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The Silver Leaf Renaisssance Faire (link here) is an annual event. It is held in Kalamazoo County’s River Oaks Park in Galesburg, Michigan the last three weeks of July. Even though we live in Kalamazoo, and I work right next door at Benteler Automotive, this is the first year Karen, Skajler and I have gone. Admission was ten dollars for adults, three for children...money well spent.
Karen’s afternoon was to be taken up by an unpaid training meeting for Standard Federal Bank where she works. So we went in the morning, not really expecting too much. The whole business sounded like it would probably be more than just a bit silly. And indeed, some few parts of it were, like all the volunteers adressing the three of us as mi-lord and mi-lady. Oh, and also the mud pit theater. But all of it was quite entertaining...yes, even the mud pit thing.
There was, among other things, a puppet show: Windsong the snow dragon. Very well done. Even we adults were laughing. And there was the Whip Boy act: a juggler/bullwhip artist. On this latter, we had to alternate between laughing with occasional winces and cringes. The jokes were bad, purposely so. The whip tricks, though, punctuated them, er...smartly.
I don’t have picturs from the morining because, not expecting much, I had neglected to tote the camera. But the whole business was such a lark, that when time crept up on when Karen would have to go home and get ready for her voluntary participation on behalf of the bank, it went without saying that Skajler and I got our hands stamped so that we could come back. And this time I rememberd the camera. Some of the rest you can see below...
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After running out of disk space (the originals are 1024x768) I was wishing to have brought more than just three floppies. There was one more event of which I wish especially to have gotten pictures: Bunny Fencing. This is where the kids get to fence eachother for real. They dress up in ballistic nylon vests, heavy gloves, and fencing masks. The fencing masks are fitted with two baloons, like bunny ears. The foils are dull except for thumb tacks on the ends.
The match is won when a child has has popped both their opponent’s baloons. Cost? One dollar.. But Skajler got to fence for free. He was last in line with three others before hime. And officially it was time to close the event. So the vendor was not permitted to accept further charges. So...the vendor cut a deal. For assisting to pick up all the many popped balloons from prior matches, those four could take their turns for free.
The pair ahead took forever to finish their match. Too much swish, swish side to side which failed to more than bounce the balloons around. Then came Skajler’s turn. His opponent was a girl somewhat taller than him. They two went after eachother in proper fashion, for foils, by thrusting with the points. And it was over quickly. Skajler won 2 baloons to her one. Would that there had been more time. Skajler enjoyed that alone well enough to merit all we had spent that day. Come next year, we’ll be sure to go again.
