Apparently some other people were agreeing with my thinking that Jeffrey (aka Riki Rik), our maypole band's new guitarist, was doing very well. Saturday morning he got an Outstanding Castletonian. I strongly suspect that dance director Jeremy Caviness was one of those who nominated him. And Sunday morning at the dancer's convocation that Jeremy always called just after the area meeting, he dealt out special words of praise to all of the musicians, and just after he got to Jeffrey, Jeffrey himself said, "And I have to give some thanks to Bill. When I came here I had never played guitar with anyone else and didn't know hardly anything, and Bill straightened me out on all kinds of stuff. You can all blame him for me." I feel like I have passed on the torch. ( Read more... )

Not much new to report. A low pressure area sitting out in the Gulf of Mexico sent a lot of moist ocean air into eastern Oklahoma, resulting in three days where the forecasts were for 70, 80 percent chance of rain, but which turned out to be very humid with mostly overcast skies that parted to show the sun for periods of an hour or so, and other periods of an hour or so where there were light sprinkles. But the only extended shower started Sunday night about an hour into the cast party. (An army of people manifested to bring all the DJ's equipment under the cover of the Crown Inn, then people danced in the rain on the grassphalt.) Most of the three days were dry. Saturday was humongously crowded, Sunday a moderate crowd showed up after church and started to thin by last maypole time. Memorial Day the cast outnumbered the patrons at opening gate by about three to one, and it remained sparse thruout the day. Jamming with Llewellyn and Nancy at the gate before closing continued to be the best part of the day, and when I had the most people stopping to listen for a while and give compliments. (And this was after most of them had already filled out and handed in their surveys.) After next week there is gonna be a real long post with lots of introspection.

There was a strong cold front that went thundering across Oklahoma Friday night, and it hit Muskogee around midnight. But there were some gaps in the squall line with only moderate rain, and one of them was in the part that passed over Muskogee, so there were no strong winds, gully washers, or hail. Saturday morning was overcast and in the 50s, and there were still mud puddles, and the clouds gradually thinned out over the day into high haze, but let it climb only into the 60s, with a north wind still blowing. But no further rain fell, and things were drying out by afternoon. Early Sunday morning was cold enough for the cloak, but the sun appeared unhindered and I took off the cloak before noon parade. This was the first day of the season with beautiful faire weather, and I could tell by the first maypole when there were 40 patrons around it on a usually sparse Sunday morning that the day was going to be very crowded. People who had been holding back because of the previous bad weather showed up this day in their multitudes. ( Read more... )

The weather continued to be a major part of the experience on the second weekend of the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival. Light drizzle fell upon breakfast and the first maypole on Friday when we musicians dealt with it by moving under the roof of the Golden Harp while the dancers did it in the street in front. After a few numbers, I think it was Twitch who came over and told us that he had heard from some people in the Lord Mayor's Company performing on the Laundry Lass stage that our sound was interfering with theirs, so we moved over to in front of the shoe place as far away from them as we could get while still remaining under the roof, and I don't know if that really solved the problem, but we heard no more active complaints. ( Read more... )

The last dress rehearsal first day of the 2009 season of the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival opened to light to moderate rain that continued almost continuously thruout the day. The temperature remained in the 50s, and almost everyone on the cast was in some kind of cloak, as was I. I was able to fit a nylon shell, a cashmere sweater, and a polyester half-slip under my gown without any of them showing, and this along with the cloak and some opaque pantyhose was sufficient to keep me something resembling warm when there wasn't a strong wind, which happened only seldom. All of the dance shows both days were on what the dance team started calling "the grassphalt" immediately east of the Crown Inn, which we musicians took shelter under when the rains returned. I was able to get away with holding an umbrella that I have that has a flowery pattern and not some modern looking wedges of solid colors. But just walking thru the mud while trying to keep my instrument and bags dry beneath it was something that required special concentration. ( Read more... )

The weather completed a perfect record for the whole OKRF Academy season in 2009. All eight days were miserable -- either cold or rainy or both. Saturday woke to low hanging clouds and temps barely into the 50s, and it started sprinkling about noon. There was thunder and lightning and 3 inches of rain in the bucket in my back yard overnight, then the clouds continued to occupy most of the sky Sunday until very late in the afternoon, leaving the temps in the 50s with a bone chilling wind. The cast picture for this year has a lot of people in cloaks. ( Read more... )

From the middle of February to the middle of March I was driving 12 miles to Fort Gibson most of the days of the week working on a job that a woman in the choir led me to. There is a Presbyterian church there, a brick sanctuary building that I never got to see the insides of that looks like it seats about 30 people. Next to it is a house that was once a single family dwelling, but now serves as their "educational building". The congregation is so small that they don't get to have an ordained minister, but instead a "licensed lay minister" who has a name that is very easy to remember: Bill Bailey. They had a ratty looking kitchen that they wanted painted and a bathroom that had an old rusty water heater they wanted removed and some damage to the walls in the corner behind it. They also wanted a new commode and sink installed. ( Read more... )

I only went for one day this year. Money being as tight as it has been lately, the idea of spending money on motel rooms was not so appealing, plus that in the three years since a tornado took the Motel 6 away, I haven't found a really good one in the cluster around Exit 124, where the less than 40 dollar ones are, and some of the evenings there have been almost depressing. I didn't know if Shanda McDonald, the fiddler from Shawnee, would be there with her jamming tent after failing to find either Calliope House or Merry Sisters on the schedule on the fair website. I decided that if she did show up, I would stay two days; if not, only one. ( Read more... )

The cold continued thru the third weekend of Oklahoma Renaissance Festival academy, to the point where we all felt like Mother Nature was playing a surreal joke. On Saturday morning we woke to drizzling rain and a temperature just a few degrees above freezing. Oklahoma City had had some snow, and that had kept several people from attending. At about 11 o'clock Don Ryan came into the Great Hall where we were all in class to interrupt with an announcement. Broken Arrow had just had about 5 inches of snow, there were many roads being closed, including the Muskogee Turnpike, and everybody who lived in B.A. or Tulsa was "advised not to try driving home", and would be allowed to stay at the Castle that night. A call went out for blankets and air mattresses from anybody there who had some with them, and there was a big sleepover in the Black Boare Pub. ( Read more... )

The weather was warmer than the first weekend, but still cloudy and frustratingly cold. Saturday morning there was some light intermittent rain. On that same morning there were strict signs at all entrances to the Great Hall telling us not to go in, and we were told at the first morning meeting that there was going to be a wedding and feast there in the evening, with several cast members in garb attending to it, including His Majesty. This resulted in several circles of people all doing IP games at the same time in the very echoey Garden Room, and sometimes it was almost impossible to make out what was being said by the others in my group . This also resulted in John Auld being with us for some of the classes thruout the weekend. The rain ceased in the afternoon, but it remained cloudy and misty, and the group I was in met outside in front of the chapel. ( Read more... )