Borne back ceaselessly into the past

There is this wonderful smoky smell in the air tonight. It makes me remember when I was a kid and used to go to this medieval war down in rural Pennsylvania where there would be campfires going all night long. It looked like the picture up above.

And in the morning you would wake up to the sound of chain mail.

Ah, youth!!

I feel kind of sorry for people who do not have those memories and yet they are very much in the majority and I am in the minority, remembering something like that. Here is something funny from that war, which was called the Pennsic War, and it was part of the Society for Creative Anachronism. A few priests belonged and that meant that on Sunday you got your choice of Masses. The priests got into the spirit of things and so one year you could go to a medieval Latin Tridentine Mass or a Byzantine Rite, the rite of Saint John Chrysostom. I seem to remember there was a third Mass too but it was just a normal modern Mass and only squares went to that.

I went to the Byzantine Rite. I always remember the priest's vestments. They were a beautiful powder blue, trimmed with gold. He explained them all to us beforehand. That was a nice priest, you know? I was a lame-brained teenager and I was just sitting there like this...

(you knew that was coming...)

... but it was nice of him, to take our interest in medieval history into all these matters deep and religious. He also explained about the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom who, attention music scholars, was one of the saints Mozart was named after. Mozart was born on January 27 which is the feast of St. John Chrysostom and that is why his name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb. Not Amadeus! He was baptized Gottlieb. Sorry everyone. Well, the good news is, it means the same thing.

All I remember of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was there was one line that impressed me: "Oh, God, forgive me for I have sinned without number." I still think of that.

That line sure applied to me. I sure had sinned without number!

Here is a Polaroid I have held onto of me attending the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

Ah, Society for Creative Anachronism! One of the many things I did before I met Leonard Pennario and had to put aside childish things.

Ah, memories brought about by a night with a smoky smell in the air!

Duke Cariadoc

The other day Howard was watching a video featuring Milton Friedman, the great economist. And I did what I always do whenever Milton Friedman's name comes up, which is to boast that I know his son.

"His son was in that medieval group I was in," I said. "His son is Duke Cariadoc."

It is pronounced, for everyone's informatiion, Car-EYE-o-doc. I do not exactly know him. He would not be able to pick me out of a lineup. Cariadoc was my rival in the Society for Creative Anachronism. That is to say, we were on opposite sides. He was king twice of the Middle Kingdom. I was queen twice of the East Kingdom. We had it out every year at the Pennsic War in Pennsylvania. 

Once, I think, I was in Duke Cariadoc's encampment. However as I said I did not know him well. He had the reputation of being kind of a stuffed shirt, meaning he was scholarly and followed medieval nuts and bolts to the letter. How many metaphors did I mix there? Forgive me, I am still on my first cup of coffee.

Looking back now on the SCA, as I periodically do on this Web log, I see I was wrong about many things. One of those things was looking down on stuffed shirts. Those people were the ones playing the game right. Heck, about Cariadoc, he was supposed to be a duke. Dukes are supposed to be stuffed shirts. The poor guy, he was just playing the part.

Back in the day I also looked askance at Countess Mara. She was also a stuffed shirt. Once at Pennsic, Countess Mara was walking along the path in her coronet and someone asked to take her picture. Countess Mara looked down her nose and said, "As you wish."

Oh, we roasted her for that, my friends and I did.

However she was right!

If you are a countess and someone asks to take your picture, you sigh and say, "As you wish." Oh wait, I think she said, "If you must." Even better.

Anyway, I did not understand any of this. I was 19 and a not very mature 19 at that. That is me in the SCA at the top of this post, by the way, with my partner in crime Jacquetta. I was about 21 by then. My name was Kunegunda.

Back to the other day, when the name "Duke Cariadoc" was spoken in our home. I went on to look up Milton Friedman on Wikipedia. Howard and I are always doing that. And Milton Friedman's son was mentioned! His name is David D. Friedman. He had his own Wikipedia entry because he is some kind of scholar, no big surprise there.

Now this is what floored me. The Wikipedia entry went on to describe David Friedman's involvement with the SCA, at great length and in great detail. His name, the site accurately reported, was Duke Cariadoc of the Bow. I remembered that correctly.

And it explained all about the East Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom and it said that Cariadoc had founded the Pennsic War. That last bit I had not known however it makes sense.

It is amazing, the publicity Cariadoc has! I was puzzling over it the next morning as I was engaged in the very medieval task of untangling my hair, Then I hit on an explanation.

"His minions must have done this," I said.

That is a shocking moment when you think you have grown up and you suddenly realize you are the same person you were.

All of a sudden I was back in time!

25 Random Things About Me

You have to love this "25 Things About Me" fad going around on Facebook. It is so narcissistic! There is nothing that is more fun than talking about yourself. Well, for me, I do love talking about Leonard Pennario more. But that is a first in my life.

