Last fall, when I started filking ABBA for Wilhelm and Vienna, I reached out to Vincenzo da Brescia (aka Vince Conaway), whose mastery of the hammered dulcimer delights listeners at Pennsic as well as at Renaissance Faires all over the country and internationally. The Mamma Mia filk demanded hammered dulcimer at the Pennsic concert, I suggested, and to my delight he agreed.
Vincenzo and I will be collaborating again soon on a recording for the album in progress, but in the meantime, here is “Carpe Diem” in its full, accompanied, silly glory.
Just got home from Pennsic. For those of you who are on the road or unpacking, I thought I’d share this song from the concert on Monday (along with the song page).
Because it seems to carry different weight coming from a man…
Harassing women in the street is not okay at Pennsic or anywhere else. It’s on the rise this year and we are all as a community responsible for keeping everyone safe. Here is a link to a bystander intervention guide.
The Pennsic community is beautiful and amazing. Everyone deserves to enjoy it without unwelcome attention, and if you don’t understand that, you’re going to learn it or we are going to remove you from this community.
Our household will be departing for Pennsic this afternoon, and should be there by Saturday. If you are looking for me, here are some places you are likely to find me:
I started something on Facebook this morning that has gone viral, with the help of some fearless and outspoken friends. It occurred to me (and I’m sure I wasn’t the first to think of it) that recent measles outbreaks, the direct result of a decades-long drop in vaccination rates, could seriously imperil Pennsic this year–and that further, there is something we can do about it in the next three months if we raise awareness. My wife and I got our MMR boosters a few weeks back.
A measles outbreak among a population of 10,000 people would do irreparable harm to the SCA, and all the communities we’d be returning to. When in doubt, get your MMR booster. And discuss this with your camp. Everyone who can be vaccinated should be, there’s no excuse.
Feel free to save and share. (But don’t have a cow about it.)
For those who say “Pennsic schmensic, people should be vaccinating anyway!”, I agree. But if this raises awareness and moves people to action by creating new urgency, then I’m all for it. Thanks to everyone who is participating in this effort, and to everyone who has posted or commented that they’re getting tested or getting a booster shot.
So, even by my sluggish standards, this Pennsic post is really late. We got home three weeks ago. There are a few reasons (excuses) why I didn’t jump on it right away:
Between my job and rehearsals for The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which opens next weekend), I have been very busy and squeezed a bit hard on re-entry the last few weeks.
I did do a few shares on this blog related to Pennsic, including two postsfrom war, a new song which recapped some of my experiences with a broad brush, and posting my full concert on YouTube.
Because the Sing for the East project added songbooks to our offerings just in time for Pennsic, and we still had some inventory left when we got home, I felt like I was attending to unfinished Pennsic business for much of my first week back. (We did sell out quickly enough on Bandcamp, and have sent this year’s donation to the EK Royal Travel Fund.)
Nevertheless, it’s important to take time to reflect on a two-week event we only experience once a year, and I have lots of people to acknowledge (even if I have mentioned some of them previously). Continue reading →
Hi everyone! We just got home from Pennsic yesterday, and to my surprise, as we began packing out, I felt a song coming on, and I went with it. So, as my way of thanking all of you for being part of my SCA experience, I’m breaking all my normal “rules” and sharing it with you right now. This is a quick a Capella vocal cut of the song, and it captures my experience of Pennsic this year, which involved my stretching a bit and doing more things that weren’t necessarily Bardic. (No, I still didn’t actually drink, but since the vast majority of adults I hung out with did, it’s still an indelible part of my experience of the War.)
I will set up a standard song page for this later (along with the other new songs I brought to the war, and class notes, and video from the concert–I promise I’ll get to it). But for now…enjoy! Continue reading →
