2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 2

As we wandered the grounds the sound of singing could be heard and very good singing at that. The melodious sounds drifted out of The Pub, which oddly enough, is a pub.

With most of the group wanting to keep pressing on, we didn’t get a chance to tarry there and these hurried snapshots cannot convey how good the group was. Alas, my Canon Digital Rebel does not take video at all.

Child torture device or good wholesome fun? You decide.

Whilst wandering about and looking like tourists, we were assailed called out to by gypsies seeking an audience. No, they were not seeking to curry favor, they were after warm bodies to watch their act, the Fandazzi Fire Circus. As you can see, they were quite poor and had resorted to eating fire for sustenance.

The show started with flaming whip cracking, which was sadly not done to Devo.

Flaming fan dancers were next up. The lass on the right took a tumble as soon as she came out. She hit the stage hard and it clearly was not part of the act. But she recovered to perform as pictured.

Next up was an old soft shoe dance routine – with flames.

Now I’d always heard bad things about gypsy hygiene, but marked that off to being prejudiced. However, it is obvious they have bad breath as the photo illustrates. At least they aren’t unicorns.

I wish I’d used the bigger zoom lens. Too many shots of people’s heads. Still, I was pleased with catching the flames clearly.

 

Chain twirling followed. The rest of the performance was lackluster with many a dropped flaming baton. It appears that they all had too much of a Friday night.

After the performance ended, we decided to check out the Enchanted Forest. To enter you pass by what used to be a hobbit hole. Sadly, no hobbits are to found in it like ten years ago. The trail took us past many a scaled down fairy house and informative signs about said residences.

After descending down the trail, a sudden vista comes into view. It is quite lovely emerging from the dark forest to behold this.

The trail was a bit crowded and there was a sign promising a Secret Garden. Near the end of the walk we found it and singing going on.

It was a nice performance and well deserving of a tip.

Opposite of the bards was a small waterfall and pond perfectly in scale for fairies.

Upon exiting, this sign is encountered. Good to know everything is in order.

To be continued…

Part 1 can be found here.

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 1

Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer and it seems like I missed the whole season. But at least I got to the local renaissance festival this year. A group of my younger friends and I did a road trip up to Shakopee with me toting my big camera this time. My quest for the elusive killer photograph continues…

So on to the pictures!

Note: No unicorns were killed in the production of these posts.

Though we got there at a relatively early time, the parking lot/field was already filling up. In the distance you can see towers and a pirate ship beckoning.

This was the row we were in. It foretold encounters with unicorns – the other other white meat. Yes, I don’t like unicorns. Unless served with a good BBQ sauce, that is.

Even before getting through the gates, performers are there to heckle you. They also heckle you when you leave. Ah, abuse.

Once through the gates, it takes awhile for the crowd to break up and head their separate ways. This weekend the promise of a longbow competition had us interested and this was the first sign showing the way.

Oh great, a unicorn already. The blond giving me the evil eye obviously doesn’t understand I’m documenting the pernicious and evil influence of the mono-horned creatures upon our society. Sorry, this photo was not about you.

The forecast warned of rain and possible thunderstorms. We drove through both coming up but blue sky appeared. A promising start to a banner day.

This qualifies as a good sign, doesn’t it?

You see all kinds of cosplay at renaissance festivals. This was one of the more elaborate attempts. Unfortunately the still can’t convey the awkward walk those goat leg stilts caused. I think she was going for a D&D tiefling or something like it from a video game.

We passed by a glass blowing demonstration and I got a couple of snaps of the bottle being crafted being reheated in the furnace. There wasn’t time to linger since the longbow competition awaited, wherever it was.

Funny, this looked more like food shops to me. I was soon rerouted to the entrance to the shooting grounds I’d walked past. I have to say the gator and shrimp were tempting, but I was determined to have a scotch egg again – I keep failing to get that delicious item every trip.

The longbow competition was not as impressive as hoped. It was underway when we arrived and this was the only photo I could salvage from trying to photograph through the crowd. Check out the traditional Japanese archer and his huge bow.

At this point, I wondered if I should have put the big 55-200mm zoom lens on the Canon Digital Rebel. Not having had a lot of chances to use it, I was uncertain if it would work out better than the 18-55mm in crowds.

To be continued…

Huffing and Puffing and Blowing…

…but the house is still standing. Though I did get to witness rain being blown through the air conditioner.

At 7 AM we had another round of severe wind from storms this morning and branches are down all over the property again. One small tree/bush is broken at the base in the small windbreak – which has had a literal meaning this year.

Not worth it to take pictures this time and I see that damage is far worse elsewhere again. One fascinating thing is how the grass was blown flat in the somewhat overgrown West yard which took the brunt of the storm. That is a new one for me.

I should go out and see what the damage is on Highway 16 locally. We’ll see if time and schedule permits – not to mention if weather allows. More storms are in the forecast for today and tomorrow.

My being a human barometer meant that I did not get much sleep last night due to pain, but sadly I lacked the wisdom to realize what it meant. I should have checked the weather instead of whining to myself!

It is time to think of planting some fast growing trees farther out to create a better wind break. This mini-break isn’t going to hold up much longer.

Hopefully the weather will be nicer up North at the Renaissance Festival tomorrow.

Thought for the Day

Nico Machiavelli discussing the cautious Roman general Fabius Maximus methods versus Scipio’s desire to take the fight back to Africa during the war with Hannibal and the invading Carthaginians:

…if it had been left to him, Hannibal would still be in Italy, for he did not see that times had changed, and that new methods of warfare were called for. So that, if Fabius had been king of Rome, he might easily have lost this war, since he was incapable of altering his methods according as circumstances changed. Since, however, he was born in a republic where there were diverse citizens with diverse dispositions, it came about that, just as it had a Fabius, who was the best man to keep the war going when circumstances required this, so later it has a Scipio at a time suited to its victorious consummation.

