July: Another month of two baronial newsletters

In the wee hours of Saturday the 11th, I finished the July issue of the Drekkar, the baronial newsletter. (Yes, I know I should italicize it, but I'm too lazy.) It's due between the 25th of the previous month (in this case, June) and the 5th of the current month (July), so this issue was late. However, I've been late multiple times and the Kingdom Chronicler hasn't said boo about it. (Sssh!)

Since there is no baronial business meeting this month, and therefore no meeting notes to publish, I thought I'd do a bare-bones newsletter for August and publish it on July 25, when I leave for Pennsic. However, I was just informed this weekend that the Baronial Letters of Intent NEED to be published in the Drekkar by July 25. (I guess I should heed what I've already published!)

So that's just one more thing I have to do before leaving for Pennsic ... on July 25.

Here is the "to-do" list as it currently stands:

• Write two short freelance articles for pay
• Pack everything I could possibly need for two weeks at Pennsic (which probably means drawing up a fresh packing list to keep track of all the stuff)
• Buy odds and ends that I need for Pennsic (fresh batteries, non-perishable food, etc.) 
• Sew some new garb that is in progress
• Get some stuff together for the Slavic Interest Group meetup at Pennsic
• Pay a couple of bills that can't wait until after Pennsic
• Put the August Drekkar together and send it out
• Download the music I need for either the Known World Choir or the Pennsic Broken Consort (or both!) and practice it
• Warp up my inkle loom with the next Baltic pickup pattern I want to try
• Attend one more Laydes Fayre rehearsal
• Keep the appointment with the cardiologist (who had better NOT tell me that I shouldn't go to Pennsic)
• Write a note to my editor about the freelance feature article I will be working on between August 10 and September 30
• Pick up a bin or two of stuff for the Children's Fete from our Youth Officer and bring it to Pennsic with me

Plus all the usual stuff of day-to-day living (cooking dinner, doing laundry, serving as the timer for the Greenbelt Toastmasters Club meeting, yadda yadda). 

Late June update: more sewing

Well, I had high hopes of getting lots of sewing done last Saturday ... but I left the draft pattern pieces for the apron dress at home! Drat! I was still able to be productive, though, by finishing up the hand-stitching on a late-period chemise that I started way back during the pandemic. (I think I'd intended it to be an entry in a virtual A&S competition, but I hadn't finished it in time, obviously.)

Now I'm hoping to go to town on garb work on Friday and Saturday, when Storvik has the Cheverly Community Center gym for two consecutive days. I'll finish basting the apron dress draft together, and, if it fits, I'll start getting the real dress cut out and assembled. On Saturday, my friend Laura will teach a class on making a Roman stola, another thing I've been wanting to do. I also have enough lightweight white linen to make a tunica to wear under the stola. Last year I bought some fibulae for the tunica at Pennsic. (See this link for what I'm talking about. However, I don't think I'll bother with the palla. Not in Pennsic's heat and humidity. Plus, my persona is that of a widow, so ... I'm looking!)

Yes, I know that Saturday is a special Fourth of July and Friday is the corresponding legal holiday. I have reasons for not planning other activities for those two days, but I don't want to fill this blog with mundane politics. Besides, this whole region will be baking in a heat dome over the next few days ... and the community center gym has frigid air conditioning.

The end of May

Right now I'm working on the June newsletter. I've written a lot of obituaries in my life -- mostly about old people, but also about a 5-year-old with a brain tumor, a victim of Pan Am Flight 103, and an elderly couple who died 12 hours apart after 49 years of marriage. But it sucks to be writing about a longtime friend. And not for the first time since I became the baronial chronicler in August 2024.

I hate death.

On a happier note, last week I spent a couple of days at Balticon, where I hang out with some SCA friends who don't go to Gem Joust, as well as non-SCA friends. I was one of the ringers for the Renaissance dance class that my friend Patches always teaches there. It was also a "Needles, Fiber & More" weekend -- a weekend every six weeks for working on some fiber-type project and reporting the results to a Facebook group. Dame Scholastica started this during the pandemic and it's still going on. I did a bit of knitting at the con; my inkle loom is too clunky to lug along to an indoor convention. I partially warped my next band, but I have to finish that. After all, it's newsletter time.

I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to On Target, a Lochmere archery event that's taking place this coming Saturday. I think I'm likely to enjoy it, but the weather might not be the best. Then again, we're still talking a long-range forecast, so things could change.

Finally, I am planning to lead a Slavic Interest Group Meetup during Pennsic 53. It will take place on Tuesday, August 4, at noon in one of the Pennsic University tents (exact location TBA). I might teach a class on Lithuania too, but it's too late to get it into the printed program book, so interested people might not notice it.

The month of May

As I expected, SCA stuff quieted down for me once May began. I haven't been to an event this month and won't be attending one till June, at least. However, the SCA is never far from my mind.

Examples:

• I finished the baronial newsletter on May 8. A few days late, but not too bad.
• I also finished my second piece of Baltic pick-up weaving and am working on a pattern for a wider band. I intend to work my way up to more complex designs.
• I prodded a few people to agree to teach heraldry classes at the June University of Atlantia, which I won't be able to attend because I have to work long hours on both days of the event.
• Now that my sewing machine is finally running again, I'm planning the sewing projects that I'd like to tackle in June and July (i.e., before Pennsic). New garb will make me feel great.

I have several other things to do in terms of Pennsic advance planning, but I will try to list them in the next entry.

Unfortunately, sadness has returned to Storvik. Master Igor Medved, Third Territorial Baron of Storvik, passed away on May 18, four days before his 51st wedding anniversary. He was a giant of a man, not just physically, but also in terms of his personality, his hospitality, his generosity and his sense of justice. The world is poorer without him.

Progress report, end of February

Whoo-eee ... I am up to my ears in non-SCA work right now. But I did not skip this week's Laydes Fayre rehearsal, as singing groups work best when everyone shows up to practice.

