Dwarf Planet in Purple

In late March, I wrote but never posted:

Now that my latest feature article is done, what do I do next?

As I had been promising myself, I started practicing the ukulele. Since I've taken up several musical instruments over my ever-lengthening life, I know that the beginning is the steepest part of the learning curve. My left-hand fingertips felt tender, but I can say I know three chords now: C, F, and A minor. All three involve only one or two fingers. I really want to learn G major, but that involves three fingers, which is a bit more cumbersome for my non-dominant hand and brain. Still, I want to learn, even if I learn at a slower pace than a youngster.

I am still singing with Laydes Fayre, Mistress Arianna's group, but I had to skip the March 22 practice session because I had to attend a church trustees' meeting about candidates for our next developmental minister. That's about all I can say because of confidentiality rules.

Then this weekend came about, and I am

I was probably going to write, "I am so tired I can barely write..." *grin* Fast forward to late April.

The weekend of March 22-23 was a double-event weekend in my SCA world. On Saturday I went to Defending the Gate, at which one of my friends got her Laurel (highest award for arts and sciences) and also stepped up as Baroness of Stierbach (with her husband as the new Baron). On Sunday my own barony, Storvik, had an informal "spring thing" at the Cheverly community center, an indoor space that we have only recently started using (but that works well for activities).

On March 26 the Key Bridge collapsed, which was huge news in Maryland, as you can imagine. I think I'd driven over it only a couple of times in the decades I've lived in Maryland. Usually I take the tunnels or I travel up the west side of the Baltimore Beltway.

On April 6 I was driving nowhere near Baltimore -- I was heading up to Erie, PA, for a rendezvous with the path of the total solar eclipse. I stayed at my friend Amanda's house -- how lucky for me that she had a guest room! Of course, the big question hanging over the weekend was: would the sky be cloudy? After all, in July 1991, I received a great demonstration of what totality looks like when the sky is overcast. Fortunately, while the morning of April 8 was disappointingly gray, patches of blue sky began to appear on the western horizon, and the crowd (at Mercyhurst University) and I were treated to an awesome sight.

This past weekend (April 13-14) I spent Saturday at Storvik Novice Tournament and Sunday at the Japanese street festival in DC. Storvik had to hold Novice Tourney really early this year because that was the only weekend we could rent the usual site. (This close to DC, sites that allow us to set up all our SCA stuff and have fighting and horses are few indeed.)

At the SCA event, I was excited to be called into court twice: first by Their Majesties, because I won the drawing for a "quest prize," which I will have to explain at another time, and second by Their Excellencies Storvik, who presented me with the Baron's Award of Excellence, which left me truly gobsmacked.

At the festival, the boy toy and I had various types of snacky Asian foods and I bought myself a couple of parasols for use at future SCA events.

Hey, it's about time. Five things make a post.

1. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of my dear mother's passing. I remember my parents' 25th wedding anniversary -- red roses, silver-colored gifts, firecrackers and Roman candles. There are no such general symbols for a death anniversary. I volunteered to light the chalice during yesterday's Sunday service (on Zoom). It seemed the best way to honor her.

2. Saturday I ventured out to the local town cinema -- first time to a movie theater in almost two years! -- to see the new West Side Story on the wide screen. It was every bit a visual feast as you would expect from the pairing of one of the all-time great director-cinematographer teams, plus the music was exquisite. I have loved this music since I danced to "I Feel Pretty" in my preschool ballet class. No matter what you might think of the plot or the general artificiality of a movie (or staged) musical, you have to admit that the music is some of the most sublime ever written. I'm so sorry this film is now considered a "box-office bomb."

3. I have been spending money like crazy. New eyeglasses (first since the summer of 2013), vet exam and blood/urine tests for Julia (who is now a senior kitty), new muffler and tailpipe for the noisy car. Whew. Hard come, easy go.

