WEEKEND IN SHERWOOD IX CON REPORT by Julianne Toomey-Kautz Whew! What a great weekend! What a wonderful time to see old friends, meet some new ones and reminisce about -- well, about a large number of years that have gone by! My trip to Weekend in Sherwood started out just fine at Logan Airport in Boston, MA on Thursday evening. Sadly, things went awry with the hotel shuttle and I didn't arrive at the hotel until nearly midnight. Helen (Avry) and Rache were sitting outside and Helen presented me with an 8 1/2 by 11 of a photo from last time's Major Oak Awards with the players in costume and Jason kneeling among us. Thank you again, Helen! Then I checked in and went straight to bed. Friday was a busy day. Started out with a fan panel that Kitty asked me to be on at 10am, "Costuming in Sherwood," so I brought along a bunch of children's books to help illustrate the various ways costumes have been portrayed in hte literature. Then there were rehearsals for the Major Oak Awards cast -- there were lots of rehearsals: 3 today, 2 on Saturday and a really big dress rehearsal on Sunday starting around 8am. "Opening Ceremonies" with Mark Ryan were just wonderful! He answered some of the usual questions and some totally new ones, and told stories that had us rolling in the aisles, and then he turned the tables and started asking *us* questions! It was a wonderful, hilarious 2+ hours! (which necessitated some scrambling by the con committee to do some rescheduling, but hey, all in a good cause!) Then I ran Pavanne Practice for the exhibition pavanne before the banquet. We had lots of brave souls who tried out the pavanne for the first time, as well as a bunch of folks who have done it before, so I managed to get the dance taught in a bit over an hour. We plotted out the end-of-pavanne skit and warned some folks that they were going to be participants in the skit. When the time came, they performed bravely: "I'm Robin!" "No, I'm Robin!" "No you're not! I'm Robin!" and so on until Marion (Janet Van Meter) ran up to the one Robin in the room who had not been warned and declared that *he* was Robin! Laughter erupted from all. We also had a performance, thanks to Janet and David Van Meter's efforts with Clannad's music -- you mean there's a music-only track on the DVD?! Thanks, Janet!! -- and choreography, of the medieval dance "Hole in the Wall." The banquet food was very good this year. I really liked the "Steak on a stake" and that cream of broccoli soup was wonderful (usually, I hate broccoli!) The costume contest was filled with excellent costumes from more people than we've seen in a while. Someone won for "longest sword" --please pardon me; I forgotten who it was. Then came filksinging until we all collapsed from exhaustion. Wandering though the halls of the hotel was a fun experience. The staff smiled and said hello and occasionally looked bemused at all these strange people in strange clothes (we had a number of people wearing costumes in the halls this year -- hooray!). Saturday was just as busy. I had a panel with Rache from 9-10am (urk--early!) on "Robin Hood Minstrelsy" where we chatted with the audience about songs in the RH legend and in RoS. Great way to start out the morning, talking about some of our favorite music! We had a phone call with Clive Mantle, where he chatted quite comfortably with Mark and the fans about all kinds of things. Later on in the day, we had a phone call with Ray Winstone who -- wouldn't you know it? -- was filming in Boston while I was in Detroit. Sheesh. Timing. Oakies rehearsals through both lunch and dinner breaks. My gratitude once again to the kind, helpful Gofers who got some lunch for me from the restaurant or else I wouldn't have been able to eat at all. From 4-5pm, we had the Herne's Jr Archery tournament. Since I'm in charge, I decided that Kevin Costner's RH would be worth the most points, and that if someone even made a picture wiggle using the little kid toy bows, it would count as a hit. Have you tried those bows? It is not enough to aim, let me tell you! It works better if you don't aim! We had a great deal of fun and laughter. A couple of people even killed Kevin Costner twice! Hooray! Nikki and Marnie gofered the tournament, retrieving arrows that went every which way but straight! My thanks to them. Janet Van Meter took over my Medieval Dance class for me, since I was feeling ill; ill enough to call my doctor, who gave me a prescription over the phone that Mick drove me to pick up at a local CVS. Thank you again, Mick! When we came back and finished Oakies rehearsal, the RoS DVD PAL episodes were showing in the main programming room, but I decided sleep was better. It sounded like a lot of fun, though. Only one person showed up for circle, so we talked instead. I don't know if filksinging happened, because I went to bed. Sunday morning started far too early for a Sunday of a con. We started rehearsing around 8am for the Major Oak Awards. My poor roommate awoke to my wake-up call, but Robin (Nash) is a good sport. She went back to sleep, I think. Spent most of the Oakie rehearsals in laughter and fun. I think the awards ceremony went well. We didn't forget our lines (well, not many) and the audience laughed a lot, but not as much as we did in rehearsal. Rache wrote a hysterically funny script. I can't wait to see the photos! Thank you again, Nikki (I think it was Nikki), who volunteered to take pictures with my camera during the perfomance. Many wonderful pieces won an Oakie. I bet the winners are up on the Spirit of Sherwood site. If they're not yet, they soon will be. I was startled and pleased to win two awards this year for poetry. :) The Art and Charity Auction went very well. I actually bought back a piece of artwork that I'd donated, because when I saw it there, it was too beautiful to let go! I bought a RH bear that was too cute to resist and a RH cross stitch needlework, too. And of couse I bought the latest edition of Albion and a Middle Earth zine. :) Closing ceremonies were wonderful with Mark, as always. He's such a nice person! :) After that, people started to wind down. Matt Whitney and I began to pack up for a flight back to Boston that night. I acutally had to work on Monday! Fortunately, there were no children in my school library because I was too tired to think straight. And tomorrow (Saturday), we're (my husband and I) off to Aruba with my parents, brother and sister-in-law. So, that's my version of events in Sherwood. Congratulations again, Chris! Your hard work made the convention a fun time.