Also this week: Storvik's A&S night featured a viewing of a Turkish documentary called Osman's Dream: Ottoman Janissary Band of America. (Don't worry, it was in English, with Turkish subtitles.) The film follows the Janissary Band around Pennsic 50 and shows the great lengths to which the group has gone to get their depiction of the band historically accurate, from a lot of original research to much hand-sewing. A couple of my friends participate in the band, so it was great fun keeping an eye out for them. You can watch the film yourself by clicking on the title.

Something to noodle over: I was looking over an unofficial website of songs related to the Kingdom of Calontir and found a song that is basically an SCA filk of "Charlie and the MTA." The lyrics are Calontir-specific, of course, but perhaps I could tweak them for Atlantia. (Insert evil grin here.) Then I'd have something to pull out of my hat if I'm at one of those bardic circles where everyone is asked to participate.

2025: The year of unexpected change

Many a time I've started off a blog post by apologizing for not having posted for a long time. This time I make no apologies. I want to assure everyone that I'm still in the SCA, but as for other changes in my life ... I didn't ask for them.

Last Christmas -- December 25, 2024 -- I had a really nice day with my partner, Nick. We opened our presents, watched the Disney Christmas parade on TV, and had three great meals, including his family's traditional roast beef dinner with blue cheese sauce. Nick cooked it all. Then, after dinner, he started feeling lousy and ... long story short, he died in the emergency room. He had a sudden large hemorrhage in his abdomen (not his aorta, but another major artery).

Needless to say, his death flipped my world upside down. My SCA friends, from my landlord and landlady (whom I met at my very first SCA event in January 2004) to recent acquaintances, have been completely kind and supportive as I process everything that has happened.

Although Nick and I met at Pennsic in 2005, he stopped playing in the SCA in 2006, if I recall correctly. He was just more interested in watching science fiction on TV. However, he never stopped me from going out to SCA events and activities and having a good time with my pals. Since this blog is supposed to be about my medieval activities, I'll focus on that topic.

In my last post I mentioned a posh, all-day feast called Highland Hearthglow. It was a smashing success, with four well-documented courses of extravagant French dishes from venison to eel pie. (In case you're wondering, the latter tasted like fresh-water fish.) Candles on the tables and a gaming room downstairs added to the medieval ambiance. If you're wondering what the event looked like, go to this page for a slideshow, the menu, etc.

I've kept up with all the SCA events and activities I would have attended had Nick not passed away. I still dance with Three Left Feet and sing with Laydes Fayre. I learned, way back when I was a young adult, about the power of social activities to elevate one's mood during times of struggle. I had been laid off from my first post-college professional job, and I spent the wintertime weeks between that employment and my next job getting involved in the local community theater group, which was staging A Man for All Seasons. I was the "stage secretary," meaning that I made the rehearsal coffee, phoned people who didn't show up for rehearsal, and occasionally stood in for missing cast members. These mundane tasks nevertheless brightened up what would have been otherwise a dreary, depressing time of my life.

Anyhow... Since Nick died, I've been to a baker's dozen SCA events and demos, including Hearthglow, AwesomeCon (the "comic con" for Our Nation's Capital), and Pennsic War 52. I've had to make adjustments, such as sharing a paid pet sitter with my landlord and landlady for the two-plus weeks of Pennsic. (Nick used to stay home and take care of all the cats.) Certainly I didn't sew all the garb I had hoped to create during the winter. The fabric from Dame Brenna's stash is still in my storage unit, and the other fabric I bought during Joann's going-out-of-business sale is still sitting in a large bag under my kitchen table.

At Pennsic this year, I had a generally positive experience. Now, the first week ("Peace Week") was stupidly hot and humid. I mean, the temperature hovered above 80 degrees (F) at 11 p.m. However, I wasn't there for the entire week; I had to drive back to Maryland for a three-day seminar called "Quantum Information for Science Communicators." Why, yes, I really do lead an interesting life! Then I returned "Forward Into the Past" (an old SCA catchphrase) to find that the weather up in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, had changed. It was NICE! Lower 80s during the day, 60s at night, and MUCH lower humidity. And, unlike last year, no rain! Huzzah!

Through Pennsic University I taught a class on "circle dances," as I had done in 2024, because my friend Patches asked me to teach something. And when the Dean of European Dance asks you to do something, you do it. 😀 Also at her request, I led the dance portion of the Blue Feather Ball. It's the big social event for Clan Blue Feather at Pennsic. We didn't have too many people showing up for dance practice at the dance tent, but participation was more enthusiastic once we moved the dancing to the Great Hall. The ball organizers didn't have a wireless microphone, so it was a bit hard for me to make myself heard among the general din reflecting off the concrete floor, but I think people had a good time anyway. It helped that I had a good turnout of musicians, too.

On another day, I led a "meetup" (scheduled as a Pennsic University class) of people interested in the Slavic Interest Group. The group was founded at Pennsic in 1995, when the former Soviet Union states were still getting the hang of being separate countries and people in Western nations were just trying out this World Wide Web thing. The group's founder doesn't really play in the SCA anymore, so I would like to try to keep the group going. About a dozen people attended, although one fellow of Ukrainian descent dominated the conversation.

The highlight of my War: my friend Patches was elevated to the Order of the Pelican at Atlantian Great Court on the second Wednesday of Pennsic. The ceremony was outstanding and I am so proud of my friend. Vivat to Magistra Sonya Flicker called Patches!!!

Report on Pennsic 51 (finally)

On August 9 I returned from Pennsic War 51, up there at Cooper's Lake in western Pennsylvania. I spent 12 days at war, instead of a week like last year. It was the 20th anniversary of my first Pennsic in 2004 -- a personal milestone, though I didn't crow about it much.

This year's war was ... harder than usual. It rained buckets on the first full day I was there (Tuesday of Peace Week). We had some more rain off and on, especially on Saturday morning of the middle weekend, and then more downpours came on the Tuesday of War Week. We were supposed to get hit with Tropical Storm Debby on Friday of War Week, but fortunately we had just drizzles and the bulk of the storm went farther east.

When it wasn't raining, the weather became instantly hot and very humid. It was as if a giant switch had flipped. I had a hard time feeling comfortable at any time. My tent (probably the side windows) leaked during the downpours and the puddles lingered despite my attempts to mop them up. Some of my dirty laundry got soaked. By the end of my time at Pennsic, even the "dry" items inside my tent felt slightly damp and clammy.

