A Tale of Pennsic: Lighting the Dream (Part 1)

Going into Tuesday of War Week, I knew that it was going to be a busy day: Slavic Interest Group meetup at noon, joining the Broken Consort for a 2:30 p.m. performance as part of the European Music Expo, Taco Night for my household dinner, and finally leading the dancing for the Blue Feather Ball and Fashion Cotillion. I had seven attendees at the meetup, and the three musical pieces the consort performed sounded great.

Later in the afternoon, as I puttered around the merchant area of Pennsic and then started heading back to camp, I began to hear a rumor that water service to the campground had been lost. Now, I've heard of camping blocks finding themselves with low water pressure for one reason or another. It happens. By the time I got back to camp, however, the official Pennsic War page on Facebook was announcing that a power outage had hit a large section of Butler County, so Cooper's Lake Campground had no electricity, and therefore no water -- because all the campground's water comes from wells that need to be pumped.

Initially, the utility company was saying that power would be restored by 7:30 p.m. That didn't seem unreasonable. In my camp we usually eat dinner at 6 p.m., so we went ahead with Taco Night on our paper plates, and the cooks just set aside the pots to be washed once the water came back. The Coopers said that the camp store was still open because of its large solar array.

Patches (Dean of European Dance) and I traded text messages about possible scenarios for the Blue Feather Ball dancing. (Gee, what did medieval people do before texting was invented??? 😏😏😏) The plan had been to teach certain dances from 8 to 9 p.m. in the dance tent, then move over to the Great Hall (along with the musicians) for the actual Blue Feather festivities. So our text messages also went to the band leaders and the fellow who organizes the Blue Feather Ball. We were all getting kind of frantic.

The consensus: we would start teaching the dancing in the dance tent at 8, and see whether the power and water came back. We turned the switch for the lights above the musicians' area into the "on" position as an indicator that the electricity was flowing again. Joshua, the Blue Feather leader, was very concerned that the Great Hall would be completely dark without electricity. He had four or five tables heaped with hors d'oeuvres and snacks all ready for consumption ... what to do with all that food? He was thinking of arranging the tables in a corridor-like setup so that people could dash in, grab food and continue socializing outside the hall. But he wasn't really happy with that format.

Meanwhile, I started the dance instruction in the tent. The musicians gamely clipped their battery-powered lights to their music stands, while we dancers made do with the ambient light coming in from the open sides of the tent. As the hour passed, that ambient light grew dimmer and dimmer. Yes, we were fortunate that sunset was still relatively late ... but we couldn't stop the Earth from turning. Finally we called it quits. We were unsure what to do next.

 (To be continued...) 

August: Pennsic Postmortem

No, not THAT kind of postmortem! I'm alive and uninjured. Not even a sunburn.

As always, I had a BLAST at Pennsic LIII (53)!! I saw folks I hadn't seen in a while, made new acquaintances and friends, and generally enjoyed all the activities in which I participated.

I didn't take any classes through Pennsic University, but I led a productive Slavic Interest Group meetup that got attendees excited about having a Slavic track of classes at next February's online session of the University of Atlantia.

I didn't play in any of the dance bands at the European Dance Tent, but I did some dancing, and I was part of the Broken Consort that performed as part of the European Music Expo. That was an excellent experience. I played soprano recorder during our performance, but I purchased a used Aulos tenor recorder from a friend in the consort. I can play five notes with the left hand, but I need to figure out how to stretch my right hand out more to cover all the holes.

I took the Pennsic bus around the lake. I hadn't seen the lake in so many years. My feet don't want to take me there anymore. Pennsic is bigger than Disneyland (but not Disney World).

I kept track of my Pennsic-related spending (well, up to the last couple of days, when things always get hectic). This will help me figure out how much it really costs to go to Pennsic, not just in terms of the preregistration fee.

This year I finished the Camino de Pennsic, and I received a very nice pair of pewter scallop shells as a thank-you gift.

People gave me other things: a battery-powered fan, a corduroy tote bag, a cereal bowl, a cot as wide as a twin bed. I've given up on my wooden IKEA twin bed, because I just don't have the spoons to assemble it after setting up my tent and lugging all my belongings inside the tent. The assembly process is VERY finicky; the bed just wasn't designed for repeated setup and takedown. These past two years I've been using a narrower cot that I bought at a discount-type store, but I've never been able to get completely comfortable on it. This year I added a narrow swimming-pool float (shaped like a mattress, of course) to my bedding stack, but that helped only minimally. At times I felt as if I was trying to sleep on a balance beam. The new-to-me wider cot will accommodate an inflatable twin mattress and I should feel more comfortable in the future.

Biggest gift of all: one of my campmates and I made a handshake deal that she will give me a double bell wedge tent that she's not using. It doesn't come with ropes, stakes or poles, but I have the first two things, and my newly retired landlord can probably help me get the proper poles. Finally, a period tent made of white canvas!!

(The kind and generous offer of a tent came up after a long discussion over one breakfast, during which I expressed my frustration about water coming into my tent because the door to the tent doesn't close properly. For reference purposes, here's what my modern canvas tent looks like: 

 

The inner screen door is supposed to zip at the bottom to hold up the lip of the vinyl floor, but after [probably] 40 years, those zippers are shot. Thus, there is a big gap between the vinyl and the canvas, and during a storm the wind pushes the canvas outer doors inward and the water drips onto the floor. I've made various attempts to try to stop this from happening:

  

Plus, I still get puddles in the far corners of the tent where I stack things in plastic bins. The stuff in the bins doesn't get wet, but those puddles are still annoying as hell when it comes time to drop the tent and take it home. I was trying to brainstorm possible solutions aloud, which led to the tent offer.)

Let's face it, I'm getting old and I may have only a few more years before I give up on Pennsic. Instead of struggling with a tent that is older than some of my friends, maybe it's time to enjoy a better pavilion.

I've already found tutorials on how to put up a double bell wedge tent and how to take the thing down and fold it up. Yep, I'm excited!

I have another good story from Pennsic, but I think I'll wrap up this entry for now.