My Trip to Feast of the Hunters' Moon or Discussion With A Wall

Last weekend, starting on Friday, I went with an Away Team from the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, journeying for 530+ miles and ten hours (and a bit of change) with four other people in a ten-passenger Ford Van, towing a 14-foot trailer from Minneapolis, MN to West Lafayette, IN. Our destination was Historic Fort Ouiatenon Park outside West Lafayette, where we'd be camping for the next two nights. Once we arrived, set-up was in order: two canvas wall tents for sleeping, cots and bags and gear related to tenting, and gear for two days' worth of activity. Activity which also needed a tent, a 14-foot canvas affair with a full wall to house tables, shelves, seating- everything you need to demonstrate and sell at an event.

The event? The 49th annual Feast of the Hunters' Moon, a re-creation of the annual fall gathering of the French and Native Americans which took place at Fort Ouiatenon, a fur-trading outpost in the mid - 1700s. It is held annually in early autumn on the banks of the Wabash River, four miles southwest of West Lafayette, Indiana.

The 13-hour day was rough, made more so by the fact that I was (and still am) battling an ear infection and bronchitis, but it eased and moderated when we were finished setting up and could relax for a while before the show began the next day. Cocktails were had. Cards Against Humanity was played. Hilarity ensued.

Saturday was busy, as it always is at this event. We wound up hosting some re-enactors, as we always do at this event. One group came in and played Pope Joan, a multi-player game good for filling in spaces between re-enactment. It's historically accurate as well, so they bought a set. One of them came back later to fetch the woman from whom they'd bought it for help - she's a bona-fide people person and a collector of people, and in the course of helping them to refine their understanding of the game, she befriended them.

Jump to after-hours: dinner in our bellies, cocktails in hand, playing Cards Against Humanity again, and one of the re-enactors stopped in to say hi. He stayed for a bit, talked for a bit, then left to refill his own cocktail. Our staff - the one who'd gone to play the game with them - was worried that we'd scared him off with our CAH shenanigans, what with the raunchiness of the game. She forgot about that in the buzz of other activity, and the game went on.

We moved on to other after-hours catching-up pursuits after our game was finished, the rest of the staff and our guests eventually drifting off to bed as it got later. I was up with our camp cook, about to call it a night myself, when our new re-enactor friend came back. We talked for a bit, then he got around to what he'd really wanted to say in coming back: he'd overheard some of our talk throughout the day and he realized that we're not, but he's definitely going to be voting for Trump.

Oof.

For my own part, I can't fathom how anyone can support him. Period.

That in mind, though, it struck me as an interesting opportunity: I've asked a number of times why anyone would, in a number of different settings. The most common response? None at all. I thought I might get a chance to hear a different side.

I was glad that both women who'd made the trip were already asleep, though - the very notion of Trump support immediately shuts them down almost completely, and I fear there'd have been an ugly scene had either or both of them been awake. As it was, the camp cook and I listened to our new friend lay out his reasoning.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not as much a follower of politics as I should be. While I could have refuted his points with "No! You're wrong!", I refrained. Our camp cook is well-versed in many things, political discourse included. He handled much of the rebuttal eloquently and calmly as I listened, but our friend was unswayed. Indeed, he seemed not to be listening to any of it.

Without going into a lot of detail, the re-enactor's support stems mostly from his displeasure with The State Of Things. Fair enough, that.

He interrupted himself countless times to disclaim, "Do I support everything that he says? Fuck no!", which I took to be his way of discarding the most unsavory portions of a disturbing collage of wholly-unsavory philosophy. Eventually his main motivation came out: he and his wife run a cleaning business which employs a handful of people, and he can't afford insurance for his employees or for himself.

Naturally, that fuckin' Obamacare is to blame.

With a $15 minimum wage, he'd have to raise his rates to the point where he'd price himself out of the market.

Naturally, Trump is the answer.

He'd hear nothing to the contrary. Respectful/non-abusive attempts to illustrate problems with Trump immediately shut him down almost completely, and had the camp cook - who'd timed out on our friend's shutdown - or I dug in our heels, an ugly scene might well have followed. As it was, we were still friendly enough despite our differences as he began to beg off, citing the lateness of the hour, but we became as heated as we would get that night when he said, "And that Black Lives Matter bullshit - pull up your pants and get a fuckin' job!".

Then I did dig in, and without making a long story longer, I laid out a defense for my postion: no freedom 'til we're equal.

And it was like talking to a wall - my increase in emphasis and volume had little effect other than what you'd expect from emphatic loudness in an encampment of canvas tents in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. So I pushed in the clutch, we agreed to disagree, and we shook hands.