Our Southwind camp kitchen at the end of one downpour:

On top of all this, one of the 9,235 people who entered the Pennsic site left in a body bag. After one of the big rainstorms, Pennsic leadership sent out a Facebook message that Wroxeter Road was closed because it was so muddy, although I don't think it was any more rutted or muddy than the other roads that cross grassy fields. (My household camps on the corner of Wroxeter Road and Long Way.) Several of my campmates have been in what can broadly be termed public safety jobs: cop, 911 dispatcher, ER nurse, Army medic. So perhaps they are used to seeing state police cruisers and the coroner's van roll by. I personally felt a bit rattled. That evening my encampment had a heartily humorous bardic circle (under the round canopy we call "the Onion," because it was still drizzling), but I decided to crawl into bed early.

Still, not everything at Pennsic 51 was bad or sad. Several friends received well-deserved awards from Their Majesties of Atlantia. I volunteered at the 25th Children's Fete, where I saw the SCA versions of the Disney Princesses:

I took one class (on beginner ukulele) and taught one class (on "circle dances" such as Sellenger's Round and Gathering Peascods). Normally I'm too hot and tired to go anywhere near the European dance tent during the day, but I wanted to help my friend Patches, who served as Dean of European Dance for this year's Pennsic. To help give her programs visibility, I wrote an article about European dance at Pennsic 51 and it made the front page of the Pennsic Independent. (This sounds like a huge deal, but the Independent changed ownership this year and was hurting for content. Still, I'm pleased that my friend's dance-organizing efforts got such great publicity!)

Here's a selfie of yours truly near the sign that points to, and shows the mileage to, all the different kingdoms of the SCA:

(Yeah, of course, you can't see the whole sign, just the Atlantian device on it.)

* * * * * *

As I write this, Pennsic has been over for six weeks or so and is starting to fade into the mists of the SCA's own history. I enjoyed Battle on the Bay in early September, but I probably won't attend any events until November or December, because the October events are way down south in our fair Kingdom. And I've got mundane work to do. But I have plans and hope to share them soon!

Pennsic 50 Frenzy!

 It's starting! Today is Opening Day for Pennsic 50! (I rather hate to call it a "War," given what has been going on in Ukraine for more than a year, and given that nobody's awarding "War Points" this year.)

And I'm going! Not right away -- today is the arrival day for land agents and merchants. But since I didn't get to go last year, and then we had a couple of years off for The Plague, I feel as if I've been away from "home" for an awfully long time. (Then again, I haven't been to my home state of Massachusetts since December 2018. My last Pennsic was #48 in 2019.)

My impending trek feels almost like a miracle. The past seven or eight months of my non-SCA life have been rough. Fortunately, good friends have been beside me with help and advice.

Now I've had to resurrect my packing list from FOUR years ago and assemble everything I'll need for this trip. I'm not used to this anymore, but it feels good.

Another way this year is different from every other year: I won't have my own car at Pennsic. (I need new wheels, but I don't want to make a hasty decision about that before my vacation.) I'm sharing a ride to Pennsic with a woman and her three kids, all newcomers to Pennsic. In a way, it'll be lovely to see everything with fresh eyes.

Status report, August 2022

 So ... what have I been doing since I taught "The SCA on a Budget"? It's certainly been a while...

As we make the transition from "pandemic" to "endemic" covid-19, I have been attending both in-person and virtual events and classes. Of course, it's always more soul-satisfying to see people in three dimensions, but sometimes it's just not feasible, either because of covid-19 precautions or great distance. Let me summarize the year 2022 so far.

Early in the year, I watched the virtual court at Kingdom Twelfth Night in January and took classes online -- one at a Virtual Known World Heralds and Scribes Symposium (KWHSS), and several at a virtual session of the University of Atlantia. I skipped Bright Hills Baronial Birthday; some years I go to it and some years I don't, but I was still concerned about the "omicron variant" of our least favorite virus.

As springtime rolled around, I participated in a successful demonstration at Costume-Con 40 (more on that in a bit) and sold a bit of excess gear at "Lochmart," the flea market that the Barony of Lochmere holds at its annual April event.

The first weekend in May, I went to Spring Crown Tourney, held in the Barony of Stierbach. Nobody I asked could remember the last time, if any, that Atlantia has held a competition for the Crown indoors (our parent Kingdom, the East, does it fairly often), but because of the heavy rains that occurred before and during the event, the staff moved all the proceedings indoors to a couple of barns. (Fortunately, the event had been long scheduled for a county fairground.) The main hall was rather crowded, and only two lists could be set up instead of four, so the preliminary rounds took a lot longer than anticipated. If I recall rightly, the final round -- between a super-Duke and a Knight who had never reigned before -- happened around 3:30 or 4 p.m. (The Knight who had never reigned before became a first-time Prince.) The damp cold drove a deep chill into our bones; by the time afternoon Royal Court was over, I could hardly wait to slog out to my car in the parking lot and crank up the heater.

June brought another public demo, this time at AwesomeCon (again, more on that in a bit), and a few online classes at another virtual KWHSS, this time hosted by the brand-new Principality of Vindheim in the Kingdom of Ansteorra. In fact, two classes I took were taught by my friend in Lochac, Mistress ffride wolfsdottir, who is an extraordinary researcher.

Storvik held Novice Tourney a bit later than usual -- shortly after the Fourth of July weekend. I did not go to Pennsic this year for financial reasons. I'm a freelance science writer mundanely, and I finished up a feature article on the opening weekend of Pennsic and got paid for it at the end of Pennsic. That's actually a speedy payment in the world of freelance writing -- some poor souls have to wait months for their financial rewards -- but the timing did not work out well for Pennsic 49. Oh, well, next year is Pennsic 50, and after missing Pennsic 40, you'd better believe I am bound and determined to attend Pennsic come hell or high water or any other disaster induced by climate change.

This post is already getting pretty long, so I'll save the reports on the two public demos for the next entry.

