Okay, Here’s another blast of past photos. It shows an interesting start to a certain pastime of mine. These are pictures of Homecoming from my senior year at Houghton College. The theme that year was obviously some sort of Renaissance Theme.
Now, I noticed in the pictures that the college madrigal singers had been brought in for homecoming because of the theme, and I can see myself — there in blue and silver.
As a non-music major it took me until senior year to try out for the madrigal singers (who sang at the annual Madrigal Dinners at Christmas-time). I made it in the try-outs. Only problem — the rehearsal period overlapped senior writing seminar, which I needed to graduate with my major of writing. So I went to Professor Leax, and he helped me draft a proposal for a special writing class to replace the writing seminar — and included attending as much of it as possible.
So college was where I first got interested in Renaissance madrigals. But it took another 11 years before I got invited by Lee Fenwick to join Madrigalia Bar Nonne in Kansas City while I was singing with him in the Fine Arts Chorale of Kansas City. And from there began my now 16-year run with MBN and the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.
So now, from that digression back to Homecoming. Naomi Woodmansee was elected homecoming queen, escorted by homecoming king Stephen Beun.
The one “odd” thing in the pictures was the balloon fish. It was Floyd the inflatable flying flounder of Yorkwood House. And apparently it got away, or was let go, some time at the end.
So it just goes to show, you can have fun with something, and never know, years later, what you might be able to do because of it.
At The Rainbow 