Inspiration, visible from the air

[jducoeur]

All jesting aside, it was a great Pennsic, exactly what I needed. There will be an introspective posting later, trying to unpack why I reacted so strongly to it (and what that implies about life, the universe and everything), but the summary is that it was one of the best I've had. I did a little of everything and not a great deal of anything; I hung out a lot with folks I like a lot; I did Stuff. The weather was as good as you could possibly ask for, at least for the week we were there: mostly clear, highs in the mid-70s, low enough humidity to gradually dry out the mud from the week before, a bunch of chilly nights that were great for sleeping. It was exactly the relaxing vacation I was looking for.

I'll call out one high point, though: I was invited to herald the procession for Colin's knighting, on the battlefield in between the field battles. This was, needless to say, a big deal for the household, and we wanted everybody involved. So as we were waiting for Ealdormere's knighting to happen, we lined things up, and the procession just grew and grew. We had me yelling, the musicians playing, a couple of the guys carrying his helmet and gauntlets. The Lochleven Army (the unit really is getting impressively big) formed double file, and parted the crowd so that we could come through, with the members of the Village following. And then the Second Division of the Northern Army wanted in on it, and started tacking onto the end, so the line just kept growing and growing, until there were practically as many people in the procession as in Court.

The best way to describe it is in pictures; sadly, the picture isn't posted, so I'll have to describe it. One of the airplanes was apparently overhead at that moment, taking the usual pictures of Pennsic from the air. If you look on the battlefield in Picture 205, you see what looks like an archery target -- a round cluster of people in court, and an arrow of procession pointing at it, lined up and ready to enter. Not quite Visible From Space, but I'll take Visible From Way Up.

Of course, not everything went to plan -- my run room turned out to be fairly short, so I only got to use a tiny bit of the windup I had prepared in case we had a long walk. And processing everybody in front of Their Majesties fell by the wayside when we got in there and realized that the impromptu Presence was all of ten feet across, with no good exit for the other end of the group. But the statement had been made: Colin's earned a lot of respect and friendship from a *lot* of people. It was delightful helping make that point...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

That's so cool.

Are the ariel photos ever posted somewhere?

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

I doubt it. The company which sells them is so cautious about their rights they do not even permit photographing the aggregate sales display at the Post Office.