Happy Holidays

[chriscat53]

Happy Holidays to everyone. Most folks don't know me because I am a playtron, but you may know my daughters Katie and Josie Tidwell. Yesterday I got my first new season urge to make garb. I am mainly a garbista, and get off on developing personas but I don't necessarily get to act them out much and hope to do more of that in the future. Being a hemodialysis patient I also hope that if they double the size of the Fair, they make the rest of  it  FLAT. lol.  On my last visit I had two scary shortness of breath episodes.  Had one right after I talked to Mumsies and headed up the hill. Too embarrassed to shout for help but luckily there was a stone wall right there to sit on till I got my breath. I just learned Tuesday that I am finally on the Kidney Transplant list so my next fear is that I won't be able to fit in my garb when the steroids take effect! 
     Some family history has given me some grist for a new persona. My dad, who was a WW2 combat vet, a liberator of Buchenwald concentration camp and my best buddy, died in October from the effects of Alzheimer's Disease. In the course of  finding some family history materials to send to family members whom I saw at the funeral, I discovered that my family name, Ruffo, (2 great grandmothers who were sisters) is also the name  of a noble family from Reggio Calabria whose fiefdom centered on our hometown—San Procopio. This family can be traced back to the11th Century and one of the most prominent footnotes is that Francesco Sforza I, a subject of Machiavelli's The Prince married a Calabrese noblewoman (probably a duchess) named Polissena Ruffo .
Sforza was supposed to have developed the idea of a balance of power and was praised for not using mercenaries to maintain his power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_I_Sforza
Also my favorite Ren colors are also the colors of the Calabrese ruling class. Hoo Ha! I had always wondered how a humble Italian immigrant family had a family motto and distant memories passed down of a coat of arms. I didn't really think about it much until now because I also saw the motto on a cheese in Wisconsin. But I was also told that my great-grandfather was "like a Mayor of the town" and that we had a little bit of land. In fact, a Fabio Ruffo is today a  consiglieri in San Procopio. Pretty weird stuff! So now I will try to work it into a persona The family also intermarried with English and Belgian nobles. . I also finally bought the translated version of Vecellio's costume work. Each page has an image and description of the garb ca. 1590.
     Wish I could join you all at the Harp and Fiddle but I have to be up for dialysis at 5 AM the next morning and it totals a 3 hour drive. My energy level is pretty low—winter came way too early this year.