Updated July 16

The main thing I look forward to at Pennsic is meeting friends, old and new, local and far-flung.

If you're going, please let me know here.

If you want to do something specific, either post here or drop me an e-mail.

I am sporting a new feature this year -- a red, leather coronet with gold frets on it. I usually wear it over a cap of maintenance.

OK, so where’s Liam?

I took my first swing through the Pennsic schedule.

We are planning to arrive on the middle Friday.

Here are some places I expect to be.

The concert are all in the performing arts tent, diagonally across the street from Maguire's Marauders, where we are lucky enough to camp/

Saturday

4 p.m.: Taking pictures for a friend.

5 p.m. (I hope),  coffee at Inner Vagabond to connect with friends.

Evening: Out and abouting with a friend. Maybe Eoforwic bardic, maybe Moonwulf, maybe other visits.

Sunday

11 a.m., Opening Ceremonies

2:30 p.m., Rapier Champions Tournament

5 p.m., Efenwealt concert

9 p.m., I Sebastiani

(The event in memory of Morguhn Sheridan is also that night. I am unsure if I will want/be able to go).

Monday

4:30 p.m., Lost and Found Auction

Evening: I will drop in at the EK Teen Party, because it is being run – again – by Baroness Pretty In Pink, I mean, Leonete.

Fairly open after that

Tuesday

10 a.m., Field Battle

3 p.m., EK Fencing Tournament

8 p.m., Cerian’s concert.

9 p.m., I will be helping at the EK Open party in EK Royal. Please stop by.

Wednesday

7 p.m., Raquy and the Caveman concert. (maybe)

8 p.m., Heather Dale concert! (If you have never heard her, please come).

I will probably try to drag bards across the street to our camp  after the concert.

Thursday

1 p.m., Ansteorra Fencing Tournament

3 p.m., Rapier Woods

6 p.m., East Kingdom Court.

I am assuming the Calontir party and/or Ansteorran Chili will be this night. I would love to find out for sure.

I will probably wander up to the Midrealm Open party later.

Friday

These are tentative. Other things may occur. ;)

6 p.m., Closing Ceremonies.

8 p.m., “Much Ado About Nothing.”

We’ll leave Saturday.

I am looking forward to seeing you all!

Obviously, I would like to publicize the  Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund as well as I can in the next week, but obviously I do not want to spam everyone, either.

I think there are items there that will interest anyone going to Pennsic (and some that will interest folks who are not).

If you could post something to the effect of.

There is a pre-Pennsic sale of some pretty cool donated items going on at Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund. If you have a chance, please take a minute and check it out.

Or something to that effect.

I'd like to ask the following people to hit their kingdom list with this if they think it would be appropriate:

silme

pepperbeast

uniquename123

summers_place

much_ado

silverstah

trimguy

ladyeliz

That covers The Midrealm, Aethelmearc, Ealdormere, Ansteorra, Atlantia and the hordes of folks coming from Drachenwoald and Lochac. ;)

If you are not on your kingdom list, can you please pass it to someone who is? And confirm for me.

If anyone thinks it would be appropriate for a local list (I am thinking mainly East, but there are other local groups that have a lot of people go to Pennsic), just drop a line here to let us know you did it.

Thanks, everyone!

I posted this earlier on EK List. That's why it may look familiar.

There is now an updated (beyond what's here) web site at Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund

There are some cool new items on the web site!

We are continuing to raise money for the East Kingdom Travel Fund.

We have some excellent offers from bards, artisans and some guys.

We’re going to put them up on a web site, but I thought I would offer them here first

First-come, first-served. These are all planned for Pennsic. Yes, send me an e-mail claiming the item, and  I hook you up with the donor.

Minimum $25 donation

1. Lady Judith, royal bard, will do a 30-minute command performance of period pieces for you and your camp.

2. Lord Joris will give you a one-hour juggling lesson.

3. Master Andrixos (trimguy)says:

During the first week of Pennsic, Master Andrixos Seljukroctonis will provide you with two hours of personalized tutoring in Latin, at whatever level you need.  Alternately, it can be claimed as two hours of his time in translating documents or scroll texts into Latin.  (this is probably best redeemed when he is at home.  If you are taking on-site instruction, we should probably spend some time beforehand feeling out where you are in your studies.

Minimum $40 donation

1. Lord Maeryk has hand-crafted a pen of coco-bolo wood, especially for you.

It's the second from the left in this Photo.

SOLD: For 50 quatloos!


Minimum $50 donation.

1. Lady Katherine Ashwode will write a poem, song or story from information you provide. If you win this item quickly enough, she may well have it ready for Pennsic. (Ask Countess Alethea about the on-the-fly song Katherine wrote about the manliness of Duke Gunthar of Ansteorra.

2. Master Liam will visit your camp and he just might happen to have a variety of combinations of water, malt, yeast and hops with him. Let’s say he might have six different combinations of those elements. He’ll have tasting glasses, too, and with a little encouragement, he might tell stores about his six favorite beers.

3. Master Liam, busy guy that he is, will shoot at least 100 pictures of you and your household/camp/etc. and provide them to you electronically after Pennsic. These can be in-camp photos, pictures of your unit at a specific battle or anything else you might work out. (This item available more than once).

Minimum $65 donation

4. Lady Alesoune will make you a fencing doublet to your specifications. This will not be able to be done before Pennsic.

