THERE IS MUCH VALUE IN friendships – even more so in those that are decades long.
In 1986, I began working at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire’s fencing booth. Dubbed the privateer ship “Cardiff Rose” (after the 1976 Roger McGuinn song/album of the same title), we taught people to swordfight using foils; we also staged exhibition bouts with epee, saber, shenai, main-gauche, and other martial implements. These shows drew in many guests, as did our hawkers (myself among them), and an unspeakably tightknit and rollicking good time was had by all – until our much beloved Black Point Forest site was sold to condo developers ’round 2000.
It’s important for Village Elders to know how to pass on what they know.
After that original RenFaire closed, some of us migrated en masse (swords included) to similar “living history” events, including The Great Dickens Christmas Fair. But we also see each other at annual picnics in an undisclosed East Bay park. My copilot (then coworker) and I met at RenFaire in 1988, and recently attended one such reunion. As we drove regretfully home (it’s hard to say goodbye to unique friends you’ve known for almost 40 years), the following discussion ensued, dutifully recorded elsenet (edited here for clarity):
Friends, Roses, countryfolk – lend me your brains.
It was so good to see, connect with, and learn from everyone, which is invariably the case whenever we gather. The thought occurred – and I’m still puzzling the why of it – that our longtime, lifetime Cardiff Rose association-web is good training for becoming Village Elders.
Stay with me here.
1. We are for the most part a generally and generously accepting group of people (we’re all misfits on some level, which helps), except when it comes to militant/willful stupidity. Village Elders may welcome the strange(r), but they also don’t take no guff.
2. The prefatory acronym AKICITR – “All Knowledge Is Contained In The Rose,” which we all use to pose online questions to activate our “hive mind” – is amusing, yes, but also true thanks to our vasty array of eclectic educations, singular experiences, and multiform talents. And what we don’t know, we know how to learn about. Village Elders must be, or at least be perceived to be, sources of wisdom.
3. Strictly as a collective, it would be fair to say that “we’ve seen it all” (see point #2), while mostly avoiding the discomfort of world-weariness by dint of a sardonic sense of humor. Village Elders without such a humor-sense are just crotchety old fussbudgets and get-off-my-lawn shouters.
4. Many of us have (or teach) younglings. It’s important for Village Elders to know how to pass on what they know.
Anyway, that’s the view from behind these eyeballs. What do you think?
This can’t at all capture our seamless friendships’ ineffable essence, but I hope it conveys some of the flavor; we would not be the people we are today without each other. Here’s to good (and sadly, some now-absent) friends – and to life! [clink]