A few of my friends and acquaintances have "tagged" me in their "25 Random" lists. That means they want me to do it too. And now I am so flattered that I can hold off no longer. Here are my 25 things. I will try to write them in a big hurry so I do not waste much time on them when I really ought to be working. Above is a picture of me, working on my list of 25 things. You will have to get further on down the list to No. 17 and 18 to see why I am dressed in the picture the way I am.

Ahem.

1.) Going by my first and middle names I am "bitter stranger." Mary is Hebrew for bitter and Barbara is Latin for stranger. Like barbarian, get it?

2.) Three things I cannot do: blow bubbles with bubble gum, return my library books on time, snap my fingers. I have tried and tried!

3.) I fell in love with Mozart when I was 8 and I have never really gotten over my disappointment that he is dead. At left is my favorite picture of Mozart when I was 8. It was on a book of his sonatas which, I don't care what Glenn Gould said, I still think Mozart sonatas are sexy and great.


4.) Two things I love about my husband, Howard (right): he can calm me down and he can crack me up.

5.) I had one great-grandfather in the Civil War and another great-grandfather in the Franco-Prussian War.

6.) Two things I worry about: the fact that America is turning into a welfare state and the possibility of a comet hitting the earth (because one I read a story in the New Yorker about that and I never forgot it).

7.) I love Christmas and Christmas music. I have no problem with the commercialism either. I love to schedule a walk through the Galleria Mall just to look at all the stuff.

8.) Like my Facebook friend Carl Herko, I am pretty much omnivorous. There is hardly any food I do not enjoy except for once in a while I blow a recipe and something goes wrong. In that case I don't worry about having to finish it. Life is too short.

9.) Two things I love a little more than I should: red wine and Leonard Pennario, the pianist I am writing my book about.

10.) Much as I am enjoying writing this list, I would rather be writing 25 things about Pennario, pictured at left.

11.) I went 12 times to see the Grateful Dead.

12.) Though I am a conservative I am proud of my hippie skills: I bake my own bread, roast my own granola, make my own soap, make my own wine (well, my friend Gary actually makes it, but we go half-in-half on the juice from Desiderio's) and have mastered difficult yoga poses.

13.) I own an ice cream maker and am not afraid to use it. But the braces on my teeth make eating ice cream difficult. You do not realize how much texture matters as much as flavor. I cannot get at the ice cream's texture with these braces on my teeth.

14.) I was always Catholic but I became passionate about it a year and a half ago when I accidentally started going to the Latin Mass. It makes tears come to my eyes when the priest blesses us at the end: "Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus..." That means "May Almighty God bless you" but it is so much more beautiful. I know the Credo and the Gloria by heart. I am lucky Howard has been so supportive of my new love for my religion because he did not sign on for this.

15.) It distresses me how 99 percent of the people I run across on Facebook are agnostic or atheist or some other confused designation. On the other hand I like these people, and I like the feeling that all of us are going through life together.

15.) I have all kinds of stuff socked away in my head that no one will ever know about.

16.) I have all kinds of stuff socked away under the bed, too, that no one will ever know about either.

17.) When I was in college I used to belong to a medieval group, the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA), where my name was Duchess Kunegunda Elandris Henschel von Schattenberg. I can still embroider beautifully, do three kinds of calligraphy (Celtic Roundhand, Gothic and Roman Uncial) and dance the pavan, the galliard and the Pease Bransle.

18.) Once in the SCA when I was the Queen of the East, which ran from Maine down to Virginia, I fell in love with my Queen's Champion. Fortunately he did not love me back. That is the two of us pictured above.

19.) Winter is my favorite time of year. I hate to see it end.

20.) I still play vinyl. I will never stop.

21.) I went through big jazz and blues phases but I have to admit in the long run it will never touch my soul the way classical music does.

22.) But going out to hear Jackie Jocko is still one of life's supreme pleasures and if I do not go at least once a week I get antsy.

23.) Walking is the only exercise that ever really worked for me. I can swim forever and never get tired or lose a single pound.

24.) I have the German compulsion to beat a dead horse. I never give up on anything until I am absolutely forced to, usually after a period of years.

25.) I run my mouth too much.

The Town Crier and me

 I love the video of the Town Crier announcing the British royal baby's birth.

When I was in the medieval group and would go camping at the Pennsic War in Pennsylvania -- and other medieval events where we would camp out -- we would rely on the Herald, our word for the Town Crier, for our news.

Sure, we were just fooling, but still, I have that experience now, a real-life experience of relying on a Town Crier. You would be awakening in your sleeping bag and listening to the outside noises of armies clanking past in armor and -- oh, there he was!

And he would start out, "Oyez, oyez!" Just like the Town Crier this week, Tony Appleton.

No one else knew what he was saying at the beginning there but I did! Because I was in the, ahem, Society For Creative Anachronism. I believe it is French for "Hear ye, hear ye." I never actually thought about it.

