I hate to admit it, but I actually had a pretty good weekend. I know that’s a disappointment to those of you who come to this blog for a daily fillip of angst, alienation, futility and despair, but even I can’t maintain perfect consistency all my life.
Saturday was quiet and uneventful, which suits me just fine. Picked up a couple needed items at Kmart and had lunch at my regular Chinese buffet. Took my renter’s door off its hinges and shaved the top down so it would close better. I discovered then that there remains yet another problem—the latch won’t engage in the hole in the striker plate. Which means I’m going to have to figure out how to move that hole just a whisker.
Whoever painted that door has much to answer for.
Sunday was, as I mentioned on Friday, Norway Day at Minnehaha Park. I first attended Norway Day in 1980 (I remember because I was attending Brown Institute of Broadcasting at the time). I was living in an apartment house just up the street. I walked down there on a Sunday afternoon just to get some fresh air, and lo and behold, My Own Tribe had gathered. It was a pretty big event, with lots of vendors and food stands, and they’d brought in a folk dancing group from Norway for entertainment.
I went back the first year I was back from Florida, and it was much the same.
But in the years since, the event has shriveled visibly. I don’t think it’s just because the old people are dying off and the young people are all half German now. I suspect there’s some tragic story of organizing groups finally reaching the breaking point and saying what they really think, and people taking their fish balls and going home.
I hope the decline hasn’t been due to the presence of the Viking Age Club & Society in the last few years.
At this point our encampment is almost half the event.
We’re crowd-pleasers, though. Our combats gathered enthusiastic crowds, and I think we gave them a pretty good show. It was only Eric and me this time, and I’m happy to report that I was on my game and beat him about three out of four bouts in two presentations. He missed the chance to get his revenge in the third, when the sky darkened, somebody opened a giant refrigerator door, and heavy rain cut loose on us and set everybody to tearing down tents, packing vehicles and driving away.
We needed the rain, though.
I also did a decoration job on the sheath of my new saex. I’m pretty happy with the results:
As a final note, I’d fail in my predictability (and render this post’s title meaningless) if I didn’t note that this week is the 50th Anniversary of what many consider the greatest cartoon short ever made, “What’s Opera Doc?” featuring Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny doing Wagner. They tell me it’s much more impressive on a big screen. But it’s funny even on YouTube.
Nice decoration on the sheath. Was that with a hot design pressed against the leather?
I love “What’s Opera Doc?” but my girls were less enthused. They enjoyed the Rabbit of Seville more than this one, because Bugs pretends to die in the end. That upset my 6-year-old.
Because the sheath is veg-tanned leather, I was able to practice my Viking “trade”–leather tooling–on it. I tool leather with stamping tools only, as the swivel knife had not yet been invented in the Viking Age (although there’s evidence that cutting in some form was done at the time, so I really ought to work out something like a primitive X-Acto knife to expand my repertoire).
As for kids and “What’s Opera, Doc?”, well, these things weren’t really done for kids anyway. Let ’em grow up a little.