In the epilogue, I'm struck by his willingness to grasp a couple of vague promises and outright dismiss so much negativity and dishonesty. I'm struck by his willingness to put his own interests before that of 325 million other people. I'm struck by his belief that anyone claiming unfair conditions should sit down and shut up. I'm struck by his refusal to entertain any contrary notion, even briefly.

But I learned something.

I Got A New Hat!

I was at a birthday party Saturday night after work with some friends from the Renaissance Festival, and while it wasn't my birthday, I received a present! My great good friend Ryan (whom I adore!) made me this hat with his own two hands and his remarkable knitting skills, toiling away for... Minutes on end? Days? Weeks? I don't know how to knit, nor do I know much about the activity knitting, so I imagine that he labored day and night for weeks between the beginning of October and last Saturday night to create this wonderful hat! Or possibly he knocked it out in one afternoon and he's been holding on to it. I couldn't say.

What I can say is that Saturday night's birthday party marked the first opportunity for him to present the present, and to do so he had to lure me from the house into a chilly, windy night. He brought it from his car as I stood, shivering. When I saw what he had, my discomfort was forgotten and I squee'd a little, ditching my winter hat to try it on.

"Does it fit?" he asked.

"As a matter of fact, it does. This is great!" I replied. "It's feckin' cold out here - let's go back in!"

He wouldn't let me wear it because he hadn't brought a gift to the party and it's probably... Tacky? Yes, tacky to bring a gift to a birthday party when the gift is for someone else. So I left it in my car and in the epilogue I've got a nifty new hat, which is awesome on all sorts of levels. Not the least of which is how I loves me some hats!

You might be wondering why Ryan made me a hat. That's a legitimate thing to wonder, and here's a story of what happened.

I've been working at the festival for quite a while, and over the years I've accumulated some costume parts. Ryan has been going to the festival for quite a while - his wife works there - but he doesn't have any costume bits. He made plans to be there on Festival Friday, a "field trip" day that was added to the last weekend of the run a few years ago. Some other "shop slaves" and I have made Festival Friday the annual date for a drunken site stumble, which is exactly what it sounds like. Festival Friday tends to be somewhat sparsely-attended, and the drunken tradition started when fellow shop slave Lewis and I were sent on an information-collecting mission. In the rain. With drinks.

This year it became "Strunken Dumble", and Ryan wanted to attend. In costume. So I let him borrow a kilt and a shirt, and when everything was done, he wanted to buy the shirt. Instead, I gave it to him.

So I suppose the hat would be more of a "barter" item than a gift.

The Weekend That Ended Up Being So-So

Owing to my somewhat-cockeyed work schedule, weekend means "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday."  I've tried explaining my schedule a number of different times to people I know who work "regular" hours in the following (and apparently incomprehensible) ways:

• The days I work one week are the days I'm off the next.  For example, if you know that I'm working on a given Monday and Tuesday, you will also know that I'm not working the following Monday and Tuesday.

• I work three twelve-hour shifts one week and four twelve-hour shifts the next.
  

• A "pay period" for my employer is a two-week period starting on a Sunday.  The way I'm scheduled during a pay period is like this:  I work Sunday, I'm off Monday and Tuesday, I work Wednesday and Thursday, I'm off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I work Monday and Tuesday, I'm off Wednesday and Thursday, and I work Friday and Saturday, which is the end of the pay period.
  

Admittedly, the last explanation is a bit more wordy than it could be, and most people I know have a tendency to tune out not long after I've started explaining. So I don't use it that often any more.

But that's that. This is something else, or at least it was intended to be. I don't really like thinking of work when I'm not there.

Anyway, my weekend: I didn't do much of anything on Friday, except to return to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things that I'd forgotten on Thursday when I went after work. Saturday, though, I'd made plans to help out some folks I help at the MRF, getting their booth ready for the upcoming run.

Any other year, I'd be at this booth on most - if not all - of the sixteen dates of the festival.  This year, though, I can't.  I used up most of my available time off in the end of March and the beginning of April, before my short-term disability benefits started, allowing me to be off work for 73 days and have a mobility-restoring surgery.

But that's a story for another time.

Saturday wound up being called off because of the threat of rain and was rescheduled for Sunday, which is OK. I'm flexible.  Sometimes.  Kind of.  At least, I didn't have anything planned for Sunday.  So it worked out.

I made myself some coffee and started up the Interwebs Fetcher, poking around some dusty corners for a bit, enjoying some breakfast, and so on.  Until I got to thinking about how I've really been itching to get another tattoo, which made me get restless, and it eventually made me leave the house.


