen to it that matched, and was very impressive.

And I got to take my last little video - one I have always wanted to have - the video of coming off the highway and into our little brigadoon. It really is a moment, when the bus lot gives way to the parking lot, and then the next thing you see are all the tents covering the fields. 

I didn't even need my tent - I slept on the loft level of the Longhouse, which was surprisingly comfortable, and while I had intended to buy all my meals at the food court up in the "Serengeti" - the flat part of the site up "topside" I was invited to take all my meals with my household while I was there.

Synn Vasallo, house mother of of Midnattsol, took this pic. I literally didn't pull out a camera, after rolling video as I entered the site on my bike. All of Midnattsol, I think, is comprised of former Hedgehogs - it's cool watching people grow and expand from their roots at War.

I stayed for two nights, and headed off late the following morning, and was ready, finally, to bring the ride to a close. Which, as I have already mentioned, Bonnie and I did the following Saturday at Rehoboth Beach.

Really, what could possibly top the summer I have had? Okay, fine: this was our private beach on Rehoboth Bay. I take no credit for this year's beach planning - i was just along for the ride.

As it were...

So, that's it for this installment of As The Two Wheels Turn. Tune in next week for Ooh-Ooh That Smell... and The Playlists That Kept Me Alive




* We say "milord" and "milady" a lot. It's polite. Let it go. Also, yes, there is increasing use of the gender non-binding, "good gentle." Also - as far as the "go up in a day" part goes... there is this household at War that holds two huge parties - they do so in a replica of an Italian villa that they spend their entire first week putting up, and most of their second week taking down. I may or may not be guilty of having said, on more than one occasion, "you know, if I had six decent stagehands I could put that up in a day - two max."