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    The tales of



    or, a Michigan Wolverine in the Lands of the Dragon






    Tales: Silver and Swan
    Of Calontir Silver Jubilee, 2009, and another extraordinary gift from my friends in Three Rivers



    You know what's a dangerous thing? A large group of musicians with too much time on their hands. :-)

    As with all thumbnails in my journal, click to expand



    The mighty sanctuary of Centenary United Methodist Church was packed with hundreds of guests from far and wide. From newcomers at their first SCA event to some of the SCA's greatest living legends, the crowd filled the ground floor pews and surrounding ring balcony of the hammer-beam roofed hall with a riot of finery and color. All awaiting the procession of the Sovereigns of the Falcon Thrones and and the reigning Barons of Calontir; all awaiting the Great Court of this, the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom. Crowns glittered; chains and medallions glittered; laughter filled the air as we all awaited the bellowing cry of the Herald, announcing the entrance of their Royal Majesties Luther and Merwyn and the retinue.

    Which was, at that point, now twenty minutes plus late.


    There were over a dozen of us musicians gathered in the balcony immediately stage left of the thrones of Calontir. Woodwinds, recorders, violins -- all of us assembled to provide music for the Great Court at the heart of the Silver Jubilee. We had gathered to provide appropriate musical fanfare for the entrance of our Kingdom's highest ruling nobles. We had rehearsed our parts and our pieces, laid out our plan for the entrance of each Queen, each Princess, each Baroness and their champions. And then, like everyone else, we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

    Well, when you have a group of musicians with a big geeky silly streak with their instruments on their hands and nothing in particular to do, silly happenings are inevitable. And so, when one of the musicians began quietly playing a very, very familiar melody, within a few bars the rest of the musicians joined in with gusto. Some playing along with the melody, some improvising harmonies, and many others simply giving voice to the lyrics we all knew so well with big grins on their faces. From below, exclamations, gasps, and then laughter as the rest of the hall picked upon the stately piece we had spontaneously began to perform...

      ... Tom Leher's immortal Masochism Tango. :-)





    It was a day of singing and music and celebration, of laughter and hugs and the telling of legends. It was the Kingdom's Silver Jubilee, the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Calontir.

    More than forty years had passed since the famed First Tournament in Berkeley, CA, and all that had come thereafter. From that beginning in 1966 was born the East Kingdom in 1968 and the Midrealm in 1969. And from the Midrealm have birthed three daughter Kingdoms in the years that followed. Ealdormere, born in 1998 of the lands of Ontario. Northshield, birthed in 2004 from the northwestern Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains. Decades earlier, across the southern Great Plains from the Missisippi river to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, there, in 1984, was born the Kingdom of Calontir. And now, a quarter of a century after that beginning, all Calontir returned to St. Louis, returned to Three Rivers. Returned to the first outpost of the SCA founded in the lands that would become Calontir, the very first group in Calontir, now grown into one of the largest Baronies in the Known World.

    And a personal celebration for me, too. For it was almost two years earlier that I first e-mailed contacts in Three Rivers about life in the Barony the National Resident Match Program had just assigned me to. Two years since I first looked up contact information for the local dancers and music people, as the first step in meeting people in a city where I knew literally no one except the Chair and Program Director who had brought me to St. Louis in the first place. Once-strangers I had e-mailed out of the blue because their names were on the Barony's contact list; folks I e-mailed out of the blue, now good friends. And of course, all the many, *many* other friends, too many to list or name, who so kindly welcomed me into their lives in the months since I came to Calontir. Richly blessed with wonderful friends have I been here in Three Rivers, just as I was (and remain) in my old home in Cynnabar. And so much there was to celebrate, on a day of celebration. :-)




    I had managed, after a lot of feverish swapping, to manage to get the whole day free. The night before, even. And there was a lot of helping friends prepare the grand site for it's big day the night before, and time spent in the kitchens helping Rowan and company prepare the evening's feast, and time singing and fiddling and so much, so much else on a happy, happy day. And then we assembled for Great Court, and then the musicians got silly while we waited: playing the Jeopardy Theme during the auction; playing the Masochism Tango and the out-of-period-but-still-cool Rondeau by Jean Joseph Moreau, otherwise known as the Masterpiece Theatre Fanfare. And finally to rousing cheers and the swirl of banners came the grand procession of the Coronets and Crowns of Calontir and the opening of the Grand Court of the Silver Jubilee of the Kingdom of Calontir.

    I had volunteered to help Azenari as a server for the evening's feast; and so, per her instructions, I quietly excused myself from the musician's perch and headed down to the server hall, to change into the purple-and-yellow Falcon Tabard Mistress Conna had very kindly lent me and prepare for the evening's work. As much as I would have liked to stay, I was also very happy to help good friends with the tremendous effort of dishing out the magnficent feast to be served to the assembled nobles of Calontir.

    I had no idea I was about to set off panic in the music pit. And absolutely no idea that happy history was about to repeat itself, almost right down to the detail...


