Faire Weather Friends

The opening weekend at Four Winds Faire brought hot and cold windy weather -- and I'm not just talking about the weather! I shan't publish the fairemily's business in a public forum, since so much was relayed in the usual way -- via the grapevine. Still, there are a few memories that are worthy of passing mention.

After the faire closed on Saturday -- a blustery, cold day -- we met at James' memorial garden to salute absent friends. We raised a glass (ah, for the song that goes with it!) to James, who welcomed so many folks (including us) to the Faire; to the Lady in the Woods, a gentle soul who was part of Sherwood Archery -- I still have the amethyst she gave me; Roland and his wife, who had the photography and Celtic works up the hill; and Myst, Dustin's knightly steed, a performer with great heart. On the last -- Dustin had posted that he would "sneak" a mention of his old companion into the service; I shot back that Myst was as much a performer and part of the Faire as us humans. He deserved more than a passing mention ... The pipers played as we drank our remembrances.

I must say that this past weekend brought out some old and new friends and supporters. Some had gone down to Sherwood near Austin; others had gone to the North Texas Irish Fest (though that might be this coming weekend). The joust was well-attended; as usual, all the merchants wanted more customers ... The gas prices may keep the casual day-tripper from making the drive from the Metroplex. We shall see.

High Drama, Low Cost

I borrowed this image -- copyright goes to the artist on DeviantArt -- because it made me laugh. I seriously need laughs this weekend since it's right before the ELA TAKS ... and the scores on that test will impact my evaluation AKA "Classroom Effectiveness Indices," which is number-crunching to "prove" how good I am in the classroom as an education ... After the TAKS tutoring at Saturday school, I don't know whether to be very worried or merely concerned. These 10th graders are very blase about the whole test-taking stakes, and their scores will rate our school for the next 2 years while Texas brings out a whole new (much harder) test. The schools are losing money, and TEA is developing a new test to "prove" how badly the districts are educating their "stakeholders," AKA students.

Four Winds Faire opens next weekend, followed by another week of school before we're out for spring break. We have kittens to distribute, older cats to find fosterage, and tons more tasks to fill several weeks -- and Faire!!! We get to see the Fairemily once more and catch up on the changes, major and minor, that occured during the last 12 months. I only hope the weather stays good for most of the run ... A repeat of this month's killer cold would be awful, though we have had snow on occasion. We shall see.

Follow the Bouncing Budget

Joy found this winged fairy cat for me ... The copyright belongs to the artist. I think the best series of such stories was written by Ursula K. Leguin; we never meet the tomcat who fathered the litter of winged kits ... Momma kitty is quite mundane and content to remain with her human while her offspring explore the world.

I normally don't discuss school on the blog -- this site is meant for more enjoyable subjects, like dolls and cats and faires. However, real life has a way of creeping up and ambushing you in very annoying ways ... and, at least for the near future, in rather dramatic ways.

It seems that the government wants to balance the budget ... and they're willing to sacrifice the futures of millions of Americans. Since those Americans can't vote for years, if not decades, then they feel the protests of millions of teachers and parents don't count for much. After all, the country (state, school district) needs to balance the budget. We still have to meet the higher education standards; all they tell us is "Learn to do more with less." Uh-huh ... I have yet to see a veteran politician come into a real classroom; when they visit, the districts take them to the schools for the best and brightest, where the kids have to go through a selection process in order to enter the school -- and where, if a kid doesn't measure up, he or she can be sent back to the home school at the end of the year ... It used to be at the end of a semester, until the home schools protested that they shouldn't be used as a dumping ground just before test time.

Our high-stakes test in ELA (English-Language Arts) happens on March 1. It worries me, since we've had such mixed results. I think the kids will pull off the passing scores ... but I don't know whether we will reach the 15% commended rate. Right now, they're trying to round up the 95% of the class that we believe can pass -- or at least need to take the test, so we don't lose points for non-participation. It's a numbers game with heavy consequences if a school doesn't hit the mark set by the government ... few, if any, of whom were educators -- or who had their kids in public schools.

Dancing Hearts, 1

"Pas de Quatre," Mme. Krassavska in center

The bad weather swooped in before I could write about the 2011 performance dedicated to Madame ... For those of you who are asking, "Madame? Isn't she a puppet," I'm talking about Mme. Natalie Krassavska, who retired to Dallas and trained many professional ballet folks here in Texas. Yes, Dallas was a nexus of classical Russian ballet for a few decades because she made it her home ... I think it was the beauty of the Turtle Creek area (oh, those azaleas!) and Nieman-Marcus downtown that she liked. (Now I know why they had borcht at the Zodiac Room there.) St. Seraphim, a Russian Orthodox Church, is located near her old home & studio near Wycliff. Yes, she's the one who helped fund its building.

