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You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

Happy Birthday hon. Hope you have a great day.

Peace...

When people find out that I also have a DayJob, some are disappointed, some encouraged, and some utterly bewildered -- how could I possibly fit in a cubicle? Some glimpses of my 40-hours-per-week grey fabric walls and grey work surfaces can be found in a Flickr set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phoole/sets/72157622706173857/ .

In the photo above:

Top left photo by Steve Spitzer. Bottom left photos by various photographers, and I wish I knew who they were. Framed photos at right by Carl Jester. Large monkey: gift from delightful woman who was in the Norreys' Household in the Guilde of St. George at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in 2009 whose name I need to look up. Little pipecleaner frond: gift from perfect kind little girl who visited me at Bristol. Gold monkey idol: gift from Raven at Ravenworks. Tiny monkey: gift from hurrsband, out of a gumball machine.

I'm still getting caught up on blague-ing my Madison adventures, but to tide you over in the meantime, here is a photo by the kind and indulgent Jim Dietrich of Tyme Travel Photography, Madison, WI, one of the sponsors of and vendors at Her Majesty's Winter Faire. He snaps your likeness and drops you into the historic or otherwise scenic background of your choice, but I let him pick for mine this year. It's very win...try. Visit my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/phoole/ for more delights!

Happy Birthday.
Hope you're having a great day.

Peace...

Phoole protege Chloe Arbiture's senior film project, CIRCUSWORLD, won 3rd place out of lots of entries last night at UWM's Student Film Fest. I'm exploding with pride. I'm hoping to check out another screening of the short piece tonight!

Where: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Union Theatre, 2200 East Kenwood Boulevard, Milwaukee, WI, between Stowell Avenue on the east and Maryland Avenue on the west, on the east side of Milwaukee.

When: 7:00 p.m.

The theatre's website doesn't have a world of useful information on it, but if you must have a URL, here it is, but you gotta scroll all the way to the bottom, and the page is absurdly long: http://ping.fm/CVosd

I'm hoping to time things out so that I can catch the screening and then make it over early to My Husband Tom Charney's band's gig.

Tom's band, the Outta State Plates, plays at Milwaukee's Conway's Smokin' Bar & Grill tonight from 9 p.m. on! Check their site at http://osplates.com/ for more info!

Hopefully I'll see you at both happenings!

EDIT: I'm actually IN the film, very briefly, but it's a short film! And I'm a short fool! It works! Tom's got a cameo too! Ron Scot Fry is ALSO in it! So's Seth Neuschwander and Chloe's brother Elon! And Duncan Blickerstaff! You can't make up a name like that!

Pity is for dogs and drunks. I'm neither. If I'm not feeling sorry for myself(and I'm mostly not), then why would I want someone else to feel sorry for me?

http://www.healthcentral.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/c/9937/97652/family

"There may be days when you ask how I am feeling. If I say I’m fine and you know that I’m not, please don’t push me to really tell you how I feel. I fear that if I tell you that I feel like I have been hit by a semi that has backed up and hit me again, and that I would do almost anything to make the severe pain go away it would be too much for you to bear. I say that I am “fine” for your benefit."

At Her Majesty's Winter Faire presented by Ravenworks in Madison, Wisconsin, I had Outrageous Adventures of All Kinds, with Good Friends, New Friends, and a Bad Monkey Extraordinaire. One of these exploits flipped open the top of my head and exposed me to dangerous levels of Brilliant Knowledges, and I'm still feeling the aftereffects, so I'd like to share this experience with you.

One of my most favorite features of Her Majesty's Winter Faire is the perennial presence of the Guilde of St. Michael, the Elizabethan military living-history society found at the Bristol and Janesville Renaissance Faires and other fine historical-entertainment establishments. Apart from the fact that my hurrrrsband was one of their founders, along with his best friend Brian Brecht, I delight in them for their candid comfort with the era and their ease of teaching. Spend but five minutes with them, and you've had an excellent and exciting five minutes -- and then you later realize you've learned twenty things you never knew about British military and living history. They build the bridge across eras calmly and cheerfully, without ego or exhausting pretension, and they include and elevate their audience without a second thought. Delightful bunch.