Your First SCA War

That was a day!! My Kingdom of Atlantia hosted a HUGE Virtual University on February 13th!! Our Virtual Universities have grown so big that we have to have seven class sessions, not just six, to accommodate them all.

I taught "Your First SCA War" for the first time in 10 years. The 2011 version happened in person, of course, so I just brought to the classroom a large plastic bin full of things related to Pennsic: the program book, copies of the Pennsic Independent, event medallions, and other artifacts of "home." This time around, I figured that I could show some photos of Pennsic without worrying about whether the classroom was equipped with a digital projector for PowerPoint slides (which isn't a very medieval thing to do anyhow!).

Unfortunately, I spent so much time looking up my photos (not all of which are online or otherwise organized) that I didn't get to embed them in a PowerPoint presentation. No biggie, I thought, I would just share them straight on my screen. But Zoom didn't like what I was doing, and at some points I was just showing a blank screen. Oops! Twenty-first-century problems, indeed. So I just went back to teaching in front of the live camera. I think my 30 or so students were pretty well engaged anyway. I fell a bit behind in terms of time, but I made sure everyone got the handout (updated from the decade-old version) afterward.

In case you would like to see that handout, here it is (on Google Docs): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q-8ZzWjxbTP3vx5Ki7wt6MY-6w9RY38u/view. Comments and suggestions welcome -- I'm sure I'll teach it again one of these years.

Even though the SCA's ban on in-person events is scheduled to expire at the end of May, the June 12 session of the University of Atlantia will be held virtually -- and concurrently with the (also virtual) Known World Sciences Symposium, which originally was supposed to take place in one of the western Kingdoms.

Losses

Even though I haven't been to an SCA event in person since February, I've been keeping quite busy and social within the Society. However, my reports on that will have to wait, because of the heavy losses we have incurred.

First, Baron Rorik Fredericsson, eighth Baron of Storvik. During these last few years, he had been looking increasingly tired, and he suffered from various health problems. At one point, he fell at home and broke eight ribs all at once. Ow. That set him back for a while. He'd also had some problems with slow-healing leg wounds and a tiny spot of a tumor on his liver. When I saw him at the Bright Hills birthday event in February, I asked him how he was doing, and he replied, "Surviving." In one of his last Facebook posts, he said he actually tested *negative* for the novel coronavirus. He needed the test before some surgical procedure (something to do with his stomach).

He went into the hospital for surgery on April 27, and something went south, and he died that day. I believe he was 73 years old.

His Excellency was well known throughout our barony and kingdom and fought in SCA battles for many years. Decades, even. I think he finally gave it up around age 60 when he got his bell rung pretty hard on the Pennsic battlefield. He also enjoyed the gentler art of playing cribbage, an ancient card game. He was also a huge science fiction fan. the first time I ever saw him was at the Millennium Philcon Worldcon in 2001, more than two years before I joined the SCA. He was wearing a Babylon 5 character's costume and was carrying his gray goose puppet, Fred, the one with the studded leather collar. When I did eventually join the SCA, I recognized him and thought, "Oh, that's the guy with the goose from the Millennium Philcon."

Baron Rorik was also that fellow who looked so much like George R.R. Martin that some Game of Thrones fans actually asked him (Rorik) for his autograph. (But Rorik was taller than George.)

Baron Rorik was very happily married to Mistress Janina for 40-plus years and they had a grown daughter and son (who adored him) and many "friends who are like family." My heart has been grieving with them. I often thought that if I could have told my father (who died in 1982) about the SCA, I would have introduced him to Baron Rorik, who could have explained all the different pieces of armor to my Dad (who was a professional welder) and then sat down and played a good game of cribbage together.

Here is a photo of Baron Rorik from the 2015 Storvik Novice Tourney:

It's not the best photo of him, but it was the first one of him I found among my photos when I heard he had died.

Lest you think that my SCA circles had escaped covid-19 ... in late April the family of Master Liam St. Liam of the East Kingdom said that he was in the ICU with the pandemic disease. I kept checking his Facebook page for updates on his progress, but there weren't any.

Who was Master Liam to me? By one measure, he was the first SCAdian I ever met, although neither he nor I had joined the Society way back then. When he and I were both juniors at our respective high schools -- me in central Massachusetts and him in southern Rhode Island -- our schools' bands and choruses did two "exchange concerts," one in our town in April and the other in their town in May. I honestly don't remember as much about the concerts as I probably should, because my grandmother was ill in April and passed away just before the May weekend (and my mother made me go along on the weekend trip, because "Grammy would have wanted it," but I wasn't in a good mood for it).

Many years later, when LiveJournal was still going strong in the United States and I took an interest in the SCA, I started looking up the journals of people who were posting in the SCA-related communities, Liam posted that he'd graduated from a certain high school in a certain year. I inquired ... and, yes, he'd been part of the same band-chorus exchange! So we "friended" each other in cyberspace, first on LiveJournal and later on Facebook. He was a high school history teacher who went back to his first love, journalism, in upstate New York. He married his second wife, who served a reign as queen of the East, and his grown daughters became Peers, one a Laurel and the other a Pelican.

I met Master Liam in person (in the SCA, not high school) only a couple of times at Pennsic, because he was so busy teaching and writing for the Pennsic Independent and doing a lot of other things. But he always remembered exactly who I was and how we'd gotten to know each other.

A couple of years ago, Master Liam suffered a major stroke and had to give up working as a newspaper reporter. He moved to a rehab facility in Massachusetts and still kept on posting on Facebook as well as he could under his own power. Usually his posts were short exhortations to be well and do good. He didn't go back to Pennsic, but he did get a chance to attend the East Kingdom 50th Anniversary celebration in 2018, albeit in a wheelchair.

So he wasn't posting for a while, and then we waited for news ... and then on May 13, his daughters wrote that, while listening to the Dropkick Murphys and his other favorite Celtic punk bands, he passed away. He was 61.