In 2010, the cold was brutal. Prince of Peace Luthern Church was an old Oldsmobile dealership showroom and automotive bays ... Now, only parts of the rear exterior reveal its original purpose. Unfortunately, when your dressing rooms are concrete-block walls, heat tends to seep away quickly. Everyone clustered in the make up rooms because the lights (and body heat) warded off a little of the chill ... That was the year that Hope and I re-purposed antique tutus designed & made by a New York (Russian originally) designer in a marathon 12-day sewing sessions. They looked great, but -- oy!! -- tearing up those beautiful basques & bodices was heart-wrenching. Luckily, we didn't know where the tutus had come from (well, Madame's estate sale, yeah) until we had the tutus in pieces.

This year the weather was mild -- girls could sit around in their tutus or wander around in the hallways backstage. The performance went very well -- although there was the usual drama since these ballet directors have old rivalries that date back to when they were Madame's students back in the 70s and 80s ... I guess you could say it was a ballet family reunion honoring the ballet grandmere of them all. (Yes, I know it should be a Russian phrase, but French was the universal language for art until English took over.) We did 2 numbers -- Cherny's "In the Flower Garden," which once again featured our re-purposed tutus, this time with flowers instead of dragonfly wings, and "Can-Can," with net underskirts that dated back to the time when Hope danced for Madame. I think that "Can-Can" was the biggest hit of all the dances -- before the first interlude was finished, the audience was clapping. The dancers backstage started clapping, too, and bouncing with the music. Shouts that echoed the Moulin Rouge crowds rang in the auditorium ... We may be a tiny company, but we can outdance most of the others!

On a more serious note, Governor Rick Perry and his Republic cronies have decided to balance the state budget by sacrificing the education of our children. We went through a similar budget crunch a few years ago, when teachers were shifted around among DISD schools that didn't meet their student numbers. This year, they say that 4,000 teaching positions might be cut -- I remember teaching classes of 35 students, and you can't prepare folks who are already behind by stuffing them in classrooms like sardines ... They'll have to move most of the core classes into the new building to accommodate the numbers. My room 313 was built in the 1920s, when class sizes were less than 25, and you can't move -- let alone use any technology -- when you stick 5 more desks in that small space. I can name a few initiatives that will go: the hated enrichment period will probably be cut, as well as our collaboration period. The question remains: how many teachers would they cut from our campus? We only have 3 regular English teachers and 1-2 pre-AP teachers for grades 10-12. The 9th grade team has as many teachers as the other levels ... We just have to wait and see how all this pans out.

Polar Cats & Arctic Dogs

Ha! If I thought it was "freezing cats & dogs" back in January, that was just a foreshadowing of the polar blast that hit us the first week of February ... I haven't missed 4 straight days of school since ... well, I don't know when. Maybe 15 years ago -- that's the date that the weatherman says we last had more than 1-2 days of below freezing temps. Considering our furnace decided to give up the ghost last week, Joy and I spent a frigid 4 days under blankets and bundled up in layers of clothes, a lesson we learned at Four Winds Faire when the Mother Nature reminds us that spring doesn't really happen until March 22, which is midway through the run of Faire. I only hope that the weather settles down after this. Yes, we have another 1-2 days of cold this coming week, but nothing like the Groundhog Freeze of 2011.

So, what news since January? I have started a rough draft for "A Fairy Tale Wedding," which stars the BJDs owned by Mariann, Joy and myself. I finally read through a 19th century analysis of the Italian Renaissance by a Swiss author ... very dense, a mix of confirmed fact and speculation. I suppose it's similar to works by Robert Graves (I,Claudius) and other writers of the late Victorian Age. I could tell that the Swiss was not a Roman Catholic; he had some unstated comments about the foolishness of Catholic customs, although he was too well-bred to put them into prose.

Ironically, the Duchy of Savoy was a country that I researched (lightly) when I was "Misling Nicola di Palmieri" in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) back in the 70s. The really old days when TRF (Texas Renaissance Festival) was a new concept for entertainment ... Back when Don Juan and Miguel let amateurs participate in their routines. Let's see -- that was what? 3 or 4 decades ago ... How time flies like a Lear Jet when you're busy doing other things.