    Helping prepare to serve the feast was exactly -- *exactly* the same thing I was doing when I quietly ducked out of the Great Court of Midrealm 12th Night four years earlier. I hadn't told anyone else back then, either -- after all, I couldn't think of a reason I would need to tell anyone where I was. I figured, after all, it wasn't like they were going to, say, summon me before the Thrones of the Midrealm, right? And so I was innocently scooting around the periphery of the site running errands for the feast autocrats when my friends -- who, led by the wonderful Lady Parsla the Curious, had secretly petitioned the Midrealm Crown for the boon of my Award of Arms -- suddenly realized I wasn't actually *in* the hall anymore, and hurriedly organized running search parties to fetch me back in for the stunning surprise told in By the Petition of Friends. As a close friend gently kidded me afterwards, it would be just like me to nearly miss my own award ceremony because I'd quietly slipped out the back to help out with stuff.

    Twice.(sheepish)





    At left, lady Professor N, Mistress of the Hall of the Two Stags; at right, Mistress Conna, Order of the Laurel; both warm, wonderful and kind friends who I am very apologetic for nearly causing heart attacks. (sheepish)

    Years earlier, my wonderful friends in Cynnabar had managed to keep my cheerfully oblivious self completely unaware of their efforts on their part to raise me to the first level of the SCAdian Order of Precedence, up until the moment the Crowns of the Midrealm called for my presence and the grand surprise was sprung. A surprise so total I wasn't even *in* the hall because I didn't have any clue I ought to have been. As I would later discover, my wonderful friends in Three Rivers successfully maintained equal secrecy in their own efforts four years later. I had no more clue the second time around than I did the first...

    Which is why I had quietly taken my leave of the musician's loft at Silver Jubilee during a pause between elements of the ceremonies to go change and prepare to serve feast without notifying anyone from Three Rivers. Oh, I did notify my music stand mate that I was slipping out and asked him to relate that side note to Mistress Conna, which he cheerfully agreed to do. Of course, he wasn't from our Barony, so he had no idea that he was supposed to stop me. Which then set off a flurry of consternation when Mistress Conna and my other Three Rivers friends came back to the musician's loft after Grand Court resumed and discovered I wasn't there anymore.

    I had barely walked into the server's hall, now dressed in my Falcon Tabard, when lady Professor N burst into the hall at a heavy-breathing run. She quickly took me by the arm, explaining that I need to come back to Court, Right Now. Something about a "musical emergency", she said. I hadn't any idea -- any idea at all -- what that was all about, but it did sound important, and so I raced out of the feast hall with lady Professor N, as my Three Rivers friends among the servers -- knowing what was truly up -- grinned like maniacs behind us.

    We got back up into the musician's loft after a few wrong turns -- three stories up the height of the church -- and I barely had a moment to catch my breath and wonder what exactly a "musical emergency" constituted when the Falcon Herald stood forth from before the thrones of Calontir and called for the next summonee to present himself before the Sovereigns of Calontir.

    Me.

      Me?!?


    Photos kindly provided by Cathus, 2009.



    Two years before, on the eve of my departure of U. Michigan for residency at Wash U, at the formal Court held by the Baron and Baroness of Cynnabar, many wonderful friends surprised me with a warm, touching formal, scripted celebratory farewell. And two years before then, the same group of marvelous friends secretly organized a petition to the King and Queen of the Midrealm which ultimately led to the stunning surprise of my Award of Arms before the Royal Court of their Majesties Brannos and Rebekah, where I was formally accorded the right to bear the first level of titles within the hierarchy of the SCA.

    In the Midrealm, the next award level up in the arts is the Willow, an award held by a number of my incredibly talented Cynnabar friends; the Willow, 2nd of the four ranks upward torwards the Knighthood-level Laurel. When I moved to St. Louis, left the Midrealm and became a son of the Kingdom of Calontir, I didn't even *know* exactly what the Calontiri equivalent of the Willow was. After all, there was no way I could or would ever remotely deserve consideration for further higher rank within the SCA.

    To my extraordinary happy shock t[hat] afternoon, I discovered many wonderful friends here in the Barony of Three Rivers gently begged to differ. Like my friends in Cynnabar before, they had secretly organized to prepare a "little" surprise for me. And in the Royal Court of the Falcon Throne and the assembled Barons of the entire Kingdom, on the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Kingdom of Calontir, by the hand of Luther Rex and Maerwynn Regina I, 50th Sovereigns of the Falcon Throne, they gifted for me the boon of being raised to Calontir's Willow equivalent, the Order of the Calon Golden Swan.

    With the stage filled with every crowned Baroness and Baron of Calontir flanking the Crown and Heirs; with the audience packed with twenty-five years of Calontiri nobility, many who had come from far and wide to return for the celebration; it was the largest gathering of Calontiri outside of the great Wars, and possibly one of the largest gatherings of Calontir nobility ever. In a grand, medieval-style hall hung with banners; before the living, breathing history of Calontir: a grander setting could not be written for the humbling gift my Three Rivers friends arranged for me. And it was thus before the whole of assembled Calontir that my reply went forth, echoes of the exact same words I spoke before the Midrealm King years before: I am humbled, your Majesties, to have found here in my home Barony better friends than any man could hope for.