Tributes poured out from all corners of the electronic Known World. One of his daughters wrote an SCA-specific obituary (I was a bit surprised to learn that his registered name was actually NOT Liam St. Liam), and one of his former newspaper colleagues wrote a very nice tribute to him. Other comments pointed out his tireless efforts to support causes ranging from the Special Olympics to high school gay-straight alliances. Someone praised him for his "radical inclusivity."

We in the SCA have had other losses. The first Triton Principal Herald whom I worked under, Baron Eogan mac Alpein, passed away in late May. I hadn't seen him for quite some time, but I think he was in his mid-60s. Then a woman who was on the winning team at last year's Revenge of the  Stitch died of complications from an aneurysm. I didn't really know her, but she was apprenticed to one of our Atlantian Duchesses, and she was young enough to have three school-age children.

The only good way I can end this post is to note that on Friday, May 29, the Dropkick Murphys played a live concert (without an audience) at Fenway Park. The band members even socially distanced themselves around the diamond as they played their greatest hits. I drank a beer, logged into a Facebook "watch party" hosted by Master Liam's daughters, and agreed with everyone that it was the best "virtual wake" we could have had during the pandemic.

Virtual Atlantia

There's a reason why I haven't been to an SCA event since February 8, when I attended Bright Hills Baronial Birthday. One of the members of my household was awarded the Pearl, which is the Grant of Arms-level award for arts and sciences in Atlantia, so I wanted to be there (plus, our outgoing submissions herald received the Golden Dolphin award -- with the late Pedro's medallion).

My attitude toward the SCA hasn't changed. But the world has, with this COVID-19 pandemic we're currently experiencing.

It was if society packed up their toys and went home around mid-March. SCA events left and right were canceled. One minute the staff of Gulf Wars XXIX in the Kingdom of Gleann Abhann (southern Mississippi) said that the event was still on, and people should use hand sanitizer; the next minute it was canceled, even though people were starting to arrive on site and many more people were en route.

Overnight, it seemed, most of the rest of the March events on Atlantia's schedule were postponed or canceled, followed by virtually all of the April events.

Except Coronation. But how could Coronation go on if gatherings of more than 10 people were strictly prohibited? The outgoing King is a lawyer and, as an officer of the court (as, I think, all members of the bar are), he can't be found disobeying the law.

So yesterday we had a Virtual Coronation, live-streamed on YouTube from the back yard of the incoming King and Queen:



The woman who was elevated to Laurel was supposed to have been elevated at Gulf Wars (but see above). The outgoing Majesties wanted to make sure she received her due recognition before she and her husband moved out of Kingdom for mundane reasons and she had to make a whole new set of acquaintances. There were also a few other pieces of business that were supposed to have been transacted during March.

As you can see, it was a nice enough day in North Carolina that the "event" could be held outside. A woman in Storvik, Dame Emma West, made the beautiful silk banners hanging on either side of the tent.

So, now the next big Kingdom events are supposed to be Spring Crown Tourney and Ruby Joust, both in May. However, both are scheduled to take place in Virginia, where the stay-at-home order does not expire until June 10. The new King and Queen did not announce anything about these events, particularly Crown, yesterday. Probably they are working behind the scenes, and communicating with the SCA Board of Directors, to figure out how to handle the situation.

I haven't surveyed all of the SCA kingdoms -- there are 19 of them besides Atlantia -- but I do know that the East Kingdom has postponed both Coronation and Crown and combined them with another big East Kingdom event on Memorial Day weekend. That won't quite work for us, because our Memorial Day weekend event, Ruby Joust, is still technically prohibited in Virginia. I don't think the Kingdom of Aethelmearc has yet postponed its Spring Crown Tourney, which is supposed to be held the same day as ours (first Saturday in May). I am less familiar with other kingdoms.

So far, Pennsic 49 is still a go. The Mayor of Pennsic 49 decided to nip rumors in the bud by putting out an emphatic statement that Pennsic 49 will be held unless HE says it is canceled (link goes to a PDF). I suspect that the Pennsic executive staff uses the annual Aethelmearc War Practice event (held the weekend before Memorial Day weekend) as its big planning meeting, because the Mayor said the meeting would be held virtually if War Practice has been canceled in person. (Update even as I continue to write this: Today the Sylvan Kingdom announced that Aethelmearc War Practice has been canceled.)

I don't want to start any rumors, and I do NOT speak for the Pennsic staff, but I can't help thinking that the go/no-go decision needs to be made no later than late May. At least the decision *by* the Pennsic staff (obviously, if the state government shuts down fairs and festivals, it's not the choice of the Pennsic staff). The deadline for paid, online pre-registration for Pennsic 49 falls on June 16, and that is also the deadline for refunds. Yet some other SCA branches have offered refunds after the cancellation of their events (Pennsic is a different beast altogether, though, because of its sheer size -- it's kind of a partnership between the SCA and Cooper's Lake Campground). I don't think the Coopers want to give back huge amounts of refunds, and I really don't think people will be happy if they can't get refunds from a canceled Pennsic. So ... we shall see.

Anyhow. Back to my own Kingdom of Atlantia.

Just since this crisis began, Duchess Adelhait and the Kingdom Web Minister have put together a page called Virtual Atlantia, a central location where online gatherings and classes can be posted. People can even get University of Atlantia credit for teaching or attending classes!

One of the first online Kingdom-wide happenings was a Saturday afternoon in which the participants in a Zoom meeting started to read aloud The Decameron by Boccaccio. Reading aloud a book of stories "told" by people stuck on an island during a huge plague -- what a medieval thing to do! There were about 15 or 16 of us, including a few bardic Laurels, and we managed to get through the introduction and all ten of the stories from Day One in about three hours. It was enjoyable, but I have no idea when we will take up Day Two.

From Pennsic, Onward (the year so far, part 3)

This year I dithered about attending Pennsic, but I ended up going for the second week of Pennsic 48. It was the 15th anniversary of my first Pennsic (2004), but only my 12th Pennsic because I've missed a few. It was a tight squeeze to get a week of War fitted in among my freelance writing assignments, but I'm starting to realize that I won't live forever, so I might as well go to Pennsic while I am still "young" and healthy enough to walk around and do things.

