Little navel gaze on that topic, sort of.
On Saturday morning Mr. J had to drive to Reading, PA to attend a wedding. You might remember that Mr. J is better known as Mark Kram, Jr. and last year he won a boatload of awards for a newspaper piece called "Pieces of Paco." If you Google phillynews.com and type in his name, you can read it. Have some tissues handy.
Mr. J asked me to go with him to the wedding. I didn't feel like sitting in the car for 2 hours out and 2 hours back. But then I remembered that the Celtic Fling was this weekend, just a hop and a skip from Reading! Threw some duds into a suitcase and agreed to accompany Mr. J to the wedding.
The wedding we went to was one of the girls Mr. J wrote about in "Pieces of Paco."
It worked like this. A young boxer named Paco Rodriguez was killed in a match at the Blue Horizon in Philadelphia. Paco's family donated his organs, and Mr. J wrote a story about the horrible tragedy faced by Paco's family ... and the miraculous recoveries of the people who received his organs. Mind you, Paco was a young boxer, so he was in tip-top shape and died with only head trauma.
The recipient of his lungs was a cystic fibrosis patient who had been given about a week to live. She was 21, and her boyfriend proposed marriage to her on what they both thought was her deathbed.
Saturday she got married. She invited all of Paco's donor recipients to the wedding, and they all came. Paco's brother Alex also flew in from Chicago to attend the event.
You want to feel weird as Wonderland? Sit at a table with a guy who can look around him at people who have his brothers lungs, people who have his brother's heart, people who got his brother's liver, people who got his brother's spleen and pancreas. I couldn't help but wonder what this poor dude from Chicago was thinking as he watched the beautiful, blushing bride dancing with her new husband.
Of course both the bride and groom thanked him for coming as part of their speeches and said he would always be like family to them.
Doesn't bring his brother back though.
Mr. J and I left the wedding at 6:00 without eating anything and started to try to find a hotel room. In the Lancaster, PA area. On a Saturday.
Ogling the Amish might be the stupidest American tradition around, but it has been and always will be popular. There were no rooms at the inn. Tourist season is in full swing.
For a hairy moment I thought Mr. J was going to give up. But he reversed gears, found us a room in Harrisburg, and we dined at a pub on Restaurant Row. Sunday morning we gulped down our complimentary breakfast and headed to the grounds of the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, where there was a Celtic Fling in progress.
Spare had alerted me to the Fling earlier in the week after hearing a commercial about it on the radio. Otherwise I wouldn't even have known about it. I never thought I would go there, even though one of my favorite bands, Albannach, was playing on Sunday. (See about about Anne's reluctance to drive 2 hours one way, 2 hours back.)
EXHIBIT A: ALBANNACH, SERIOUS BUTT-KICKING FLING BAND
Mr. J and I went to the Fling. He doesn't usually go to these kinds of things with me, so he's not used to seeing how I behave. But he took it in good stride when I joined the small (very small) group of people dancing to Albannach's set. Turns out that those dancers were almost all Fairie Festival people -- I recognized them.
So, this weekend I got to see a bride who cheated death, with the help of someone else's untimely end. I got to go to lively Harrisburg. (Not kidding, all the clubs are on Restaurant Row.) Then I got to see Albannach, which I thought was only a dream.
And on Monday, I believe Freya will be stopping by for mead and steaks!
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