Home from summer travel

I know, it's been a while since I posted to this blog, but I have been away on summer travels for a few weeks, so you will excuse me if I've been slow to update it. Well, I made it down to Elkins, WV in late July to the Augusta Heritage Center's Irish Week. I had a perfectly grand time of it, despite having to climb up and down the steep hills on the campus of Davis and Elkins College in an air cast. As mentioned earlier in this blog, I'm still having to wear it 24/7 for at least another month, at which time I will be evaluated for possible surgery. So anyway, I was able to survive the challenge of the terrain there and still manage to have a good time. I had the very good luck to be put on the ground floor of my dorm so as not to have to climb up steps in a cast, which I deeply appreciated. My roommate in my dorm was a fellow librarian, Janet Wagner, from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. She was taking piano accordian and was a newcomer to Augusta. We got on well, and she seemed to have a very good time during her week there. I do hope that she comes back and takes another class. There were a number of Augusta newcomers this year as there are each year and I do hope that most of them come back again. Not surprisingly, the numbers of attendees at Irish Week was down this year, and a lot of the "old regulars" didn't attend this year as they have in years past. It could be that we are seeing a changeover as we do from time to time in who comes back and who doesn't. The folks who used to be "regulars" when I first started going stopped coming after a while, and then a new bunch of people began coming and became yearly "regulars", and now perhaps we have a new bunch of people who will return year after year and become another generation of "regulars". I'm already seeing that in folks like my friends Dan and Ginnie and others who have been coming for a few years now and return each year. So perhaps those who'd been coming for a number of years like Jeff, Bob, Dave and others who haven't come in recent years are falling away and being replaced by new "regulars" like Dan and Ginnie. That seems to be a kind of trend I've noticed for nearly 20 years since I began going. I make new friends and reconnect with old ones each year, and every July, it begins again, a magical week of music, singing, friendship, dedication and sorrow at parting when it's all said and done. But we always know that each year, we'll come back again and spend a week in each other's company and learn from one another new songs, new tunes and new friendships, some of which will last a lifetime, and others that are fleeting like the winter's snows.

My next stop was the annual Pennsic Wars near Slippery Rock, PA. After coming home from Augusta, I had hoped to go directly to Pennsic, but between needing down time, running errands, packing and weather delays, I did not get there until the Wednesday night after coming home from Elkins. I was there a grand total of about 10 days and as usual, had emotional ups and downs that are associated with camping with 10,000+ people in all kinds of weather and camping conditions. Our camp is pretty decadent, sporting a dining pavilion, a kitchen complete with hot water for dishwashing, four propane powered burners on which to cook meals, a large food prep area, a pantry, a larder tent and plenty of large coolers for refrigeration of perishables. Our courtyard has many tiki torches and tea lights in glass cups where tent stakes are so that people can see at night, and we also have a shower complete with hot water. Our kitchen sink has a solar powered light so that we can see to wash dishes at night and our shower also has a solar powered light to allow nighttime showers to be able to be taken. Our gate has a solar light over its entrance as well. We don't do anything half way in our camp. The main problem with this is that it takes forever to set up and tear down and much manpower to do so, and in recent years, we've been shorthanded since fewer people come to Pennsic as gas prices keep rising. The date that Pennsic takes place has also been recently changed so as to start in late July, and that has affected attendance as well, since its traditional dates have been moved back a week in order to accommodate students and teachers who need to be back earlier and earlier to start school. But for the rest of us, the date change has interfered with other traditional summer activities and caused a significant drop in attendance instead of what was hoped would be a rise in attendance among students and teachers. So we get fewer people coming to camp with us and those of us who do show are really put to the test to get more work done with fewer hands. It's hot, exhausting and time consuming work that can cause tempers to flare and I wonder to myself if how much work it takes to do set up and tear down has caused fewer people to come, especially the first (set-up) week. Typically, no one gets to leave camp the first week and all we do for a solid week is hard physical labor. People come to Pennsic to vacation, not to work their butts off for a week and then a full weekend for tear down, leaving very little time for actual relaxation. But having a really nice camp is, I think, worth the effort. People come to visit and they oooooooh and aaaaaaaah at how nice we live in our camp and they longingly say, "Gee, I wish I could live here!" And some pull us aside and say to us, "What do I have to do to be able to camp here, anyway?" So we are the envy of a lot of those who stop by our camp, so all that hard work is worth the admiration of our visitors! So now it's over for another year, our camp is packed away in a derelict semi-trailer we bought several years ago that is stored at the campground, and I'm back home again trying to get back into the swing of normal life after three long weeks away.

Oh, and a very HAPPY 81st BIRTHDAY to my beloved mother, pictured left! She is a true example to me of graceful aging, refusing to act like a little old lady in a rocking chair and instead keeping busy and active and not letting her age stop her. I can only hope that when I am her age, that I am as busy and active and leading as full a life as she does. She is true to the example that life begins after retirement. She's taken university classes, traveled to Europe, spent time drawing and painting, started blogging and inspired me to do the same, gotten into digital photography (something I have yet to get at all good at doing), kept active in community activities like the Kent Environmental Council and the Kent Historical Society, stayed physically active by working out and taking water aerobics since hip replacement surgery last year and just generally been an inspiration to me as I face my own retirement in a little less than 5 years. Thanks, Ma, for everything and for being the best parent you know how to be. I'm lucky to have a mother who has always been an example and an inspiration to me. I can only hope to be half the woman that you are.