    As always, click thumbnails to expand

    The scroll was an even more magnificent hand-painted artwork, personally created by one of Mistress Conna's apprentices. Mistress Conna, my music-mistress here in Three Rivers, orchestra pit leader at Crystal Ball this and last year, and a wonderful, wonderful friend whom everyone loves. Just as Lady Parsla was years earlier, Mistress Conna was the driving force and organizer of this surprise, arranged utterly without any clue on my part. She had happened to be out of the musician's loft at the moment I innocently had slipped away -- thus the panic and frantic last-minute scrambling I cluelessly engendered by not notifying Mistress Conna personally I was stepping out. But all's well that ends well, and among the many fierce hugs back up in the musician's loft after I took my leave of their Majesties and Excellencies, after many hugs with old friends and apologies to wonderful lady Professor N for making her run all over the hall in search of me, a fierce, long, heartfelt hug with Mistress Conna, for her welcome, for her kindness, for everything.

    And still redoubled joy when, just a little later in the same Grand Court, to mighty sustained roars, Mistress Conna herself was ambushed with the extraordinary, incredibly rare honor of being made a Baroness of Calontir, pearled coronet and all.

    Picture at left kindly provided by Cathus, 2009. Picture at right mine, immediately after court.

    To be raised a Baroness is a rare honor: and even more rare to win it as Mistress did. In Calontir's twenty-five years, there have been over three-hundred twenty-five Calontiri who have recieved the Grant of Arms -- the Knighthood level awards for Chivalry, the Arts (Order of the Laurel) or service (Order of the Pelican). Less than half that number have been made Barons and Baronesses. And among that number, most Court Barons have served first as ruling Territorial Baronesses, granted the Court Baroncy after their reigns as Territorial Barons end in reward for their service, and well deserving are they of their honor.

    Extremely, extremely few are those SCAdians who were never appointed to the ruling nobility and yet still won a Baron's crown, purely by dint of extraordinary service and the high esteem of the Kingdom. It is among the rarest and highest honors one can achieve within the SCA. In twenty-five yeras, the number of "pure" Court Barons and Baronesses raised in Calontir is perhaps less than a quarter of the number of Knight-level nobles made. And to the great, great happiness of the many, many, *many* folks in Calontir who love her so, was that afternoon raised to that exalted honor, her hand-crafted crown bearing the musical notation and lyrics of one of her favorite Cantigas. Apropos for the lady of music she is with such cheerful joy.


    It was very much a grand afternoon for Three Rivers. Many more were the good friends who were honored as well, their achievements in the arts and service honored as they so richly deserved. And a grand day, among so many friends, another day of joy to be remembered among so many others, going back many, many seasons, now.

    And in that moment, when I came before the Crowns of my Kingdom for the second time in four years, that when by the kindness of my friends in Three Rivers I stood before the whole of the Kingdom of Calontir; when I presented myself before all the ruling nobility of the lands of the Falcon, prominent on my right against the purple of my borrowed tabard rode the crimson-and-white of the Arms of the Barony of Cynnabar. The arms of the Barony into which generous friends welcomed into the SCA; the arms I have worn with humble honor ever since Baron Straum presented them to me long ago. Standing before the Crowns of Calontir, the long cloth crimson-and-white belt-banner upon my right spoke, with gratitude and pride, now and forever: I was Cynnabar born.

    And on my left, Morwen and Jennifer and Kat's belt favors; and upon my breast, the silver cross on chain gifted me by Therese, my dear sister-in-arms in Sweden; and around my waist, my SCA godfather Lord Constantine Treesbane's belt; every piece a story, a story of friendship and adventures and joy, a rich journey which began years before I joined the SCA, and continues on yet.

    And now to those tokens I add the medallion which Her Majesty draped around my neck, and which my friends in Three Rivers so kindly petitioned her for me to recieve. Less important for the rank it confers, and vastly, *vastly* more important as a symbol of all that my kind friends in Three Rivers have given me, these many seasons, now. Another token of friendship which will carry with me in all the years that may yet be to come, and all the lands which I might yet travel. For no matter where my travels take me, I will always be deeply, deeply grateful for all that my kind friends -- in Three Rivers, in Cynnabar, and everywhere else -- have given to me, all these many years. What all of you have given me, all these years. And now to all the other proudly-worn gifts of friendship, I add the purple and yellow of the lands of the Falcon. A gift of a swan, to declare proudly forever, wherever else I may yet go: for many happy seasons, I was too a son of Calontir.


    We'll rise above the clamor/ Fight for the falcon banner /
    My bonnie Calontir is calling to me;
    Drums in my heart are drumming / I hear my kingdom calling /
    My bonnie Calontir is calling to me.







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All materials copyright Jeffrey Huo, 2005
jeffshuo@alumni.northwestern.edu