As you might guess, we are also looking for additional donations of time and skill.

Popular items include preparing dinner for a certain number of people. (The bidder also pays for the food items needed)

An hour or two of camp work.

Dinner cleanup for one or more nights.

Lessons of an hour or two from people with specific skills.

Anything else you might think of.

Please contact me at liamstliam@gmail.com to claim an item or to offer a donation.

• “When someone cooks for you, they are telling you about themselves. They’re telling you about their own personal histories, they’re telling you about what their mothers made for them, their ethnic history, their national history, the history of their region, what they like. And they’re giving you the purest expression of that by offering you food.”
• Quoting Mario Batali on omnivorous eating: “If it’s slower than me, stupider than me and tastes reasonably good, then pass the salt.”
• “I thought I could drink, but every 90-year-old Russian grandmother can drink my sorry ass under the table and drive me home while rolling a cigarette.”
• “The first person to eat a snail was one hungry son of a bitch. Some starving, country-ass (expletive) is so hungry he’s watching a lone snail crawl by and he thinks, ‘Well, maybe by slathering enough garlic butter on it, I can choke it down.’”
• On Mario Batali: “Little by little by little he has elevated our hopes and expectations of what a meal should be and can be.”
• On Rachel Ray: “First of all, bitch doesn’t tip. … If you’re doing $40 a day, that means (you’re) stiffing waiters all over the place. … Aspiring to mediocrity is not a good thing, and that’s what pisses me off. It’s not OK to buy prechopped onions in the supermarket. It’s just not OK. Garlic powder is not food. … It’s her world, I just live in it. And on what she spends on (nail care) in a week she could have me killed, and she probably will. But at least I can watch her neck slowly disappear on television.”
• “I respect nonprofessionals on the Food Network. Giada De Laurentiis isn’t a chef, but I’d eat her food. … Ina Garten is certainly not a chef. I wouldn’t want to spend a weekend at her house … When Ina makes mashed potatoes or Ina makes meatloaf or Ina makes chicken, it’s good. She takes that extra step and she tells you … it is possible to properly roast a chicken. She will show you how.”
• On Gordon Ramsay’s Fox series “Hell’s Kitchen”: “It’s a horrible theater of cruelty.”
• His preferred final meal: Roasted bone marrow spread on crusty bread and sprinkled with sea salt.
• (Warning: Some readers may find this offensive): On the only circumstances under which he could tolerate sharing a meal with Rachel Ray: If she were wearing “a ball gag and assless chaps.”

Snubbed mission group's help is welcome in Nashville

Texas students paint, landscape seniors' home

Bob Smietana
Nashville Tenneseean

Fernia Harris was looking for a little divine intervention

And  without knowing it, the Southern Baptist Convention came through for her.

This week, a group of high school students from Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, which was tossed out of the convention in late June for being too gay friendly, have been painting and doing landscaping around her house at 151 Fain St., just southeast of downtown.

The group had planned to be working at a Southern Baptist outreach in Kentucky, but was uninvited. That sent group leaders scrambling for an alternative plan, which is how they ended up at Harris' house.

"It's a blessing," said Harris, who lives with her husband on a fixed income. "The Lord sent someone to us. He always steps in right on time."

Fran Patterson, minister to youth at Broadway Baptist, was just glad to be of help.

For weeks, the group, a high school singing group known as the Chapel Choir, had been planning to go to the Mountain Outreach at University of the Cumberlands, in Williamsburg, Ky.

They were hoping to work on several homes, and then sing at local churches. But on June 29, she got a call, saying the college had rescinded its invitation to her youth group.

The rest of it.

1. Welcome to rowan1, who is way cool, and rikibeth, who is really cool and knows a bunch of youse guys.

2. Reason No. 23 ya'all wish you were married to me.

alethea_eastrid came home tonight to Maine mussels steamed in Cooperstown Brewing IPA, lemon, ginger and garlic.

Oh, and fresh corns.

I then  took the leftover corn, the juice from the mussels, onions, zucchini (for color, kudos to mama_hogswatch), paprika and some water and made soup.

3. I wrote this to someone who goes to school in Boston.

Others maybe interested.

Speaking of Lovecraft . . .

If you have a car at school, head west on I-90.

Take it to Exit 8, Route 32 North to Route 9 West.

Follow the directions to Quabbin Reservoir. That's the inspiration for "A Colour Out of Space."

You can feel it when you get there.

4. Beer tonight -- Weyerbacher (Penn.) Blasphemy, an ale aged in oak barrels. I did not realize A) It is no longer brewed. B? It's a Belgian Quad. I had gone to EBI (Saratoga Springs) to see if they had the Gravitation (they didn't). I bought the Weyerbacher Quad instead (not bad), and this one (you can tase the fact that it's 11 percent and the whiskey. Makes you warm. Oh, and Stone (Calif.)
Indian Pale Ale, the standard by which all others should be measured.

5. Boston friends! The Globe is reporting that the Franklin Park Zoo may have to close because of budget cuts. Someone alert new_man.

6. The SCA never ceases to amaze me. The outpouring for Emma and Talorc is just amazing. So is the hard work of jenphalian, lbitw and knoggleknot.

7. Give me a better line from a Canadian Band than "Methane gas comes out my ass."