Savoy is located on the borders of France & Italy -- depending on which map you check, you'll find some Savoy cities now located within Italian borders and others in France. Officially, Savoy is a French province ... but its port area was located in Monaco.

I haven't gotten very far -- Until Saturday, my fingers were too cold to type more than a few minutes ... I may need to sit down with the girls and brainstorm the conflicts -- and figure out who (at the moment) is ally or enemy of whom ... This wedding party puts on a happy face, but there's intrigue in the background. No one, even the ingenues, is what he or she appears to be.

Freezing Cats & Dogs

Whenever Joy plans to fly out to California to visit our friends, Mother Nature decides it's time to send some freezing stuff to Texas ... Generally, we don't have a white Christmas. No, we have a "white" Martin Luther King, Jr., day. This year, the snow's a week early.

Joy feeds the birds in our back yard thicket. By this time, we have numerous cardinals, chickadees, blue jays ... and squirrels coming to the feeding stations to check out the goodies. This photo is from the Big Snow of 2010, a storm that took down power lines and trees across North Texas. We're hoping that conditions don't get that bad this year, but no one knows. At least they're predicting only 1 to 3 inches. At Four Winds Faire, they're going for 3+. On black top country roads, driving can become very treacherous. My school commute on Monday may be the trickiest part of the day ... we shall see.

Mar and I (with Joy's help) are starting a story thread based on our BJDs dressed in Renaissance clothing (all made by Lady Fayre). This story line begins with the arranged marriage of a Fae princess with a Human price ... but undercurrents of politics and intrigue infect the new couple's fragile happiness. Mar loaned me her little netbook so I could keep the story in one place ... and I can work in front of the television instead of relative isolation in the computer room. I need to read up on my Renaissance politics -- the Italian city-states make a good background, and it may still be the time of the Pope and anti-Pope. I also need to connect the different Italian clans with their respective cities: Medicis & Borgias with Florence & Venice. And how does Roma fit into all this mess? Do we want to keep in the "real" world? Well, I can start writing, and we'll see where things go.

Final exam time for students this week means more (and less) work and stress. We must survive the last full day with kids -- a "C" day, that lets us see all of the students for 40 minutes or so. Since the weather today is nasty, we may be short teaching staff until they can drive the distance ... and some kids may opt to stay home. Who knows? We prepared our ACPs last week, though I still haven't met with the teacher who will give my exam. I spent too much time dealing with student problems on Friday; Mrs. B talked to the girls, and they seem to have worked things out without "bitch slapping" or curses. 1 long day, then the exams -- the kids go home early, which gives me time to grade projects and determine final grades. Then a 3-day weekend, a staff development day, then the 2nd semester begins ... Man! Didn't we just do all this last year?

Yesterday, we settled down to watch Trinity Blood. Mar hadn't seen the series, and we had watched it piecemeal on Cartoon Network -- when CN ran decent anime series. Now it's next to impossible to find anime on the so-called CN, just American drek. TB is a very densely plotted series -- you have to watch and listen to each episode because, at any moment, there may be a flashback or line or dialogue that foreshadows a character's past or future. Many fans saw the first episode which introduced the future earth and Abel Nightroad and the dangers from the vampires. Although this civilization has technology, much of it is based on "lost technology" from the past, which gives the series a steampunk feeling -- futuristic yet characters use swords or pistols and there are steam engines for the trains. Flying machines look like huge flying fortresses ... and every so often the translator (and it may be an accurate translation) will state that we're looking at a particular European city ... and the geography is all wrong. It's a case of "take your brain and put it aside." That's what we say when knowledge and the story don't jibe. Coleridge would call it "suspension of disbelief."

Back to the humans and vampires and the Vatican. Yes, the Japanese have turned to that bastion of the occult, the Roman Catholic Church. Well, Stephen Sommers did it with Van Helsing, as do other stories that don't fall under this purview. The Vatican connects the future human communities together and protects them from the vampires, similar to what the Church did during the Middle Ages when religion united men more than national pride. The costumes of the Pope, cardinals and priests are like nothing you'd see today -- well, the Pope does wear white, and the cardinals do wear red, and the priests wear black ... but the nuns' costumes are rather unique versions of the modern nun habit. But what the hey -- sit back, watch and enjoy the story.

