Yesterday was incredibly hot and humid - 36 degrees and 70% humidity at midday. I wore my Keen sandals for their first extended outdoor excursion, and they held up very well (ADC doesn't like his Keens so much, and he wore shoes and socks). The Rennfest is a completely different kettle of fish to the reenactments we saw in England. As befits the homeland of the Society for Creative Anachronism, there was less emphasis on authenticity and more on fun. I think that this was epitomised by the bellydancing girl accompanied by bagpipes, played by men in kilts and woad on their faces. Apart from the fact that it is only in Braveheart that woad and kilts are worn together, she would have died of exposure in the average Scottish castle. Actually, I have never seen so many men in kilts at once, nor so many women in corsets and off-the-shoulder bodices. The festival runs through September and October in a large site outside Annapolis, and is a mixture of Hutzot ha-Yotzer, junk food, and fantasy-styled theatre and reenactment. The crafts shops all accepted Master Card and Lady Visa, and many had a fantasy/dragons theme. We saw a glassblowing demonstration and bought a butter dish sized for American sticks of butter. Our search for a stopper for wine bottles remains unsuccessful.
The most historical accuracy could be found - unsurprisingly for the USA, I suppose - in the weapons. A and S each bought a wooden dagger, made of hickory from Arkansas, with a lifetime guarantee. The carpenter discussed the different kinds of swords and crossbows he had there with us and in another place a bowyer who made longbows explained how those were made. This was just before the long-awaited joust. Jousting is the state sport of Maryland, so we were told, so our expectations (or at least mine), were quite high. Here, if nowhere else, I expected authenticity. Well, I should cut both horses and riders some slack due to adverse weather conditions, but I was disappointed. I don't know if health and safety regulations got in the way, but one of my favourite exercises - man cleaves a cabbage in half at full gallop - was nowhere to be seen. Instead, four knights knocked a piece of Lego (at least, that's what it looked it) off a pole at a canter. The quintain was not in fact a quintain - yes, they had to put the tip of their sword through a ring, but the counterweight never moved! A proper quintain moves regardless and you have to avoid being punched by it whether or not you got the ring! But apart from that, everything else we saw was excellent. Even the Celtic bellydancer was good (she was a good bellydancer, and the music was good of itself.) A particularly good performance was the Barely Balanced acrobats - two men and a woman - who defied the laws of human physiology (I'm sure they took physics and gravity very much into account) to balance on each other and juggle swords. As well as being amazing acrobats,they kept up a constant patter which was actually funny.
We have subscribed to Netflix, and the first DVD we ordered was Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. It seemed very appropriate to end a medieval-themed day by watching that. Just in case the children had difficulty with the text, we watched using the closed captions for the hard of hearing (the alternative subtitles were French or Spanish, which we felt would not really be helpful). We had to stop once or twice to clarify plot points, but basically they were able to follow. S particularly enjoyed the Chorus (Derek Jacobi) and the set pieces (Harfleur and the St Crispin's Day speeches, because Henry "excited and encouraged" the ordinary soldiers). A liked everything, he said.
There was a thunderstorm Saturday night, and the next day was glorious. We spent almost the entire day at the Folk Festival, and I enjoyed "live whatsapping" to family back home (thank you for explaining how to take pictures, I was usually not close enough to the stage and/or there was a mix of sunlight and shade making photographs impossible). There were seven stages, playing various kinds of folk, country, roots rock, blues and world music, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (we arrived at 10:30 and left at 5; we could hear one of the stages through the open window when we got home). Here too there were food trucks - with much healthier options than at the Rennfest, to say nothing of much tastier ones - crafts stalls (I bought earrings) and information standsfor everything going on in Takoma Park. There was a whole row of religious stands, with the Quakers, Unitarians and some other denomination I didn't recognise but clearly mainly black, separated by the Movement for Secular Humanistic Judaism (I took their brochure), Tiferet Israel, the Farbrangen Cheder and Shirat Hanefesh. The Ps go to Adas Yisrael in DC, which have free services on Rosh Hashana and Kol Nidre, and that is where I think I will be going. Another stall was House of Musical Traditions, a local music store, and S - who has been resisting resuming guitar lessons - decided that he wanted to learn the ukelele. I am in favour, it's much more mobile, and definitely for playing music to sing too. That's a birthday present sorted, I should think.
Back to the Folk Festival - we wandered fairly randomly, hearing some urban folk, very good country/roots rock/Americana with a sense of humour, excellent Appalachian ballads. I skipped the Indian/jazz fusion in order to look at earrings, then heard a Pete Seeger tribute with Andy Wallace, a banjoist who played with Seeger himself, a bluegrass trio that did *not* have a sense of humour, and finally rock again. The festival is co-sponsored by the Folklore Society of Greater Washington, so I took a copy of their newsletter and joined their mailing list. It looks like they have a lot going on in Takoma Park, which is nice.
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