Chris Last is their Assistant Guildemaster, and Chris studies with Bob Charron of the St. Martin's Academy of Medieval Martial Arts in Stoughton, Wisconsin. In the photograph above, snapped by the inimitable, indomitable Heather Winterling Last, Bob is blowing my mind. You might not be able to tell from there, but it happened: my brain exploded.

I think my first experience of Bob's brilliance was at the Madison Faire last winter -- during the supper show, with Chris Last, he gave a demonstration and lecture on Fiore dei Liberi's principles of abrazare, translating in this context to "grappling." Mistress of Misrule Magnolia May and I were, um, riveted, and that's enough said about THAT. But intellectually, the demo was electrically exciting, because Fiore's principles are rooted, of course, in the Trivium -- the grammar, logic and rhetoric of 15th-century Europe. And I've approached the Trivium from so many angles throughout my 20 years of Elizabethan historical interpretation -- customs and manners, dance, fashion, architecture, design, language (Italian, French and Elizabethan English), science, music, poetry, dance, masques, political rhetoric, philosophy, social theory, theology, and on and on -- that it was truly earth-shaking to me to see these disciplines' underlying precepts interpreted physically.

And because I can't leave anything alone, I naturally applied every tidbit I could assimilate to my practice and teaching of interactive environmental historical-comic performance. Mind you, I didn't assimilate very many tidbits at that stage. The grappling was distracting, you see. But that early encounter definitely whetted the appetite for more knowledges of Fiore and his monumental treatise on Medieval martial arts, The Flower of Battle. At the same supper show, I recall having some verbal exchanges with audience and other players that got some fairly big laughs, and Bob had complimented me on really playing the Court Jester, parleying in a ready wit, and I remember that compliment turned my world golden, because it had come from someone who'd taught me something. (I've always had an extreme weakness for getting approval from teachers. It's an ACoA thing, possibly, but Adlerian therapist Sherwin Rubenstein [R.I.P., much-missed friend] told me it works for me, so I keep it.)

I encountered Bob again with the St. Mike's troops at the incredibly-fun Jane's Ville Renaissance Faire last spring, and made myself pay particular attention to the vocabulary of the principles during the Fiore demonstrations. I enjoyed silently congratulating myself over understanding the concept of time being measured as it is in music, and it was delightful to hear music-theory terms from my favorite era of study being used in a martial context, minim-rests and all those things that evoke Mercutio's instructions to Benvolio and so on. I didn't yet understand that this was something I could learn first-hand, despite invitations and encouragements to sign on for lessons at St. Martin's Academy. (Not Relevant At All: I grew up listening to bebop, but developed an appetite for the Baroque masters at a rather young age. Lots of the long-playing records I checked out from the local public libraries were performed by the justly-famous ancient music ensemble, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, so when I heard that this martial arts academy was called St. Martin's, for the longest time I was putting an entirely incorrect mental soundtrack with the thing. Brandenburg Concertos, orchestral suites, everything, instead of the catches and lute and chittern and rackets and sackbuts that should have been reverberating in my sconce. Ah, well.) It was there that Chris told me about Bob's wife, Kristina. "All the amazing stuff Bob can do?" Chris enthused. "Kristina can do it on horseback. At full speed." I grinned fit to split my skull over the images that conjured. I recall making a mental note to get someone to do a documentary of these two remarkable people.

Bob joined St. Mike's again for this year's Her Majesty's Winter Faire in Madison, and I tried to keep myself occupied elsewhere in the Faire so as to not be an over-fannish too-geeky hanger-on, but that didn't last long, and, swallowing trepidation, I bounced over to the "encampment" and announced, "I'm here for my Fiore lesson!"

Bob smiled. "All right. Hand-to-hand first, or sword?"

I goggled. "Really?" Couldn't believe I'd get away with it. "Whatever is best, I suppose -- I have no idea!"

