August, 2015 Archives

A Renaissance Festival Wedding

August 31st, 2015

A Medieval wedding for a modern-day couple

“I’ll bet you’re looking forward to this wedding,” bride Jen said to me as we waited at the front gate of the Renaissance Festival in Holly, Michigan.

That was definitely an understatement. It’s not often that you get to photograph a couple and thousands of their closest friends who went all Medieval on them before, during and after the ceremony.

I knew things were going to be memorable when Jen was accosted by the Village Idiot imploring her to travel the world first, before jumping into matrimony. That’s okay, The Queen (I wanna say Elizabeth, but was unable to confirm her royal lineage) blessed her union with new hubby Dave Roby.

More than a quarter million fair-goers visit the festival each year. Held on weekends from mid-August through the beginning of October, the Michigan Renaissance Festival has been going strong for 37 years. Sprawling over 17 acres, the festival features 300 artisans, themed stages, jousting, camel rides, a cornucopia of food and last Saturday, a wedding as well.

The wedding party and their lucky guests were feted and featured as they were paraded through the festival, first with the bride-to-be, then with husband and wife. After the nuptials, they were all seated for a rather lavish five-course meal in the castle on the grounds and treated to ongoing performances featuring sword fights, acrobatics, fire juggling and all manner of merriment.

You’d have to be a Village Idiot not to enjoy something like that. And I have it on good authority that even the idiot had a blast as well.

Enjoy a small sampling of the photos. Here’s to Lord and Lady Roby. Hip hip, huzzah!

The Beast From The East

August 6th, 2015

Don’t say his name three times.

They chanted, “No, No, No,” like petulant toddlers.

And he began to stir.

Like summoning Bettlejuice with repetitive incantations or the toil and trouble chant from Macbeth, they beseeched their anointed leaders to reject all: immigrants, Muslims, health care for the sick and needy. They implored with rancor that we shun science, Mother Earth, those who identify as LGBT+.

And he rose from the scum, the muck.

They had no ideas, no thoughts, nothing that could move the people forward. They could only conspire against. And they did so with malice. They plotted against women, the poor, minorities and menaced the rest of the land with openly-carried assault weapons.

The clown prince of darkness showed his ugly, contorted visage, riding an escalator down to his poorly paid pretend partisans.

The world jeered. So did his own party. “We eschew responsibility for this monster we created.”

And he began to spew forth hatred. He parroted back all that had been hushed up, hidden by his party’s elite. A vast trainload of misplaced rage was now out in the vile open, rolling unstoppably down the tracks. Pandora’s boxcar.

He bellowed resentment against all the dumb losers who weren’t rich, white or male.

They tried to run away, but he just gained in strength. He was grim reaping what they had so hatefully sewn. Out in the bright sunshine, their evil beast roared with pompous hatred and shambled to the top of their popularity polls.

He was them; their words, their thoughts, their bigotry. He was their golem, brought to life by hatred.

And now he stalks the land. Will he be stopped? Can he be stopped?