This year I did not take a single class at Pennsic University, though I had taken a full day of classes in mid-June at the most recent session of the University of Atlantia. Some Pennsic classes tempted me, but ... I had chores and shopping and chatting with friends who don't live near me in the "real world." Also, I did something I've sadly neglected doing for some years: I volunteered one afternoon at Heralds' Point. I colored device and badge submissions in the art tent and got some free ice cream for my troubles.



I went to a couple of evening balls, although I felt rather awkward at the first one -- not because of the particular dances, but because one of my camp chores was to refill the tiki torches, and my hands continued to smell of kerosene, no matter how much I washed them. I don't think anyone particularly avoided me, though.



The second ball I attended was Lady Sonya Flicker's "Reduction Ball," which started with dances for sets of large numbers of couples and ended up with dances for individual couples. Sonya, also known as Patches, made a new dress for herself, and she also brought along the "BEAR-on" and "BEAR-oness" of Storvik. (The real baronage were unable to attend Pennsic this year.)



While I was packing up my gear at the end of War, I felt rather wiped out. Once I got home (or started my "50-week town run"), I realized I had that kind of chest cold known as the "con crud." I hardly ever get sick, so I wanted to sit around and mope, but I had freelance writing to do.

Now that another Pennsic War is in the books, I'm looking forward to a few fall events. I'm even making a new dress for the next Coronation, which Storvik is hosting. (The dress will be the subject of at least one other post here.)

To kick off the season, Storvik had its first-ever information booth at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival (which is rather like an old-fashioned fair). Lady Sonya was in charge of our booth, and she did a great job -- we won second place!

Letter from Pennsic 47

(In the style of the #pennsicletters hashtag, which follows the style set by the #secondcivilwarletters trend a few weeks or months ago...)

Dearest friends, I have much news to relate to you. My journey to and from the Pennsic War was eventful, with many twists and turns.

Before I departed home, my place among the warmongers was far from certain. Several days before my journey was to begin, my elderly steed, Draco, came down with a frightful fever. To prevent a fatal wound to his vital organs, he had to be carted home on a special wagon. Fortunately, after four days the pyrexia broke, and he contentedly let me load him with the bedding, clothing, and other necessities of travel.

Upon my arrival at the front lines, the members of the household known as Southwind welcomed me to their dinner feast, and a young man named Treavor, who was making his very first pilgrimage to the lands of War, provided me with kind assistance in setting up my shelter and furnishings. His helping hands enabled me to be prompt about setting Draco loose in the large paddock to be with others of his kind while I attended the War.

My goal during this year's travels was to pace myself with leisure. I took no more than one Pennsic University class per day. One of my most interesting lessons was in Chinese heraldry, about which I have been queried on numerous occasions, with not much knowledge to provide to my questioners. I also learned about archaeological excavation reports and the long-armed cross stitch, and I sat in on a history lecture taught by a fellow named Igor, originally from Ukraine.

For the first time, I attended the event known as the SCA Medieval Barter Town, in which I relieved myself of two articles that I no longer use. In return, I gained two pairs of handmade earrings and a "coiling gizmo" that I plan to use to recreate accoutrements from the ancient Baltic lands.

The second day of my sojourn ushered in a brutal wave of heat, so that several of my campmates departed to spend their evenings in a distant, and apparently marvelous, building where a "condition" is applied to the air to remove the heat and humidity from it. However, I remained in my tent, which I affectionately dubbed the "Green Monster."

At the end of the week, I found Draco to be reluctant to leave the bucolic, hilly pasture in which I had left him. He needed several prods to get moving again. In return, I took him on a nice long ride out to Ohio, where I procured a moderately delicious dinner from the estate of His Royal Majesty the King of Burgers.

My journey homeward was uneventful, and I made no side excursions. I shall always cherish my memories.

From "medieval crack" to Pennsic prep...

So far I've been having a rather quiet SCA year in 2018. Not completely dead -- I have NOT quit the SCA. No way am I doing that! But I've had to watch my pennies, and I've had unavoidable time conflicts with some events. I've been to only three events so far since New Year's Day, and one was technically a baronial activity, not an official event.

On the first Saturday of March I attended Atlantia's Kingdom Arts & Sciences Festival in the Barony of Stierbach. It's an annual event, but I haven't attended it annually. Last year it was in South Carolina, which is an awfully long drive from Maryland, so I went to my church's annual women's retreat instead (sadly, they're usually on the same Saturday). In 2016, I had a head cold and just stayed home.

"Medieval crack" is how one Facebook user described the inspiration she got from seeing all the displays and competitions. I totally agree! I went from table to table and gaped at all the wonderful things that I never knew existed or could be made. I took quite a few pictures; unfortunately, I still haven't sorted them out yet. (I know, I know ... I keep taking photos and dumping them into the cloud and then never getting around to organizing them....)

One Saturday in April I went to Storvik's Performers' Revel at the home of Master Igor and Mistress Fevronia, two longtime stalwarts of the Barony. It made for a long day, because in the morning and early afternoon I went up to Baltimore to attend the "Windmills" dance festival at the Lithuanian Hall. As it turned out, one of my Lochmere friends dances in a Scandinavian folk-dance group, so it was great to see her there and share some of my non-SCA interests with her.

Then I had yet another time conflict in June. (Seeing a theme here?) On the same day that Storvik held its annual Novice Tourney -- a single-day event without camping due to site limitations -- I was invited to a "celebration of life" for a college classmate who had passed away in February. What to do? Once again, I split my day: in the morning I went to Novice, then left mid-afternoon, changed my muddied clothes at home, and then went downtown to attend the memorial gathering at an art gallery. It rained a bit toward the end of the second event -- we had a very wet June around these parts -- and as I walked back to the Metro station, I saw traces of a rainbow in the sky. My classmate was smiling down on us....

Even though I'm a little light on my event schedule, I'm still keeping busy with other SCA-related activities. I have been making a few medallion cords for the Kingdom and finally learning how to knit with multiple colors of yarn. I'm dancing in the dance group, and I try to attend baronial meetings when I can. One highlight of the year so far was an SCA group outing to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of the classic Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot. The theater not only gave us a group discount, but also a free drink coupon if we attended in garb. After the show, a couple of the actors invited us on stage for group photos. They were as happy to meet us as we were to meet them!