"SWORD!" yelled the St. Mike's crew. The smattering of an audience clapped approval.

"Sword it is!" Bob handed me a waster, his steely eyes a-twinkle. I gulped at the heavy short sword's weight in my hand.

I looked down at my capacious busk-farthingale-and-bumroll motley. "Do I need to attire myself in the manner of a boy for this?"

"No." Bob looked at me very seriously. "You must learn to fight in what you're wearing. Your attacker won't wait for you to change your clothes."

And so we squared off, and I suppressed the thrills jangling my spine and tried to pay attention.

At the top of the lesson, I kept mis-stepping, and I kept judging myself, which he of course saw immediately, being an excellent teacher. "Just breathe!" he grinned, and I dropped in a breath and tried to exhale my self-conscience. "Just relax. It's so easy." And he patiently reminded me to do this, over and over, as we practiced. He'd attack, I'd deflect with the false edge, change feet, rotate to the true edge, and allow him to walk into my blade. That was the sequence. But I kept forgetting I didn't have to advance -- I just had to step to the side and let his momentum cause the damage. One of Fiore's basic precepts seems to be to always place oneself on the defensive, never the attack. And each time I mis-stepped I'd berate myself just the tiniest bit, partly verbally, mostly internally.

And then he stopped at one point and said, "Remember your Plato, and the levels of soul?"

I blinked. No one ever, EVER asks me to remember that. I DO know it, but no one had ever asked me about it. "The vegetative and animal and cosmic, you mean?"

He beamed. "Yes. Exactly. Plato says the vegetative soul governs your autonomic nervous functions. The animal soul governs movement, interaction, social conduct, flight, and fight. But you didn't mention the contemplative soul. The contemplative soul governs reflection and prediction, planning out next steps. Your contemplative soul is extremely highly developed. It has to be -- you're the fool. You need your wit for your livelihood. But you don't need it right now. I want you to set it aside for the remainder of the exercise, and whenever we work together. Use your animal soul now -- it knows what to do. You don't have to do anything but let your animal soul fight me."

It was intense. I finally dismissed the head-voices, just thanked and released conscious inner chatter, and of course, it all clicked. He phrased that exactly the way I needed it phrased. And I succeeded instantly and repeatedly. It irked me that I hadn't been able to teach myself that lesson -- after all, I've taught students to release self-judgment for ten years -- but I was amazed that it was simply a matter of the right spell, the right words, and I understood the concept the way I needed to. I made eye contact, received the attack, and the moves were right where they needed to be. And they returned for each repeat of the play.

We then went on to some grappling (HOORAY), and I learned so much. Did you know the human body can shift a TON of weight just using the hips? I didn't. I do now. I enjoyed letting my animal soul run things. To be "on," onstage, usually means the predictive aspect of my contemplative soul isn't fully engaged anyway, as Jane the Phoole has Now, Now and Now, but no Later or Consequences of Now. But this was a Whole New Level of living in the moment. I also had the extreme privilege of meeting the legendary Kristina Charron, horse-warrior extraordinaire. I'm certain I came off as a fangirl dressed rather terrifyingly as a Grotesque History Clown, but this woman has Very Serious Skills at something that's incredibly dangerous and just plain cool, so I suppose I'll not critique my own exuberance. There are viddies online of her equestrian martial excellence, but it would be fantastic to see her applying Fiore a cavallo live.

My Facebook page has loads of pictures from the lesson and the rest of the hijinks from Her Majesty's Winter Faire -- peruse! Hopefully I'll have time soon to detail the Adventure of the Baddest Monkey Yet.

Tweaks and enhancements

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Holiday vgifts are here!

We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine.

Introducing: LJLimericks

We cordially here do invite you
To craft a fine limerick. Might you?
Each week, a new theme,
Then a poll, that's our dream
Winner posted on news to delight you!

In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll.