4. I am SO. INCREDIBLY. TIRED. of this covid-19 pandemic. None of the organizations to which I belong can meet in person this month because of the omicron surge. Atlantia is "shut down" until January 21; Storvik is taking the entire month of January off. Church is soldiering on with Zoom meetings. Same with Toastmasters. People are fed up with virtual this and online that. My local science writers' group had its second online holiday gala last month and attendance was barely two dozen instead of the usual 150 or so. No wonder people drive like entitled maniacs and treat strangers so poorly when they do manage to leave their hidey-holes. We are all losing social capital.

5. Just now, as I was writing the above, I heard a crash in the condo. The little wooden shelf in the dining room fell off the wall. It's the little wooden shelf I gave Mom for her 75th birthday. Is it a sign??

Over and out....

Yep, the summer heat and humidity are here, big time.

This was possibly the quietest Fourth of July weekend I've had in a long, long time. Because of the pandemic, my neighbor-friend T.V.P. did not have her usual blowout birthday-solstice-Fourth party, complete with the public fireworks display over the lake. My town did not have its municipal fireworks display this year. The boy toy and I watched the coverage of several major cities' fireworks on CNN.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I finally got to see Hamilton on Disney+ (courtesy of the boy toy's parents -- they subscribe on one device, and the subscription says "up to four devices," so they sent him the code). OMG. SO EXCELLENT. Of course I've listened to the soundtrack in bits and pieces over the years, and I've read the Ron Chernow biography on which the show is based, but somehow it all came together when I could see the action and could tell who was singing when. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Lin-Manuel Miranda is his generation's Shakespeare.

(I know some people don't like rap music, but I can take it in reasonable doses, and I don't find the speed of the lyrics any worse than listening to well-performed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.)

On Friday I watched the YouTube video of the Lithuanian folk dance festival from 2016. The festival was *supposed* to be TODAY in Philadelphia, but because of the pandemic it has been postponed to August 2021. Smack dab in the middle of Pennsic, which of course has been postponed from this year too.

Le sigh. The whole year is being postponed. EXCEPT for the election. We MUST have the election.

Five things make a post....

1. The plumber was here. The incident that prompted the call -- the cold-water handle on the bathtub faucet was broken -- was an easy fix. The other thing we've been putting off for years -- the replacement of the kitchen faucet -- took a bit longer. Still, the bill came to "only" $226.

2. Washington Nationals fandom is getting to be a lot like Boston Red Sox fandom: hope followed by heartbreak.

3. Today is "Women Boycott Twitter" day. Not that I use Twitter a whole lot....

4. This weekend I won't be going to Harvest Wars because I had been planning to go away last weekend, and now I need to focus on working on my next feature article due at the end of the month. That article is also why I wasn't planning to go to War of the Wings this year. Hey, at least I went to Pennsic, and my home barony is hosting Fall Crown Tourney just about 10 minutes' drive from my house.

5. Speaking of that feature article, I had a couple of good interviews with sources this week (one just ended). I also did a few other adulting things, such as getting a free flu shot at the county clinic, and some fun things, such as seeing Wolgemut last night at the New Deal Cafe. Actually, this time around the four gentlemen currently making up the band played the longest "soft band" set I've ever heard them play (as opposed to the "loud band," which relies on bagpipes and a rauschpfeife.

First off, a Happy Belated Birthday to Maugorn and Forestcats/Bridget.

This week was quite the reminder of our universal mortality. Not only did we pass the 19th anniversary of my mother's death and funeral (the 9th and the 13th, respectively), but also David Bowie and Alan Rickman. I wasn't as big a fan of David Bowie as I have been of several other artists, but still, his music was part of the soundtrack of my life, going back all the way to the time I first heard "Fame" on WRKO-AM Top 40 radio when I was in high school. As for Alan Rickman ... oh, I was just one of many, many women who swooned over him. Especially that voice. The perfect pairing of fine wine and chocolate. He also seemed like one of the few celebrities with whom I would actually like to have a meaningful conversation. Now I shall never get the chance. :-(

As far as other stuff goes ... The first half of the week, I felt pretty darn productive, but I've stumbled badly the second half of the week. Blame it on Alan Rickman, I guess. I've definitely set myself up for an intense three-day work weekend. Well, work plus a New England Patriots playoff game, Maugie's birthday party, and Lithuanian folk dance practice up in Baltimore. Oh, and a Finance Committee meeting on Sunday morning, bright and early before the church service. *sigh*

Happy Birthday to my friend Leslie!!