(Incidentally, there was someone else in the audience who would have been interesting to meet ... her initials are R.B.G.)

I should probably also mention that this spring I did a fair amount of reorganizing of my craft and sewing supplies, as well as my books on SCA topics, so that it should be easier to get off my duff and accomplish some creativity. (I am a naturally disorganized person, so a friend helped me with this.)

Now I'm getting ready to go to Pennsic again. Starting in 2004, I've attended every Pennsic War with the exceptions of 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016. (I *registered* for Pennsic XL in 2011, I loaded up the car ... and that car's transmission was croaking before I got out of Maryland.) This year I'm keeping things simple -- going for War Week, editing the stuff I'm bringing so that I don't end up with a tub full of unworn garb. I've already done a fair amount of packing and staging my belongings in a spot in the spare room. (This is NOT the kind of packing one can do in an hour, or even an evening.)

I'm trying to finish a linen dress and turban before I leave, and I also have some work-for-pay that has nothing to do with the SCA. I'll try to write about the dress in a future entry.

Since my car is in the shop for a thermostat replacement, wish me luck in my travels -- I'm going to need it.

Cap of St. Birgitta

As I said in my previous post, last month I took a Pennsic University class on how to make a St. Birgitta's cap. Lady Sarai Tindall taught the class. I don't think she has a website of her own, but the method she taught was very similar to the one in this tutorial. The main difference was that Lady Sarai had us leave the ends unconnected to each other, so that we could tie them in a knot or bow. Also, we didn't do the optional embroidery between the two halves of the cap, and we had to "finger-press" the linen seams instead of ironing them (fortunately, in hot and humid weather, that isn't difficult to do).

You can go to the tutorial if you want step-by-step instructions. I would just like to post photos depicting some of the stages of my work.

First, here's how my cap looked toward the end of the two-hour Pennsic class:

I had hand-stitched the two halves of the cap together and finished the gathers at the back of the head, but that's about it. (Granted, a good part of the class was an introductory talk followed by distribution of materials, etc.)

The next time I bothered to take a photo of my work, I had pretty much finished sewing the ties to the front edge of the cap, down to the gathers. The ties came in three separate pieces, including a bit of extra handkerchief linen I had to buy after the class.

I finished the last little bit of stitching only after I got home from Pennsic. Here are a couple of photos of the finished cap on my head (pardon the mundane clothing on the rest of me):

I'm not sure about that bow. Maybe I should redo the strap/tie as a long closed loop that could be wrapped around my head. Hey, I should experiment with this -- what a concept!

I think I have enough of the handkerchief linen to make at least one more of these caps.I might try the same thing, or I might experiment with doing the embroidery down the middle seam, or other embellishments such as contrasting thread for the hand stitching. We shall see.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few other links related to the St. Birgitta's cap.

http://www.pinterest.com/miriampike/accessories-cap-of-st-birgitta/
http://m-silkwork.blogspot.com/2008/11/womens-caps.html
http://katafalk.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/embroidered-st-birgittas-cap/
http://katafalk.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/st-birgittas-cap/
http://m-silkwork.blogspot.com/2008/08/cap-of-st-birgitta-reconstructions.html
http://larsdatter.com/birgitta-caps.htm

Restarting this blog

OK, it's been a long while now. While the hunt for full-time employment continues, I try to keep up with my SCA life as well as I can with my limited means. I haven't been doing much Lithuanian research lately, but I have been attending events when I can and trying to make myself useful to the Barony of Storvik.

For example, this past January my Barony hosted Atlantia's Kingdom Twelfth Night, a very Big Deal in SCA circles. We held it at the Shriners' temple in Washington, D.C., which inspired the event's Ottoman theme. Some of my friends and I made brand-new late-period Ottoman garb specifically for this event -- I was literally working on it at 1 a.m. the morning thereof! Plus, I organized the heraldic consult table. So, even though it was the first completely Metro-accessible event in our Kingdom in many years, I couldn't really take Metrorail, because I was lugging 50 or 60 pounds of stuff -- books, musical instruments, refreshments for heralds, etc. Plus I was wearing clothing that looked vaguely Middle Eastern and I would have been getting off the train a few blocks from the White House. On top of everything, the skies gave us cold winter rain all day. Nevertheless, it was a lovely event.

I recently returned from spending a week or so at Pennsic 43, and, now that I have mostly finished unpacking and doing laundry, I have concluded that I really should be chronicling everything I do for the SCA, not just research and crafts related to Lithuania. Don't worry, I'm not giving up my Baltic studies, but many times I find something interesting and enjoyable to do that falls within the purview of the SCA but does not pertain to Lithuania. I really ought to record that stuff for posterity, too, until some greater pattern emerges.

So, to start with, here is a link to some photos depicting the construction of my Ottoman outfit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/34356022@N03/sets/72157639457065966/. A few of the photos at the end of the album depict me as I was trying to convert the coat pattern into a vest pattern, so that I could make a sleeveless, unlined vest with the remainder of the fabric I used for the outer layer of the coat. I'll post more of the details some other time.

And here are my photos from the event itself: https://www.flickr.com/photos/34356022@N03/sets/72157639717114533/. I'm in the very last picture (apologies for the blurriness; we were trying to avoid flash).

At this most recent Pennsic, I was extremely cautious with my spending and I didn't want to take a class in something that would make me run out and buy all sorts of expensive supplies. However, I did take a class on how to make a St. Birgitta's cap. The cost was just a few dollars for the linen and the handout, and I did most of the hand-stitching at Pennsic and finished it up at home. I will try to write about that very soon in a separate entry.

I'll just close this one off with a couple of images. Here is a selfie of me at Pennsic on August 6, halfway through War Week. (I'm wearing a kerchief, not the St. Birgitta's cap.)

Finally -- just so I can have some Lithuanian content in this entry -- here is a portrait of my cat trying to look learned. :-)

My excuse this time...

OK, here is what happened between this blog post and the last one. (Some of it, anyway.)