And what a story! From the beginning, we have the doofus Abel Nightroad, who is more than a clumsy, hungry fool. We meet the vampire who works for a vast network of vampires; we meet Cardinal Caterina who runs the organization that sends out agents like Abel. (To tell the truth, there IS no other agent like Abel.) We see the richly imagined post-Armageddon world. (The series starts with a narration of how the world nearly destroyed itself.) Then there's the battle between Abel and the hijacker vampire ... when Abel reveals that he isn't just an ordinary priest. None of the AX priests and nuns under Cardinal Caterina is "just" an ordinary human. I must admit, however, that Caterina has a wonderful harem of pretty boy priests under her command ... and the music suggests that there is a romance lurking under the gothic horror. The artwork is gorgeous -- and with all the intricate lines (and pretty boys) IT falls more on the shojo side than the shonen side. Shojo gothic horror ... hmmmm. Yeah, I like it.

Since I watched the story all the way to its conclusion, I (and Joy) have to remain quiet whenever the foreshadowing appears ... We got to the point (1o years before) when Caterina ran from vampire assassins who killed her family only to be saved by a mysterious man (Abel in shorter hair) and the introduction of Esther, a nun who will become more important as the series progresses ... but there are hints even by episode 5 and 6 of why all this incidents are important. Shoot, in episode 2, Abel has a short flashback to his past -- and we're left wondering: where is he? who is the sleeping woman in the glass coffin? who is the guy holding up a severed head? We'll get the answers MUCH later in the series -- but don't forget the scene, boys and girls. It becomes very important near the end.

In a word -- Trinity Blood earns its 4 out of 5 stars.

Ballet this week may depend on the weather. I don't drive to East Dallas when the weather threatens to be freezing wet ... and my visits to Mom also depend on the highways. I just wish that one of us lived a little closer. That can't be helped. Back to ballet -- we have a show at the end of the month, a classical ballet festival hosted by some of Madame's former students. Many student/directors are invited to bring their companies ... we'll see how it goes at the Prince of Peace school this year. The school took an old car dealership's buildings and remade them into a church sanctuary and outlying classrooms. If you look at the buildings one way, you can see that the fine arts classrooms were originally part of the auto repair area -- the sanctuary was the show room. The auditiorium? I'm not sure what it originally might have been ... the stage is quite large, although the seating is rather small. I suspect that someone on the festival board knows someone on the church board. The church had posters for fine arts involvement, so I suspect that the costs of renting the facilities are less there than at the Granville ... There should be some good dancing on January 29. I'm just glad that we got most of the costumes finished in December.

Rabbits, Dolls & Cats

Rabbits to all --

My friend Karyl says that's it a tradition to end and begin a year with "Rabbit!" I'm not sure where the tradition started, but 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit -- or will be when the lunar new year begins in February.

I chose a horned frog because TCU won the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. They kept saying it was a small school -- well, with 9, 000 students, I guess it is small compared with the huge California universities, or the University of Texas at Austin -- Big colleges are larger than some small towns ... Shoot, TCU has more students than some Texas towns (like Whitehouse where Four Winds Faire is located).

2010 ended on a solemn note. My mom put her beloved Ginger, a 9-year-old dauschund, to sleep on Friday. Ginger had developed diabetes that would've required 3 injections a day and a strict prescription diet ... All the old memories of my dad's death 21 years ago combined with her own worries about her ability to take care of an ailing dog combined. When she tried to hold Lola, my terrier, so I could clip her nails, Mom didn't have the strength to keep her still -- and Ginger weighed twice as much. Karen, Joy and I visited my mom and Ginger on that last day ... Ginger knew something was wrong; she gazed at each of us. I know Mom had been crying -- she was crying on Friday. I don't know whether her decision was a betrayal of Ginger's love and trust, as Joy says, or whether it was better than our decision to keep Lady Orchid who suffered with cancer until she passed away ... Either decision is hard -- Rita Mae Brown once wrote that animals gave us their love and trust, and in return we cared for them ... and the hardest choice was knowing when it was time to let go and let them pass away in dignity and without pain. I just don't know ... On Facebook, Nancy McMahon posted a memorial to her Missy, who had to be put to sleep (at age 22!) 2 years ago. I still remember Mad Margaret and Calpurnia, my Houston kitties, and Del the scarf kitty ... Ticky, Joy's dog who moved down with us, Amber Sue Dancer and her sire ... Skipper, Joy's parrot who bit my ear, and Harry Tiel Stone who would turn on his back for me, and Pertwee the monk parakeet. Our lives have been touched by so many animal friends. Skittles now sleeps on the computer monitor while I type -- Margaret would do the same; however, she always made sure her tail draped over the screen. We remember them at their strongest; I hope they remember us at our best when we meet on the Rainbow Bridge.