I love how Appleton ends by saying, "God save the Queen."

Our Herald, you would wake up in the morning in your tent and listen for him. There would be something you would have to find out, what time the Field Battle was, or where you were supposed to be if you were taking glass blowing class, or some other medieval matter. And you would shush your friends so you could hear the Herald. Or the Town Crier. Same thing.

That was before I was the authorized biographer of Leonard Pennario. When life was simpler.

"Oyez, Oyez!"

It brings back memories!

Remembering the War

My friend Missy is Tweeting from the Pennsic War. That is the war down in Pennsylvania that I used to go to when I was a kid. I think the last one I went to, I was 22. No, 23. I don't know.

Every once in a while I think about going again but there is Leonard Pennario and I cannot leave him, alas. I mean I cannot leave this project until it is done, I am sorry.

I admit there are things about the war that I miss. This is the Society for Creative Anachronism, which more or less recreates the Middle Ages. I miss waking up in the tent and hearing the sound of people in armor tramping past. Well, sometimes I had to go out and put on armor and be among them. I did not like that!

I miss people bowing and scraping to me which happened when I was the Queen of the East and led troops into battle.

It was fun to sit around campfires at night. Missy tweeted something about listening to recorder music and drinking 18-year-old Scotch that made me wish I were there by her side as in the old days.

Most of all, the long days of doing nothing.

La la la la la la la.

You would sit and watch the medieval world go by.

It was fun, the commitment everyone had to it. Once at a campfire I ended up drinking beer with this girl who had hitchhiked to the War all the way from Israel. Imagine hitchhiking from Israel! I could not imagine that then and I can not imagine it now.

Not only that, but she had lost all her bags somewhere. They had been stolen or something. But this Israeli girl did not care!

She said: "The important thing is, I'm here."

What a great attitude toward life! We should all have it.

That is me up above playing with medieval, ahem, balloons. I am on the right and that is my friend Jacquetta with me. She is probably Tweeting from the War too! I will have to go check. Jacquetta still looks exactly the same.

Here I am with my friend and now Facebook friend Severin.

I was kind of a goof-off in the SCA but still when you were in it, the Middle Ages had a way of working its way under your skin. You learned, whether you wanted to or not. For instance I joined the SCA on St. David's Day which was in the spring. People would ask me when I joined and I could not remember the date but I did know it was St. David's Day. And that was before I knew saints' feast days.

And that St. David was the patron saint of Wales. I learned that in the SCA. Also I seem to remember it was March 1. That just came back to me.

It is not as if the SCA was religious. Far from it, trust me. And it actually should have been more religious, because what was the medieval era without religions?

But whatever, you cannot do the Middle Ages without some things sneaking in. Also I learned to embroider, more or less, and to do three styles of calligraphy. I could do Roman Uncial, Celtic Roundhand and Gothic. These are skills I still have.

I learned how to illuminate manuscripts by drawing strings of twisting vines and leaves and flowers. When I am on the phone this is still my go-to doodle. I will start with a twisting S shape and then add the leaves and the flowers. I learned how to draw curvy leaves so you see the up side and the down side.

What else did I learn? Once at the War, there were a few Catholic priests who were in the SCA and they were all saying Masses on Sunday. The priests got into the spirit of things and this one year, you could choose among an ordinary vanilla modern Mass, or a Latin Mass -- so I guess there was my Gregorian Chant -- or a Mass in the Byzantine Catholic rite.

I went for the Byzantine Mass! It was the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Mozart was born on Jan. 27, the feast of St. John Chrysostom, and that is why he was named Johannes Chrysostomus. We should all go back to naming our kids after the feast days they are born on, you know? You do not even have to use those names. Just tack them on the way they used to do.

The priest at the Byzantine Mass had the most beautiful sky blue vestments, as I remember, trimmed in gold. Actual gold, I seem to think, although maybe I am embroidering it, so to speak, in my memory. Before Mass he explained the vestments to us as we all gathered around.  They were very valuable, heirloom vestments. This priest, he was so nice. We were used to him drinking beer with us and stuff but all of a sudden he was very reverent and so we just sat and listened. It was like seeing him in a new light.

He had really done his homework for us, now that I look back. He had copies of the liturgy all ready to hand around and we got to keep them. I took mine home. I think I still have it somewhere. I always remember one line: "Oh, God, forgive me, for I have sinned without number."

That has such a "Dr. Zhivago" ring to it!

Mass went for about two hours, with me sitting there with my friends, in my gown and veil. It is funny, I am wearing a veil again at Mass now. I do think about the SCA sometimes at the Latin Mass because with all the Gregorian Chant, it is like going back to the Middle Ages. In  some ways it is more vivid.

I could walk into a cathedral in 1100 A.D. and participate in the Mass! I could pray and competently sing along. Imagine that.

It is a funny thing about the medieval era.

It never quite leaves me alone!