The second weekend in May was the annual Lithuanian Festival in Catonsville, Maryland, but it was also full of other demands on my time. My dance group was supposed to perform at the Maryland Faerie Festival, quite a bit north of Catonsville, and a couple of friends of mine were moving their stuff from one apartment to another in Hyattsville, near Maryland's border with the District of Columbia. As things worked out, the dance group agreed to perform on Sunday, so I figured that I could go to the Lithuanian Festival on Saturday -- getting out the door earlier than I normally do -- and then see if my friends needed any help when I got back.

As always, I had a great time at the Lithuanian Festival. Someone had brought in his collection of Lithuanian beer cans, and I was amused to see that some of the brands were named in honor of the great victory at the Battle of Zalgiris:

I really enjoyed the tasty potato pancakes fried up as a fundraiser for Malunas, the Baltimore-based Lithuanian dance group.

And finally this year someone was actually doing a marguciai demonstration and selling basic egg-decorating supplies:

When I got home, I called my friends, whom I met in the SCA as Pedro and Devora, and asked them if they still needed help. Pedro answered the phone and said that they were all done moving stuff for the day, but he thanked me for my offer of help just the same.

It was the last time I ever spoke to him.

The following Thursday, Pedro had a massive hemorrhagic stroke. He had brain surgery to try to relieve the pressure on his brain, but to no avail. He passed away on Memorial Day at the age of 42.

I had met Pedro and Devora at my very first SCA event. Later he became my heraldry teacher; I looked up to him as if I was his protege, even though he never became a Pelican (he was the protege of Master Herveus, one of the SCA's top heralds). Still later, as his interests shifted toward his old love of amateur astronomy, he joined my science-writing group and we were once both on the same "trivia night" winning team -- our intellectual strengths and weaknesses complemented each other brilliantly (I didn't know which vegetable symbolized Wales; he didn't know which rock group had Paul Hewson for a lead singer).

Losing Pedro, and knowing that Devora had lost the love of her life, was like a giant punch to the gut in an otherwise good time of my life: I had been working a temporary job at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and cranking out freelance articles on the side. The loss has been hanging over me ever since, whether I'm practicing my heraldry, looking up at the night sky, or catching one of Devora's Facebook posts.

I didn't go to Pennsic War this year, not because of a lack of money, but by a time squeeze -- since Pennsic started earlier than usual, it overlapped the "crunch time" at the end of my Smithsonian contract. I missed Pennsic terribly, of course, but as we say in the SCA, real life always comes first.

So, now that the weather is getting cooler again, I'm trying to get back into the groove. Storvik has a new Baron and Baroness who have a lot of ideas for things to do. The Kingdom of Atlantia's Twelfth Night will take place in Storvik next January, which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of my first-ever SCA event. Anniversaries tend to make me pause and take stock of where I've been and, more importantly, where I still want to go. I may make some posts on this topic in the near future.

In the meantime, I know where I'm going this weekend: to the next Slavic University, again in the Kingdom of Aethelmearc. Woo-hoo!

Finally, congratulations to Lithuania for its election to one of the non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. And for the second half of 2013, Lithuania holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union. Lithuania is truly coming of age as a 21st-century nation!

Post-Pennsic Post

Yeah, I like alliteration. :-)

I spent last week at Pennsic 41 (the second half of the event). Of course I had a fabulous time despite the periodic bursts of wind and rain. My "modern" canvas tent, which may be as much as 35 years old, held up like a champ.

The Slavic Interest Group (SIG) meeting is always one of the highlights of Pennsic for me. Some of my SIG friends were missing -- either they didn't get to War or they were off doing something else -- but it was a pleasure to chat with newer folks, and a happy surprise to find out that one or two of them remembered my past classes on Lithuania. We shared snacks and booze (*smile*) and left with tentative plans to have another Slavic University in central Pennsylvania, perhaps sometime next year.

I also took an afternoon class on basic inkle weaving and even bought myself a small inkle loom. I really want to practice good, consistent weaving with constant tension. Also, I suspect that an inkle loom will be the perfect platform for me to practice the kind of pick-up weaving that I see in Lithuanian woven bands. However, I've got to learn the basics thoroughly first.

Finally -- and this has nothing to do with Pennsic -- back in July there was a Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival in Boston. Wow, I would have loved to attend it, at least as a spectator. I want to peruse the website more, but I'm just posting it here as a placeholder now. So many interests, so little time....

Late summer and fall activities

Once again: long time, no post...

Perhaps it's a good thing that I didn't plan on teaching any classes at Pennsic XL this summer, as my car broke down while I was traveling up to Cooper's Lake. Since everyone I knew was already at War, and since I didn't have enough money for a rental vehicle, I ended up missing Pennsic entirely. :-( It's only thanks to the grace and kindness of a group of my friends, who collected some money for me and presented it to me, that I was able to afford the expensive repair bill and get my 15-year-old Pontiac back on the road.

At least I was able to attend the Kingdom of Atlantia's 30th-anniversary celebration earlier this month. For one of the gift baskets that were presented to the winners of the various competitions, I made a small pincushion embellished with a cross-stitch replica of the Atlantian ensign (the kingdom's arms without the crown and laurel wreath). Here's how it came out before I attached it to the pincushion:

It had a few flaws that I'm not proud of -- especially the slightly different shades of blue and white. I hope the recipient, whoever he/she is, overlooks those details and enjoys the overall picture.

Anyhow ... I am getting ready for the next University of Atlantia session, which is tomorrow (Saturday, October 1) in the Barony of Bright Hills. I will be teaching a one-hour class called "Survey of Medieval Lithuania" at 3:30 p.m. I have only two student pre-registered for the class, but I suspect that I'll get more attendees, because I also suspect that a lot of people haven't pre-registered for anything.

I'm also trying one extremely non-medieval innovation: PowerPoint slides. I wouldn't ever try a slide show at Pennsic, because the inside of the A&S tents doesn't get very dark in the daytime (and the insides of the red and yellow tents make lousy screens). However, I am hoping to show even more images and maps than in previous iterations of the class.