A Dirty Atmosphere

The time had come around to make the annual trip to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival this past Saturday. A somewhat smaller group went on the 2013 trip and while the company was good, the festival was disappointing this time out. More on that at the end and why parents should no longer be taking kids to this event.

 

It was a rare hot day with only a few wisps of clouds in the sky in the draught stricken area. After finding our way from the unfamiliar Queen’s parking lot, we emerged near one of the outer rim theaters. An amazing increase in temperature accompanied the emergence and only the occasional breeze floated through to make things bearable.

Only problem is that dust and dirt came with those pale attempts at gusts.

We headed straight to a glassware’s shop, Ould Glass. Having gotten lost on the way up as is our tradition, we were a little late for the main attraction, caber tossing. However, a glass blowing and sculpting demonstration was announced, so in we went. While shaded in the back, it wasn’t exactly cool there with the furnace going.

The demonstration was dryly comic with the artisan bantering with a woman from the audience. Glass blowing does involving blowing as the pipes being heated indicate. An assistant blew some very thin bubbles that fell to the ground as an intro to how things are done.

Molten glass was likened to honey with a very convincing example of why. To keep it from running like that, the blowers constantly rotated the pipes in their hands.

The dry humor was constant and involved a great deal of misdirection about what was being created. Here we see the bare beginnings of the white pigmented glass that made up the main body of the figure being shaped.

The molten glass was dunked in pigments to color it at different stages and reheated regularly. More was added from a separate pipe to create details. In this case, supposedly it was a belly button being used in place of an eye, since the blower wasn’t good at making eyes but good at making belly buttons.

I figured out pretty early on that the sculpture was not going to be a bunny like claimed. The eyes made me think something fishy was going on and sure enough, the “failure” at whiskers was the next addition. Soon failed “hair” made it obvious what was really being made.

It is doubtful anyone watching believed he was making a bow by this point even if the glass was red. All of this was done in half an hour, by the way.

Sadly I was having problems with shaking hands and most of the pictures I took did not turn out. So much for auto stabilization! This is the closest to the finished product that wasn’t a blur and I’ll say it was a good looking piece of art.

After we exited, the grand turn around the outer perimeter began in earnest as did one friend’s fruitless quest for the perfect stein. Attendance was high, but I’d seen it much higher in the past. Notice the haze. That’s dust, not humidity.

My black shoes ended up gray and so did my lungs. While it was hot at 92 F, it wasn’t the heat that was a killer, but the dust. That’s why two of us were yawning and wondering why we were so drained. We simply weren’t getting enough oxygen.

While other stores beckoned to my friends, I found a bench to sit on and get a picture of Scot dancers that are always at the festival. The Celtic genes kick in any time I hear the pipes, so resistance is futile.

One thing I noticed since the last visit was that there is now a dedicated Hmong Craft Shop rather than a cart. Since cash is sparse at the moment, temptation was resisted. My desire to have a hand beaded Hmong tie does not own me. At least for the moment.

Time for caber tossing was upon us so we went a little early to get a good position to view it. Instead we found MacBeth being staged on the open grounds, which is a decision that cannot be fathomed other than they wanted to keep everything Scot confined to the “Highland Village.” Wait a second…

Yeah, thought so.

No, I still see no sense in the play being there since the dancers were nowhere near the “village.”

Warm ups in the background of the long play alarmed me. At least one of the competitors was showing signs of suffering cramping and they all looked lethargic. And I still was yawning.

Just before we were ready to give up and leave, a scripted stabbing ended our wait and the competitors took the field. Alas, there was all of one good toss witnessed before we left in disappointment. The caber was repeatedly dropped, fell over a back, and generally didn’t go far at all.

By this point, I was feeling unimpressed by the whole affair and mystified by the lack of interesting things to photograph. Either my muse had departed me, or there was something simply off about this year’s presentations. After taking a picture of a couple of performers, I stopped to evaluate things. Tired, shaky, and uninspired I put my camera away in the backpack and only pulled it out one more time.

The tortoise pulling the cart is always a treat to see at the Renaissance Festival and we were lucky to find him at last. Actually, this is a new guy to the event, replacing the previous tortoise. Though a rookie, he had a lot of personality for a reptile and seemed to like people a lot. He also moved faster than I was able at this point.

So ends the photos, but not the observations.

Something that bothered me was how R to X rated things have gotten at the festival. On the relatively mild end is the appearance of more skin than ever on both men and women. I am surprised to see furries making their presence known which illustrates how very little any of the doings relate to the Renaissance.

Belly dancers twerking aren’t the worst of it either, though it is flat out bizarre. Yes, one trio of belly dancers went from delicately balancing sabers on their heads to twerking within less than sixty seconds. Our culture really has devolved to Miley Cyrus levels.

No, the worst dirt flying through the air was verbal. Nearly every comedy routine was hard R to X rated with lots of references to genitalia of both sexes. I saw kids passing by performers on a Saturday afternoon talking about all sorts of inappropriate things in terms well past what we call bawdy. We ended up moving from shady areas to get away from some of these routines.

One act was bragging about how their allowed to say and do things at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival that they’d be arrested for at other fests. As I passed, I thought it was probably just a gimmick to rouse the audience, who loudly cheered. After seeing all the other acts doing much the same material, I realized that might have been the truth.

Other moments included one of my friends being genuinely propositioned by a girl at one of the shops. A pair of performers drunk and staggering along the side of the path not doing a routine, but grousing about the heat and the crowd. In another spot there was a male performer in tights that left absolutely nothing to the imagination walking around small kids.

I saw fewer kids there than in previous years, but it wasn’t a dramatic drop. What did bug me was how the parents were howling at the sleazy single entendre jokes. Yeah, things aren’t what they used to be when there was a conscious effort to attract families to the location. That has changed and I recommend parents not take their children any more.

That brings me to an impression I had about the mood of the fest. Underlying the apparent joviality was an undercurrent of meanness and exhaustion. To describe it, it is that atmosphere at a party when it has gone a little too long and people are trying to force it to continue. You know that moment, when words are about to be said that lead to conflict or someone hurts themselves stupidly.

I learned long ago that you always leave a party while you’re still having fun.

The most interesting part of the trip was a brief talk with one of shop runners. Two or us ended up talking about religion and philosophy with him that really got going when he realized we were Mormons. It was great fun that left us smiling. For me, it was a needed shot of energy to make it through the end run.