Labor Day Weekend, Plus Counterfeit Madison

 

On the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, Jim Cowan and I met over brunch at the Starliner Diner, a great Cuban-American restaurant in my very own Hilliard.  I had a plantain omelette with a side order of plantains (are you seeing a pattern emerge here?), all very awesome.

Then on Saturday evening, Juhi, Amol and I attended Lisa M. McLymont’s opening art show and reception:

The reception was a lot of fun.  I had a hard time choosing which wonderful work of Lisa’s to call my own.  After some indecision, I settled on “Necessary and Beautiful,” (graphite and neocolor on mylar, 2016), which you can barely see in one of the photos here. You can get a better view of it in my earlier post about my weekend plans.  Link to my earlier post about the weekend, which shows “Necessary and Beautiful”

There was a lot of good conversation.  I enjoyed getting tips on my research for the Intro to Medieval Lit project I’m doing from Brian of the Hilltop Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.

And it was a major surprise to find Grayson Atha at the gallery!  He is a former pastor at my church, Summit on 16th UMC.  We are going through many transitions at the church right now, and I caught Grayson up on some of them.

Plus, there were excellent munchies and wine at the reception.  Right on, Lisa! 🙂  Juhi, Amol and I took off to hike down High Street for Gallery Hop and made ourselves thoroughly exhausted.

So that was Saturday evening.

Sunday morning at church at Summit on 16th, I met some very interesting friends of our congregation’s soloist and accompanist, Sharon Udoh Itoro-Obong, known to many by her performance handle Counterfeit Madison.  Sharon asked me if I recognized one of her friends and on closer inspection I could say Yes! Because he was a member of the band that backed Sharon at her sold-out show, “Counterfeit Madison Meets Nina Simone:  A Celebration of Blackness” at Copious/Notes on August 13th.  Here’s a very impressionistic shot I took at the concert:

You’ve got to hear a couple of snippets of very different songs she did at the show, the first being from the jazz standard “Strange Fruit:”

Then a rousing bluesy number that concludes with the entrance of none other than our Luster Dela Virgion, aka Sile Singleton:

Sharon’s other friends who turned up at Summit on Sunday morning were Carolyn, who is scoping out dual-degree grad programs in divinity and social work, and Andrew, a high baritone who I’m trying to enlist in the Summit choir, as well as providing vocals for some lutesongs.  We exchanged contact info.  I hope something comes of that!

Labor Day Monday dawned clear and hot.  Juhi, Amol and I got a fairly early start to our day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival.  Juhi and I decided not to go in costume because of the heat, but after she saw all the folks there in colorful garb, she regretted our decision.

We met the Countess of Rutland:

The Countess most graciously deigned to converse with us before she had to hurry off to attend Her Majesty, the Queen, because, after all, in the Village Of Willy-Nilly it is 1572!

We got to see and listen to my friends Michael Rosa and Teddy Johnson perform on citterns as The Roses:

Juhi’s dearest wish at ORF was to have her photo taken with a fairy.  When we arrived in the morning, fairies abounded.  But now that we were looking for them, they disappeared. Our theory was that the heat of the day, which was oppressive indeed!, had driven them away.

Then we found the Fairy of All Fairies:

She even danced for us, demonstrating an insouciant fairy disregard for gravity:

Juhi found some other colorful characters as well!

Meanwhile, I tried and failed to get Juhi to buy something for herself or even to accept a modest gift from me, which she would not.  I did manage, however, to custom-order some leather Viking shoes, complete with crown burnt antler buttons (don’t ask!). 🙂