We hate to squelch your creativity, but, as a courtesy to other users, please post only one photo at a time and keep the main photo no larger than 350x350 (so images display properly via mobile and on friends pages). You can link to a larger image and/or post photos under a cut. Just so you know, we select photos for the poll blindly, based on user comments and staff feedback. Please continue to vote, comment, and, of course, enjoy. You can check out the week in pictures and view more awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there!

Earlier I watched snow falling horizontally. There is no longer any snow, but the air is still trying very hard to remodel everything a few feet to the left.

Anybody have a kite?

I'm hoping to return to Muncaster for Festival of Fools 2010, as a walkaround character, and in the best of all possible worlds, I'd love to be there with so many of you who've raised a glass with me in the past couple of years, saying, "Next year, in Muncaster!" But that means More Adventure. And I haven't finished the chronicle of the LAST adventure yet. So let's journey back to the 2007 adventure and recollect the tale.

In another blague, I've talked about my training as an interactive environmental edu-tainment character, and the long performance day I grew up accepting as normal: The day begins when the event's gates open, often at 10:00 a.m., and continues, non-stop, until the event's gates close, often at 7:00 p.m. or later. A handful of years ago, that kind of schedule began to wear me down, even while pacing myself between large-scale look-at-me big-crowd happenings and what we call "hit-and-run" encounters, making brief exchanges with large numbers in moving crowds. For many years, I prided myself on being able to be "on" for a close-to-ten-hour performance day, with little to no time "offstage" or out of the performance area -- I would take all meals with the audience, and spend every minute of the day with patrons. But four or five years ago, I suddenly couldn't do that without having extreme consequences at the end of the day, where I'd crash very, very hard, often needing to be completely isolated from other people. Too many faces, it felt like. I'd need to be a complete hermit on the weeks between gigs to recharge.

So I started to take a break once a day, right in the middle of the performance day, usually after a large-ensemble number or parade or other spectacle. I take an hour to be very quiet, eat a little something, rehydrate, recharge. When I first began doing this, I felt incredibly guilty, particularly while performing at shows where there were few or no other lively walkaround characters. The sense of responsibility, as twisted as it may have been, was simply too deeply ingrained.

So at Muncaster, the first day I appeared as Jane the Phoole, I emerged around 11:00 a.m. I wasn't on a schedule at all -- I was doing it simply because it delighted me, and because I couldn't bear to not be Phooling at the Festival of Fools.

At noon, Sadie, our kind and indulgent go-to person, plucked at my elbow. "Don't you want to take a break? You've been at it for a whole hour!"

I grinned at her as if she were making fun of me. "I'm fine! Cheers!" And I was off entertaining another family, letting the kids jump on me and tell me the very silliest of jokes. And so on for the next few hours: Sadie or Becks would find me every hour or so and say, "You've not taken a break yet! Are you sure you're all right?"

I thought, "I'm in England, it's bright and sunny and cool and dry, and there's A CASTLE HERE. I'm perfect! NO WAY am I stopping!"

Finally, about 4:00 p.m., Sadie put her foot down. "You're having a meal now, no question." Jiggins fetched me a sandwich, and, reluctant to be away from the lovely kind people visiting that day, I plopped down on the castle lawn.

Inevitably, a small crowd formed immediately. (Phooligans know what happens at a festival when I stop moving for too long -- eventually the whole world ends up gathered around me, conveniently enough.) At first, a choir of towheaded kids chirped nonsensical riddles at me while I nearly choked from laughing, and then along came this charming woman with her labrador retriever dog, and just when I thought the company was at its most delightful, along came Muncaster's Owl Mascot, and we THINK Peter Frost-Pennington himself was inside the thing! It was too fabulous. Muncaster Castle is the headquarters of the National Owl Trust, and the mascot costume is made of thousands of owl feathers moulted and otherwise shed by the hundreds of owls resident in the castle's owlery. "Chouette!"; the French would say.

Later, Max the Meadowvole, another mascot of Muncaster Castle, joined us for a chat and a chew too. I felt truly honored that my humble repast should be host to such noble guesties.

Yes, Yes, Yes. In that order.

Peace...