10 am: We're underway in A's Mommy Van, with Cam quizzing us about our favorite birds and favorite animals generally. His are seals, otters, wolves, and lions. Nothing you'd perform dentistry on without trepidation. We park at the Bryce Jordan Center and take the shuttle bus to town.
First: up the campus mall. The guy who makes custom sandals is here again. It would almost be worth it if they had any arch support. At a booth of wooden toys, we talk Cam out of a rubber-band pistol with some difficulty, but finally come up with the uber-logical argument that neither of us has any rubber bands with us! Phew -- a million potential liability suits averted. Ceramicists and leatherworkers seem to predominate this year.
We stop at a booth with some really amazing decorative brooms. I always think of "The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre": "The graip was tint / The besom was deen / The barra widna row its leen." Cam discovers a bucket of bent twigs, some stout, some long, labeled as wands! Well, then! He finds one that fits his hand, and I ask him, in a moment of whimsy, which he'd pick for me. He selects one with a twist to it, very like my cane (and my damn spine, come to that), and when I pay for it, I'm told it's box elder, shaped by having had a honeysuckle vine round it. This broom maker, an awfully nice man, does in fact have a broom labeled "Nimbus 2000" hanging directly above the register, and will be appearing with it at a book party for the release of ... and the Deathly Hallows later this month.
Up further: the booth of Susan Soleil, Bookbinder to the Gods. She's no longer in Rochester, NY! She and her wife have packed up and moved operations to the Chapel Hill, NC area. They are astounded by the heat, but according to Susan, the studio situation she's in is much friendlier. I blow most of my discretionary budget for this event on a hardbound blank book with either daffodils (which have personal meaning beyond my tiny smidgen of Welsh ancestry) or jonquils (which would go with The Glass Menagerie) on the cover. Temptation to buy something from her booth for every one of my writing friends is as strong as my wallet is weak.
Around the corner. All sorts of things, including a leathermaker, Ron Musser, who is from Lancaster and who makes leather games boards, everything from traditional sorts like backgammon to more contemporary things like Monopoly. And, ohmuhgawd, frickin' SCRABBLE. I do not have the $140 it would take to buy a leather Scrabble board, but I do have the $4 it takes to buy a small black leather pouch with my bird totem on the outside. I do challenge him: if I can beat him at Scrabble, could I win a board? He laughs and says I sound awfully confident. I just smirk. A. tells him I'm pretty good. She refrains from mentioning that pretty much nobody, even Doug, will play me because I can mop the board with the faces of basically anybody I know. I'm not that aggressive, really, but get me across the board from someone and the game is on.
Down Burrowes. Lots of stuff: a ceramicist who uses Japanese motifs, including cranes; a maker of fine, fine wooden toys. At this point, Cam has to pee, so we go inside the Deike building (pron. "dykey" -- which is odd, because I really look quite femme today) -- Earth and Mineral Sciences. Apres-restroom, we have a look at the small exhibit of fossils and geodes and the like. There is a tiny, tiny vial of my dad's jet fuel in the coal exhibit. Cam is impressed, but really enjoys the prehistoric-animal bits -- mammoth vs. mastodon teeth; a hadrosaur-footprint cast. We rest on the benches across from all this, and Cam plays with his wand a bit. A. coaches him a bit in how to say Expecto Patronum, and asks him what his resulting protector animal would be. He says elephant, then quickly switches to woolly mammoth. I coin a new spell: Expectoratio Pastrami. This would cause deli sandwiches to fall out of the target's mouth unexpectedly. We realize we're all hungry, so press on toward Allen Street, passing an instrument maker who has The. Largest. Banjo. In. The. World. It's the size of an upright double bass, if not taller. In the same booth, you can buy a mandolin made of three different woods, with an antler... I forget, peg head? and moose-bone bridge, for a mere $3,000. Gee, what a bargain.
The food court is less diverse (except Polacks in da hizzouse!) and more expensive than last year. Blah. Luckily, Smart Auntie packed her own water and has hand sanitizer for everyone. We pass through Central Parklet, with a small ensemble of youth flute players on the stage, and see this year's sand sculpture, which is frankly crap. I mean, the Mr. Potato Head is well-rendered, but otherwise, meh. Cam plays a bit, and makes a friend: not a Campbell, like him, but a Cameron. Touchingly, they try to exchange phone numbers.
On Fraser, we see Mom's cousin's wife Vinnie, and a booth where a woman makes exquisite knotwork necklaces to complement jade pendants, many of Kwan Um (aka Kuan Yin, Kanzeon, Chenrezig, Avalokitesvara-bodhisattva). I resolve to bring Dad and his wallet. Dad calls then. A. and C. want to see a comedian downtown, so we all agree to meet up at the West African drum-and-dance performance at 4:30.
I press on alone past my old high school. A few fiber artists; still lots of ceramicists and leatherworkers, one of whom makes amazing, amazing journals -- your choice of watercolor or hemp paper. Renew resolution re: Dad and wallet. A center for runaway and troubled youth is offering water and snacks, and seeking donations. I gladly stuff a buck in their box and pour myself a cup of icy water. I sink to my knees on the shady grass next to the booth; drink half the cup straight down; pour another quarter of it over my head, nape, and cleavage; and drink the rest. A bargain, for those of us whose migraine meds overheat us.
I take few pictures here or on Allen St. because of the whole intellectual-property thing, but one artist, who works in found metal pieces and does a lot of birds, is just amazing. Some of his brilliantly realized birds, the ones I like best, are perched on antique binoculars. That's just what a bloody rare bird would do -- elude you all day, and then perch right on your fecking Zeiss the moment you set them aside in frustration! Someone I see near here looks so much like Linda K-B it's bizarre.
At Webster's, I duck in and retrieve one of the unsold copies of my book. Back on campus, I present this to Susan and Karen -- they're good people whom we know from way back, and it's absolutely true that many of the poems in that book were handwritten in Soleil blank books first. I must look a right mess, because Susan gives me her chair and darts off to refill my water bottle at Willard! This is a woman still wearing a compression sleeve from a mastectomy two years ago! She also walks with me over to Old Main lawn and lends me the chair for the concert. I mean, I should be used to having my disability accommodated by a cancer survivor by now, really, but -- of all the couples in all the world to give a book to, these two, I swear.
The West African drum-and-dance ensemble, Barafo (bara, drum; fo, to play) is so good that, when the musicians enjoin the crowd to dance, I do -- overheated and sore though I am by this point. I try to further memorize a lot of the African moves for the other five minutes of the year that my body will let me dance. Good times.
On the way back to the shuttle bus stop (since Dad's car is farther away), A. and C. and I run into Blane Bates, best hairdresser in Pennsylvania, and also a longtime friend. He's hitting on some hippie chick. Typical. But he's a sweetie.
After dinner, we recreate the famous Diet-Coke-and-Mentos experiment on the front sidewalk. I'm handed A's camera with which to take video, which is fine, because it gets me out of the blast radius.
No sign of the Predator today, and by that measure alone a success. He'd better not cross me on Friday the 13th, either. I feel very sorry for him if he does: I have a little baggie of dirt from the graves of my very own ancestors. Granted, it's not made up into goofer dust yet. I still require sulfur and the kitchen ingredients. But we buried my grandfather with his cobbler's hammer, and although he was a sweet and gentle man, there would be no faster way to make him angry than to hurt one of his children or grandchildren. Just sayin'.
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