I get to operate the WHAT?

Fall brings the ripening of pumpkins and that can only lead to one thing, pumpkin festivals!  The crisp air, the crackling of dried leaves, the smell of cider, they’re all part of the fun.

Last Friday, after our mid-term exam, we drove down to Warren on the first leg of our journey to Old Bedford Village to help with the village’s pumpkin festival. The plan was for Jan and Charleen to occupy the basket weaver’s shop on Saturday and Sunday and demonstrate basket weaving for the public.  Ken was to occupy the cobbler’s shop and show off his leather working skills, and your happy narrator was to assist in the operation of the trebuchet.

What’s a trebuchet, you ask?  Well, way back in the 12th and 13th century, the trebuchet was the high-tech weapon for breaching castle walls.   The modern trebuchet is used to destroy pumpkins by flinging them out into a field.  What’s the point of that?  None, really, other than to see how far they will fly and how far they spatter when they hit the ground.

There was plenty to spatter on Saturday, it was raining in the morning as we got on the road at quarter to five, and it never stopped.  The pumpkins were soaked, the trebuchet was soaked, and the field was a muddy mire.  God, it was fun!

That’s really all that needs said, so here’s a few pictures to illustrate.

Pretty much the most fun as you can have while dressed in wool!

Zip Summer

Like a zip file, there’s been a lot compressed into this summer so far. And not necessarily all of it was reenacting. There have been some encampments, but with school on two nights a week, involving homework for each class, and a program to write for each week, there hasn’t been time to do more than a walk-in to an event on a Saturday or Sunday. Taking college classes in the summer is so wrong on so many levels, but it has to be done, if we ever want to finish before it’s time to retire.

And believe me, we both want to finish as soon as possible. It’s the “possible” that’s hampering us. Based on the homework load from this summer, and looking ahead at what we hope to accomplish by next spring, we’ve already cut the fall term back to one class.

What has to be done this fall and winter that will make it im-”possible” to take more than one course? In a nutshell, clothing. More reenactor clothing. More heavy dresses to make the closet bar sag. More coats and pants for me. You might ask, “Why do you need more clothing?”

The answer can be found on my Flickr page. Can you figure out where we’re headed next April? Let me know.

It’s March, must be time for Colonial Christmas

Christmas is a special season, and even in colonial America, families traveled to be together for the holidays. That was the premise for our occupation of the Kegg – Blasko house in Old Bedford Village on the second Saturday in December, 2008.

Ken, Janet, Charleen and I had been asked to participate in the village’s Old Fashioned Christmas Evening. The goal was to educate and entertain the public as they wandered from warmly lit house to warmly lit house.

Our basic storyline was that Charleen and I had traveled from Philadelphia to the Bedford area so that she could visit her sister, Jan, who had moved to the frontier with her trader/trapper husband.

A lot of planning went into trying to create the right atmosphere for the house. We decided that the smells of the holiday would make the most impact. Ken envisaged the boughs of pine around the house and rosemary and bay on the tables to freshen the air. Charleen wanted to have the smells of cooking greet the public. I found her a simple recipe for “Poor Man’s Fruitcake” that seemed like it would fit the bill. In true hope and a prayer fashion, we did not have a chance to make it before the program.

The day started early, with an eight a.m. departure from Jan and Ken’s house, because we knew that there was a lot preparation needed to get the house ready for our guests. We were bringing all the decorations, and all the baking and preparation items, and even water for washing the dirty dishes, so the back of the mini-van was solidly stuffed. We arrived at the village around noon, and immediately began getting the boxes and bags and clothing into the house.

The van was just about empty when Steve from the village walked up looking very agitated and distressed. He blurted out that “the octagon schoolhouse is on fire.” We grabbed buckets and kettles and started at a run up “Fremont Street”. When we got to the schoolhouse, it was apparent that we couldn’t do much about the fire itself, except hope that the Bedford Fire Department arrived soon. The fire was at the top of the roof, twenty feet above our heads, where the vent for the pot bellied stove came through the roof. What we could do was save the contents of the building, bringing them outside to save them from smoke and water damage. The fire department showed up soon after, and the building was saved with only minimal damage.