I must note that she shares a birthday with Pete Townshend, who turns 70 today. My mind boggles at this, at least until I remember that Roger Daltrey is already 71.

I first heard the Who in, of all places, junior high school music class. The teacher, a rather young woman (as I recall), realized that she wasn't getting through to kids by lecturing them on the types of classical music and the chord patterns of the blues. So, one afternoon, she surprised us by putting the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album on the turntable and asking us whether we thought that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was really about LSD. After debating that, we listened to a bunch of rock operas: Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Tommy. The last really grabbed my imagination.

(And, yes, this *was* a public school, but the teacher wanted us to understand that music could be used to tell a story. She was pretty subversive -- the junior high school chorus performed at least one Tom Lehrer song!)

Sadly, I didn't get to see them in person until 1982, when Keith Moon was already gone. My other Who concerts were in 1989, 1997, and 2012. I don't know if I will get to see them again. But they -- driven by Townshend's composition -- are and will always be very much a part of the soundtrack of my life.

At some of our Monday night dance-with-live-music practices, I've borrowed Maugorn's triangle to generate some slightly more delicate percussion than the usual tambourine and drum. But sometimes I've also said, "Gee, I wonder what a larger triangle would sound like."

Last night, the dance director, Fred, showed up with a BIG triangle. That sucker was HUGE. He spent multiple hours over the weekend hammering it out from a used truck spring. It weighs nine pounds and is wider than I am (and I'm fat).

And when you hit it with the striker (made from the remainder of the truck spring), it makes a CLLLAAAANNNGGG!! sound. I was told that this sound is quite reminiscent of two motor vehicles colliding. Still, I played it in a few tunes (being careful to strike gently!) to please Fred. He plans to experiment further by adding duct tape to the striker.

I'm not sure if silmaril's photo came out, as it was taken at dusk on a cloudy evening and she wasn't using flash. Gary, the other guitarist, took a picture with his smartphone and put it on Google+, but I will have to ask for permission to swipe it.

In the meantime, be careful what you wish for....

(I know, I know ... you're all thinking this is the event that never ends, right? Well, it WAS over a long holiday weekend....)

After dinner some musicians brought their instruments under the populace pavilion and started playing dance music. I didn't feel like walking back to my tent and getting my instruments, since I wasn't sure how long the impromptu dancing was going to happen -- it was supposed to be a general dessert party. So I just drummed my hands on the table, and I also actually got up and participated in some dances, which I don't get to do very often because I'm usually one of those hard-working musicians. :-) One of the musicians was a male violinist whom I'd never seen before, though he certainly knew the dance tunes already. Turns out that he used to play with Three Left Feet maybe a decade ago, then went out to Michigan for professional reasons, and is now back in Bright Hills. He goes by the name Peter in the SCA and is a good friend of silmaril, and he said that as soon as he is done with his board certification exams in early October, he would like to check out the local SCA dance practices. (I guess most people want their pediatric oncologists to be board-certified these days. *smile* He seems really smart and I'm quite sure he will pass just fine.)

Unfortunately, Peter was not able to stay too late, because he had to do a 24-hour hospital shift starting early the next morning (yep, that's what young doctors have to go through). After he left, I wandered back to my encampment to spend some time with my campmates, since, after all, I didn't get to see them much at Pennsic.