For this reason a republic has a fuller life and enjoys good fortune for a longer time than a principality, since it better able to adapt itself to diverse circumstances owing to the diversity found among its citizens than a prince can do. For a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way, never changes, as we have said. Hence, when times change and no longer suit his ways, he is inevitably ruined.

-- from The Discourses, “Adaptation to the Times”

Italics are mine.

Gratitude for Having an Attention Span

An odd thing struck me last night. I am very grateful to have an attention span that allows me to appreciate old and slower moving entertainment, whether it be movies, radio, or television. It has allowed me to enjoy things that others apparently are unable to these days.

People have been mocking the ever decreasing attention span of the modern American ever since MTV became popular in the early 1980’s. That which was flippant in many cases (at least I was) has turned out to be true as communications between humans has devolved considerably. We have gone from physically getting together to speaking on the telephone to email to texting on mobile to Facebook and finally to Twitter. Every stage has lowered both the quantity and quality of ideas communicated.

Even how we get our news has been affected. Going from five minute sound bites to five second texts is not a sign of great intelligence. It may be hip, but the price paid for it becoming stupider or at least less mentally disciplined.

Lately I have been watching more movies from yesteryear and appreciating the fact that even the action films didn’t have explosions going on every other minute. So when a friend mentioned that he was amazed how slow and boring the pacing of the original Doctor Who stories were, I was a bit taken aback. It also made me flashback to another friend who had the same problem with Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

These are not dumb people by any measure of IQ, by the way. Upper one percent to be precise if you care about such measurements.

Perhaps it is because I am older or that I grew up in a household that only had broadcast television and did not go to movies in the theater. Maybe it is because I have worked on personal patience since my teens. It could be that I am just different that way.

I remember watching 2001: A Space Odyssey as a very little kid and understanding it. It was not the least bit boring, to the contrary it was fascinating. Then there were all the old black and white movies which were still a staple of filling in programming blocks in the 1970’s. The comedies were masterpieces of timing and the art of the slow burn was often on display.

Whatever the reasons, I find myself becoming more of an iconoclast sniping away at modern culture at nearly every turn. Entertainment especially is irking to me and the decline in sales seems to support my hypothesis that quality has gone down hill drastically. In the end, feeding short attentions spans may be the dominant factor in that decline. It certainly cannot be helping.

You know, it is a good thing I have a long attention span. When you have a chronic illness, you end up with too much time to kill and can’t be productive. Perhaps it is all a defense mechanism to keep from going crazy.

Whatever the cause, I am very grateful for it.

P.S. I am still in shock anybody can find the original appearance by the Daleks boring. Scandalized, in fact.

Even Science Is Primarily Political

One of the things that I have come to a reluctant conclusion on is the fact that hard science is not really hard at all. It is subject to the same vagaries that all things human are, which is a fancy way of saying politics. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is just the latest of many unsubstantiated theories touted as fact for political gain. This is nothing new with recent examples including ice age hysteria in the 1970’s and about anything to do with the Leakey’s in Africa.

For me, learning the reality of this has gored some of my sacred oxen held from childhood. I was always ready to believe my teachers and Walter Cronkite (aka Voice of God to generations) when they breathlessly talked about the latest discovery. Somewhere in my late teens I began to look harder at things as my love of things scientific blossomed further. I admit a twinge of desire that I had not done so, for ignorance truly is bliss.

So when my father forwarded the link to a story on child psychologist Arnold Gessell, I recognized the timeless aspect of politically motivated but accepted theories that had been flushed down the toilet once exposed to the sunlight of reality.  Eugenics is one of the nastier branches of science that has long since been discredited, but one hundred years ago it was at the cutting edge of left wing politics. Of course it took decades for it to fall out of favor, yet it spawned an organization, Planned Parenthood, which is still very active today. This quote sums up the problem:

How, Harris wondered, did someone such as Gesell become so enamored of eugenics that he would actually manipulate research? Harris said it is important to place Gesell in the context of the times. Social scientists were as much crusaders for the improvement of the human lot as they were researchers.

Things are no different today.

This behavior is not uncommon, despite what researchers would have you believe. There is another influence that does damage and that is simple greed. Far too much money flows into science supporting causes, though I admit quite a bit of data doctoring is also to keep one’s position in a “publish or perish” academic climate.

Beware do-gooders in science is what I say since it usually ends up skewing all the results . Science needs to be cold and ruthless. More Spock’s and fewer Dr. McCoy’s are needed. It may not be exciting to the masses, but I prefer accuracy over popularity. I imagine the residents of Alma back in 1913 would agree.

To wit, science should no longer be put upon a pedestal. Perhaps it never should have been in the first place. I can only hope time filters out all the corrupted data rather than accumulating it or we are in real trouble.

Health 8-28-2011

Not a good day at all, stuffed up and pain index is steady 5 peaking to 7. Very poor sleep due to the latter. Symptoms started yesterday morning.

Had a choice of not going out last night but though I was feeling better by the evening. May not have been a wise decision in retrospect.

Didn’t go to church and would have been foolish if I did. Very bleary on top of it all – crossword puzzle took nearly half an hour. Not even going to bother with Audiosurf since I’m getting a headache. Even though classical music is all I use for it on Sabbath days,  sound and flashing lights are the last thing I want to endure right now.

UPDATED 8-29-2011

Glad it was a transitory cold, I’m doing much better today as both the crossword puzzle and Audiosurf showed. Time to get some long postponed groceries!