5 questions from selkiesiren

[acroyear]

1.) What sparked your love of Morris dance?

Upon having my thursdays surprisingly free in my single 90s when I could (and did) dance pretty much every single day of the week, mostly Scottish, I finally followed a college buddy to the Foggy Bottom practice. The contrast between the simplicity (the basic patterns are variations of the playfords I'd already been doing in 3LF), combined with a power, were already an attraction.

Now add in very good company, an appreciation for other folk arts among the team members, and a bond of good beer drinking, and it sort of exploded within a month.

The general impression is that the Morris takes the dancer, not the other way around.

2.) Your engagement was beautiful...I was standing in line nearby when I saw the crowd gather, and did my best to look over the shoulders of taller people to hear and see what was going on (missed a lot, but what I caught had me in tears). How surprised were you? And, what were your thoughts/feelings at the time on having the "traditional" roles reversed (Good on ye, Cyd, by the way. I'm all for a little tradition thrashing once in awhile)?

Surprised? Shocked and Stunned. Absolutely Shocked and Stunned. Needed serious drink afterwords (to whit, the Order of the Drunken Sots Germans gladly provided at Ze Vine Gardon).

The "pants in the family" joke continues, but really it stays humorous because it didn't phase me at all, either then or now.  Each of us has our lazy side, and usually we're good about prompting the other through it to get stuff done.  That time was her turn.

3.) When did you start taking the time to really educate yourself about politics? I.E.: was there an event that shook you awake and made you feel as if you had to, or was it a gradual process?

"We're only immortal for a limited time".  Its a lyric from a Rush song (author, Neil Peart).

I'd always been educated about it, but my cynicism and apathy 'cause "both sides suck", which I inherited from my father, overwhelmed any other feelings of activism or interest.  I was part of the great 1980s and 1990s middle class, the immortal, the timeless, the ones destined by history to dominate, regardless of the actions of the rich or the numbers of the poor.  The class that saw no end to its growth except the day when we're all that way.  Comfortable, content.

Greed could be seen, recognized, chastized, and ridiculed out of importance (a-la commedians like Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldburg and the whole Comic Relief scene, and of course Doonesbury which I followed religiously since the 1984 return to operations).

Laughter, logic, reason, and education should have been enough to keep this country going well, and in 1993 the final idiot in the way of progress (Bush Sr.) was gone and my parents generation, whom I'd always respected, finally got the chance to steer this country right and stop the freeze caused by the WW2 generation.

Uncle Newt came in 1994 and I shrugged it.  "Contract with America" indeed.  I certainly never signed it.  As Desmond pointed out in his column, 2 years into the "Contract", the only thing that Congress did was pass itself a raise.  "Family Values" were being praised as the ideal by divorcees, parents of homosexual children they'd practically disowned, alcoholics, parents of children caught abusing drugs.  The "Family Values" pastors all preached to a choir of Jerry Springer worshipers.  They still do.  And he's a Democrat, dammit!

The Sonny Bono copyright extension act, and the abuses of the patent system on software, started to get my attention, thanks to slashdot.  They remain major hot-buttons for me.

A practical tie in the Senate came in 1998 and I shrugged it.  It wouldn't last.

Kansas as a state decided Darwin was wrong.  I laughed.  They got kicked out and science returned.

Bush Jr. became "President" on a campaign of lies and Reagan Worship, and I got a little pissed, and started to try to figure out why a people would vote so against their own interests.  At that point, my main concern was just the Supreme Court.  The dot-bombs would never fall on me.  I was too smart, I was in the right business. The military always spends money on research.

9/11/2001 happened, and I felt very secure.  Information processing was our business and we would handle it.

I didn't see that Big Brother was coming in the form of John Poindexter's TIA.  I had major problems with that, but I kept my mouth shut.  We had other things, things I could work on.  Still, I could see it coming.  Projects were more oriented towards increasing intelligence gathering to massive amounts of data on everybody, rather than processing the information they already had (which as the commission reports, would have been enough to at least green-light an investigation of the florida flight school students).  I saw in an instant what kind of an ass Ridge would be.