By Sunday morning I was feeling really sticky and gross, so I walked down to the communal shower tent, powered by a propane hot-water tank. Woo-hoo, so nice! Thus cleaned and dressed in fresh clothing, I came across Maugorn and Patches, who had just arrived for their day-trip visit and were looking for the merchant area and the A&S activities, so I pointed them in the right direction.

I had expected Royal Curia to be in the mid-afternoon, but the Royals moved it up to lunchtime (as it turned out, I think they wanted to hit the road early). So I sat in and listened to the proceedings while eating lunch. This wasn't the pointy-hats business, which is already Done with a capital D; this is another set of changes to Kingdom law. Eventually I got tired of it and went off to take pictures of the horses at the equestrian activities and to check out the Atlantian history tents.

Maug had a set in the Performing Arts Tent beginning at 2:30, but sadly I had already signed up to cry field announcements at 3 p.m. Fortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of information to cry out, so I was able to get the announcements done and head back to the pavilion to catch the rest of his performance. Funny thing: I was planning to request "Heather on the Moor," but he went and played it before I could request it!

After his set, which was the last one in the Performing Arts Tent -- some guys arrived to take it down -- Maug followed me back to my encampment, where he fixed the broken string on my psaltery. Then we walked up the hill a bit to a wooden fence, which turned out to surround a bucolic pasture with horses running free, and it all looked golden in the warm late afternoon sunlight.

After dinner I raced back to my tent to change from my bog dress to a light blue dress that I once bought for $2 at a Holiday Faire, but that I had never worn to an event before. Then the Grand Ball began. It was supposed to start with Their Majesties, Their Highnesses and Their Excellencies all parading in to "Belle Qui," but most of those folks had already left the site due to rumors of impending storms. So we had a small professional with the Baron and Baroness of Stierbach, but it wasn't as "grand" as planned. Still, I had fun playing with Maug, Baron Watkyn and the other musicians.

The ball was also ended (at least I was told) early because storms were rolling in. So I bade good night to my musician friends and went back to my encampment, where another bardic circle was in full swing. And guess what: It didn't rain. The skies stayed clear and folks were passing around the strong liquid refreshments and the merrymaking continued till after I went to bed.

Finally ... not too much to say about Monday morning except that I got packed up and rolling off site around 11:30. I used the GPS to get back to I-95 and find a Waffle House, because I was craving a nice omelet with hash browns. Amazingly, I reached home without hitting any end-of-holiday-weekend traffic jams.

Last night I had to go to an extra meeting of the church board of trustees. It's the budget season in our congregation, because our fiscal year starts on July 1. Our financial pledges for the next fiscal year don't quite match our "austere" budget, never mind our "basic" budget. So we had to mull over some ideas for wringing some more money out of the congregation. Of course, since I'm one of those people who had to cut their pledge by some huge percentage, I feel guilty about the whole thing. All the other trustees say I shouldn't feel that way, but hey, I grew up Catholic, so guilt is just something that happens.

Maugie was not thrilled that I missed the majority of last night's dance/music practice, which is the last one before our upcoming weekend performances at the Maryland Faerie Festival. So I said I'd go to tonight's monthly dance practice up in Lochmere. The practice happens in Columbia, which has to be the creepiest town in the state, not just because it has weird neighborhood names (King's Contrivance???) and hippy-dippy street names (Forty Winks Way???) but also because everything looks so freaking perfect and businesses must have tiny little signs and be hidden by clumps of trees. Anyhow, I managed to find the practice location and the dancers. Mistress Jeanmaire was there with a couple of wooden recorders, so we actually made a little band together! We managed to play enough tunes to keep the dancers busy, although she was sight-reading many of them, so my job was to keep her on tempo. The dancers were extremely appreciative. So it was a good evening.

Go to http://biancavirina.tumblr.com/post/2665295375/click-the-squares-the-whole-world-needs-to and click on the squares. Seriously. Especially if you like music. :-)

If Tumblr is this cool, maybe I ought to join.