Hi again. (Ooh, two posts in the same week? Suddenly he’s all chatty!) It occurred to me that now that I have more time for SCA events, I should mention that I will be at a couple in the next few weeks. Continue reading
Hi. I’ve been doing the thing again where I go quiet for much of the winter. A piece of that is that I am prepping for K&Q Bardic Champs once more, which is coming up a week from Saturday. I’m doing what I can to focus on that.
There is some real life stuff that I will take a moment to mention. A year and a half ago, a long tenure working at Intralinks came to and end in the wake of a troubled acquisition and the elimination of my position. I needed to find a new role, which led me to a consulting position at Bluewolf (which was already in the process of being acquired by IBM).
The experience at Bluewolf was valuable professionally, and provided terrific growth opportunities, including the trip to Marrakech that I took with Bird last year. However, the demands of consulting work, client engagement, changing projects, and ongoing business travel, limited the amount of attention I could give to other parts of my life, particularly the SCA.
As Bluewolf has been absorbed into IBM, those demands have only grown. I realized at the start of the year that I needed to make a change, and so I have left the organization. This week, I will be starting a new in-house role at Wiley Publishing in Hoboken. I believe this new opportunity should provide a much better work-life balance, so that I can have more time for the SCA, as well as my family and my other interests.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know. I’m hoping to have more to share with you going forward.
It is with the utmost regret that I share that I will not be making it to Winter Nights this year. Getting out to Massachusetts next weekend would torpedo things for my family, both of whom have commitments. I hope to see most of you at K&Q Bardic Champs later in the month.
This #WordFameWednesday I wish to honor my beloved friend, sometime travel companion, and partner in mischief, Juliana Bird, King’s Bard (in Exile) of the East.
If I have taught Bird anything about what it means to be a bard, I’m delighted. But I know what she’s taught me. She’s modeled for me what it means to survive adversity, do hard work on oneself, and come out of it still connected to joy, authenticity, and childlike wonder. She has shown me how rapidly it is possible to grow in musicianship and art when it is done with zeal and passion and deep effort.
On top of everything else, she has shown me the artisanship of creating truly great filk.
I got to spend the day down at Buckland Cross, which formally became a Barony today. It was a lovely, pleasant opportunity to catch up with my friends from the area, and get a little quality time with our lovely royals.
I also enjoyed the chance to play my repertoire of lute pieces in front of people, promenading unobtrusively as people were sampling the wonderful day board.
Okay, more ABBA filk might have happened. This piece was a salute to our Society members who give service. (Lyrics here.)
I had promised I would share a version of “Concordian Soil” that would be a little easier to sing–sorry it’s a little late. This version cuts the very top notes off the chorus, and should sound fine. It only reduces the range of the song a little, but that is a rather problematic high note that was written for my voice (and pushes me if I’m not warmed up). Please feel free to move the song into whatever key works best for the voice or voices available. (I’ve added the alternate notes to the downloadable sheet music as well.)
So, I got to return to the SCA and my kingdom with both feet yesterday at Bjorn’s Ceilidh up at our second home, Concordia of the Snows. I probably need to explain how it is that this happened, since it was not in anyone’s plans at the start of the day…
So let’s rewind. (Lyrics to the filk here.) Continue reading