Then I got laid off in 2003.  Directly the result of the pre-emptive, internationally illegal, utterly immoral, and finally totally unjustified war on Iraq.  DARPA stopped rewarding contracts.  TIA got trimmed due to public/media pressure.  My company's other customers "froze" while waiting for the war to finish so they could proceed without worry about whether their own budgets would get slashed.  In the end, the cost of the aftermath caused those budgets to get slashed anyways, totally unplanned for by contractors or the customers.

It got personal.  Big time.

I stopped caring about my present; its already screwed, and thank god for faire, good scotch, a job outside of the government world, a loving and talented wife, as being the only thing keeping me sane.

I had to care about the future.  I can't sit by anymore and let this man and his corporate cronies destroy my child's* future for the sake of their religious prejudices, their grievances against a nation that did them no harm at all (but has plenty of oil they can control), and their desire to keep getting richer at *my child's expense*.

Logic and Reason lost.  Education lost.  Humor lost.  The Middle Class lost.

Illiteracy won.  Propaganda won.  Liars won.  Bigots won.  Fundamentalists won.

Arguments that Lewis Carroll wrote 150 years ago AS A JOKE justified a war that killed 1000 Americans and 20,000 Iraqis, many innocent of the atrocities enacted in the name of their leader.  Governments continue to take advantage of the basic scientific principle that all things (I mean, ALL) are nothing but probabilities and extrapoliations, and have used that uncertainty to destroy the environment and remove any semblence of modern biology theory from the classrooms.  People continue to vote for their own economic ruin all because someone told them that the alternative is to give up their guns, or be a sinner because they would be permitting others to have abortions.

The Poor of this nation, seeing the rich destroy their jobs, their unions, their home towns, their farms, their schools, their parks and natural wildlife preserves, their free press, and their pride in America, have risen up against these Rich men who dominate their every life.  Together in one voice they have cried out that revolutionary mantra, "We have come to lower your taxes!".

Greed won.

And for the sake of my children's future, I simply can not let that happen again.

4.) William Larkin? Is there anything behind the choice of the name?

My middle name (named for my dad's father), and my brother's middle name (named for a surname on mom's side, first arrived in the colonies in 1634).  Both names are period well before the renaissance, which was a Markland / Three Left Feet requirement I had to keep in mind, that being my first performance dance group.  Part of me (the part of me that keeps getting called "Joe" at least 20 times a day on site) is thinking of retiring the name in favor of something with Joseph in it, similar to what Bob Garman did.

5.) How do *you* perceive the average perception of you? What do you think the average Joe sees when they look at "Joe"?

I really have no idea.  I know nobody really sees the whole thing, because each thing I do or am part of, is done to a considerable depth.  The faire crowd certainly doesn't see just how scientific and geeky I can be; I leave it out of faire now (didn't used to, and annoyed people that way).  Even in the historical setting, they don't see just how much history I have in me.  They know I'm "smart", but (no egotism here, really), they have no idea just how smart or just how much *stuff* is in my head.  I'm incredibly arrogant, but as I put it arrogance means being able to back it up.  (note, that doesn't mean being right, that just means being able to back it up -- governments are arrogant because they can back it up with the rule of law and a police force).

As a result, I'm sometimes misinterpreted.  Arrogance doesn't necessarilly mean having an ulterior motive or a constant prejudice, but it can be perceived that way.

One of the reasons my faire persona is more foole-like / child-like (not the extremes of an O or Stupina, but you get the idea; its just a mask, not a character) is because that arrogance combined with my short temper can piss people off.  Better to keep those parts of my life hidden.  Playing for kids has worked (they're still Cat&Fiddle's core/target audience) in helping me build that mask.  But that mask in a sense exists for their protection rather than mine.  "Silly-boy" as Cyd calls it, is much more enjoyable/comfortable to be around than "Cranky-boy".

* no, I don't have a kid yet, but its in the plans.

Comments

thank you

[zammis.livejournal.com]

Its always good to get more detail as to why people act the way they do. :)