I went to this place and talked to one of the artists for a while, and wound up getting this

on the inside of my left forearm, just down from my elbow.  Apparently this was a minor miracle on its own, it being Saturday and the shop's busy day, and me without an appointment.  A few people came in during my two hours (and a tiny bit of change) in the chair, but the artist and the new guy/intern/apprentice were both surprised by how quiet it was while I was there.  Clearly, the universe approves of my new tattoo!

Or something.

This image was one of several I've been considering for quite a while, and I decided to get it done partly to declare my love and admiration for the body of work of the band They Might Be Giants generally, and for this album specifically.  I don't like it any more well than any of their other work, but I received the CD as a gift a number of years ago - it's a sentimental attachment. I also wanted to celebrate the occasion of my post-surgical-feeling-much-better-and-continuing-to-improve, something I could've done by composing haiku or burning... I dunno... A "Back-Malfunction Goblin" in effigy.  The tattoo seemed more permanent, somehow. 

the top of a torn sock

Anyway, he finished, took some pictures, bandaged me up, took my money, and sent me on my way, a happy little man with some new colorful ink.  Before I left, I was given after-care instructions, one of which was the advice cover that with something before you go to sleep or you'll ruin your sheets.  I'm glad I did.

Here you see the top of a sock I used to cover the work before bed.  You can plainly see that my arm became something like an offset-printing press.  Cool and gross at the same time. 

Which I discovered Sunday morning.  That was the day I was supposed to help with final prep on the MacGregor Games booth at the MRF site, so I was up shortly after seven, enjoying a breakfast and coffee before getting ready to go.  I brushed my teeth, washed myself, and collected the various items I'd need to be gone for a good part of the morning, then got in to my car and left home.

photo not taken sunday

It was a foggy morning, and still.  I set out from home listening to this album and made it about four miles before this car of mine began hitching and gasping, losing power, and eventually stalling on the side of Highway 169, a bit southwest of Alloy Hardfacing & Engineering.

"Well, shit." I said to myself, imagining the great good fun of the long walk home from here in the fog, the cost of a tow from here to... Someplace not here.  Preferably a place with auto mechanics.

The car started again and idled wonderfully, so I drove off on the shoulder of the highway, hazard lights flashing, Nissan Maxima choking and lurching along and unwilling to go faster than 25 m.p.h.  We made it to the parking lot of the OK Corral, Suzette's, and a used-car lot that seems to change hands at least once a month.  I shut off my poor car and sat for a minute, my mind racing agitatedly...  My savings has been wiped out by my recent eleven-week leave from work, combined with my return consisting of half-shifts, six-hour days - a slight pay cut from the 60% I was being paid by my employer's short-term disability provider.  When I combined that with the thought that I'd just taken a loan from my 401k to pay my out-of-pocket medical expenses and that multiple loans aren't allowed....

I started the car again, and again it ran just fine until I asked it to go.  It reluctantly sputtered its way through the rest of the parking lot to nearby County Road 59, a "back way" to return home.  I thought that there wasn't anything to lose in trying to get back home, dodging the expense of a tow, so up the hill on CR 59 we went.  Before the hill began, I managed to get the Maxima in to 4th gear with much sputtering and protest. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was down to 1st gear, rocking forward and back in my seat in the hope that my added momentum would be enough to get her to CR 66 and the right turn (and the other side of the hill!) that would take me home, saying I think I can, I think I can, I think I can to myself over and over.

We made it, barely, and the rest of the drive was fairly uneventful.  By the time we got home, the car was whistling and because I wanted- no, I needed to pull something positive out of this whole mess, I discovered that I could control the pitch of the whistle with the accelerator and considered playing with it for a while, make some Sunday morning music for my neighbors to enjoy.

photo also not taken sunday

"Probably the car's not a toy, though." I said to myself before I went inside to make a couple of phone calls.

I left the ailing Max in the street instead of my driveway in case she was planning to vomit any or all of her fluids in her malaise, enjoying the still of the morning and basking in the sunshine for a moment.

Inside, I set about emptying and rinsing my travel mug, fixing a fresh batch of coffee, visiting the restroom, making phone calls, and in general restlessly knocking around the house.  It wasn't long before I discovered that Megatron had struck again in the short time I'd been away.

a cat who wasn't named for a long, long time

Because I mean "six pounds of female tortie kitten" when I say Megatron, and not "sixty thousand pounds of evil Transformer", I found a houseplant uprooted and on the floor with potting soil everywhere.   You know, instead of a heap of smoldering rubble where my house used to be.  So, preferable.

Even so, a plant that was older than the kitten lying on the floor amid chaotic sprays of soil over the computer desk, my books...  It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I sent her to the shower stall in the bathroom for a time out to think about what she'd done while I vacuumed up the mess and put the plant in a vase with water in the hopes that it will grow new roots.

Maybe the universe doesn't approve of the new tattoo.