We still had much to do, Jan was making cookies for the evening, Charleen, the fruitcakes. Ken and I were making pine roping, decorating the tree, and making small logs out of big ones, to keep the baking fires hot and the cabin warm. We also put some cider with mulling spices near the fire to help warm us from the inside as well.

By three thirty the house was looking festive and the smells from all the spices conjured up all the pleasant memories of holidays at Grandma’s.

However, Grandma wasn’t cooking, so while Jan and Ken went into town to bring back something for dinner, Charleen and I retired upstairs to change into the clothes for the evening. While toasty warmness reigned downstairs by the fire, upstairs was quite a bit cooler and sliding into a linen shirt that was just a few degrees short of frozen was no small feat. Thank goodness that the natural fabrics pick up body heat quickly.

Five o’clock and showtime were rapidly approaching by the time we finished dinner. Ken and Jan barely had time to change into their togs before the first wave of public crossed over the bridge into the village. From then until the nine o’clock closing it was non-stop.

I don’t think we could have scripted the evening any better. Charleen played the rich, spoiled sister to Jan’s hard-worked-but-happy backwoods character. Charleen made sure to let her sister know that everything that she had brought over the mountains was done so at “great expense”. That was a line that was heard throughout the night. So much so that the public was finishing Charleen’s sentences for her with it.

Me, I played the solicitor from Philadelphia who had made this trip grudgingly, because my wife had no doubt nagged me into it. It was an annoyance to my character to be stranded in the wilderness away from my law practice, and forced to deal with the uneducated trapper who was my brother-in-law.

For all concerned it was a successful event. For Roger, it was 788 paying guests through the gate. For the public it was an experience of the past, heightened by the smells of the holidays. For the four of us, it was another event pulled off “at great expense” at least at the expense of sleep — we had to drive back home after a long and very busy day — Jan was scheduled to play for church on Sunday morning.

The Eyes Play Tricks

I walked past a cabinet in the support station at work this morning, and had to do a double take on the label on the door. I thought it read “Blinders” instead of “Binders”. It seemed reasonable at first that we might need blinders to stay focused at work!

Have to admire the ingenuity

Have you ever noticed how the simplest of solutions are often the ones that work best?

Case in point: There is passageway way between the two buildings at work. The roof of this passage is also an elevated walkway exposed to the elements. For the better part of the last two years, I have watched as the maintenance staff has tried to locate and stop a leak that drips a small amount of water, either rain or snow melt, into the downstairs passage. At first the wet floor cones would come out, and a bucket was placed under the drip. Then ceiling tiles were removed, goops and pastes were spread on the roof, and the tiles reinstalled several times. Finally, last summer the flagstones that make up the outside walkway were lifted and waterproofing materials were laid down outside, over a wide area.

All to no avail. There were still small puddles after every major storm. Last week the ceiling tiles were removed once more, and a new approach to the problem was tried – rather than trying to stop the leak, the drops of water were redirected and routed to a clear plastic tube attached to the wall of the passage. The tube leads into one of the many corporate potted plants and the problem is finally solved! No more puddles in the passageway.

No More Free Time

Did I mention that I’m back in school? When last I graced the hallowed halls of academia, Ronald Reagan was President, the Berlin Wall still divided that city and I was a lot younger. Back then, I just wanted to be done with school. I had been pursuing a degree for eleven years and it was about time I caught one.

Now, it isn’t so much a degree that I want, I don’t have the time or energy to pursue that. I’m looking to get a certificate in in one of the web technologies. Twenty or so focused classes that build skills needed for the real world. I need to get out of the factory floor job that I am in, and get back to a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. That’s hard to feel when you know tomorrow is only going to bring more of the same of what you did today.

Write Now

There are ideas for posts banging around in my head, but they just won’t stay together long enough to get onto the page. I know part of it is I just haven’t sat down with the keyboard and started typing. I’ve had the time, just not the motivation.

I want to write about the Colonial Christmas at Old Bedford Village and the sheer lunacy of driving four hours to get there, setting up the house for the program, spending four hours interacting with the public, packing up and driving four hours home all in the same day.

I want to write about the Rosaryville event back in October. The Hundred Years of Fashion and what it took to put that on.

Then there’s more recent news, like going back to college, twenty two years after getting my degree.

All of this wants to be told. I just need to call the muse and start dictating. Do they still do that?