Perhaps my celestial alignments are coming into place after all... Last night we watched 10,000 BC, which also has to do with a sign/prophecy about a mark of Orion on a deliverer heralding the coming of the Hunter to defeat the 'god', using slave labor to build the pyramids (an Atlantian?). Anyway, I went out to return the video; it was a very clear night. Just under the moon was none other than the constellation Orion, upright and plain as day!
Now, I'm not really superstitious, and I say this tongue-in-cheek, but it is an amazing coincidence, all on the evening of the day I spent at a meeting about an opportunity for a Brewery and Meadery in Kalamazoo, which brings me to the purpose of this post...
Anyone and everyone who have tried my meads over the years should contact me. I would like a testamonial from you about your experience with my meads in order to solidify the opportunities I'm being offered in Kzoo. Please identify whether you're an experienced mead drinker, where my meads place on your scale of others you've tried, and an honest, specific description of the what you tasted, along with any emotions, feelings, memories, etc that was evoked by the experience, and what you thought of the mead you tried in specific terms, its quality, and any other aspect you found important to you. For others who may have tried mead for the first time, please answer within the above parameters as best you can within your own frame of reference. Of course, as always, I want to get a clean description of my meads for what they are, without attaching too much expectation or expectation divergence from either any name or comparison to anything. While comparisons are good for their own sake, let us also include stand-alone evaluations for what my meads are themselves. I think they stand up against almost any product out there, but I just want a well rounded opinion from my interested mead taste-testers.
Please respond to this as a comment to submit your testamonial. If you were not party to our mead-tasting after-hours BDI parties, but know someone who was, please pass word along to them about this opportunity. Anyone submitting a testamonial for inclusion in our plans and promotional materials will be given due credit, so be sure to leave your real name.
Perhaps many of you have noticed a song from '90's Dokken on my song list called the Maze (on the myspace.com/blackdragoninn page). It's a melancholy tune about negotiating a maze, but as applied to life, and in my case, being still unemployed, 'I'm right back where I started.' Sure I've developed skills, earned a degree, gotten experience in a host of things, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum, but it doesn't seem to matter. I've always wanted to be a pilot too, so now that they raised the mandatory retirement age, I have to move on it this year or it seems it will be lost forever. Add to that my opportunity to start a brewpub and meadery, and it seems with the skills I've developed over the last 20+ years in brewing, that I could engender support out there. NOT! Unless my networking here and around the state in person somehow pays off, it won't happen either. I can't do it alone, and like many of you, I'm from a working class background trying to breakout professionally, but you need a benefactor when you're economically challenged. The benefactor I seek is a group of investors willing to pony up the capital to work with for producing and marketing my beers and meads. Again, I can't do it alone. If I could, I would have already done it. In the old days, I could have already done it if I sufficiently impressed the Lord under whom I lived with my products after my apprenticeship with the local Brewmeister, or even worked for him... The King would have welcomed a new business that paid taxes. Today's regulations make it seem we have less freedoms than back then under the feudal system, and you need to be independently wealthy in order to make it happen. Whatever happened to opportunities in this country to start small with a craft and make its popularity pay for its own growth with a minimum of investment?
The future of the BDI now depends on what happens to me professionally. Will I find any investors willing to help? Will I find a local Lord (land-owner) who has an idle building for me to develop a brewery/meadery within its walls with an equitable deal for myself to make it worth my while? If so, the BDI will become very solid as a marketing adjunct to the enterprise. Without it, the BDI is just a shakey stand that might pay for itself; and in the face of new employment where I won't exactly have earned time off, my availability for it will be at the mercy of said employer. And if I have to move out-of-state...? I'd like to do it, but it seems all the circumstances have to be just right: The planets have to be in perfect alignment with each other and my constellation, along with stellar harmony between galaxies and a favorable wave of dark energy! Well, it seems that way at times.
One may well ask, why not work for another brewery for now? Why? Well, they all seem to want science or botanical degrees, which I don't have, and nobody wants to believe I have talent or experience when I say I do because I've never worked for a brewery before, yet I can make better beer than they can! And this is why many microbrews suck! They've all hired scientists and lost the art. They need artisans, and don't even realize it! I'm sure the entrepreneurs that started these breweries didn't have scientific degrees at the beginning, if even now; which brings me back to the power of entrepreneurialism. The market rewards those who make a good product. But in this business, it takes money to make money; it takes capital to make such products under the circumstances the government wants to get the license to sell it. Therein lies the rub: It's not about ability anymore, but politics and money. Knowledge, therefore, isn't power... MONEY is POWER! Knowledge just removes one's bliss-of-ignorance to make one sick; sick that you have the inside knowledge and ability to make a great products, i.e., make money, just not the means to do it!
Special thanks to those who helped spread the word about the BDI and my meads. Due to my customers, friends, and fans, I made rent. Odd thing to post? Not really, when my last ditch effort to drum up business was to level with my friends. Just wanted to pass along the good news: Mission accomplished!
Another thank you goes out to Wendy Hough for coming to the last BDI Gathering of faire in which she pledged and reinforced her support for the BDI as the Village Tavern and Inn that she wants to be permanent. I know it was an effort after being on your feet all day, luv! Thank you!
Thank you to Heather and Louie for being such great friends and supporters in such a very short time, and for making me your Meadmaster. I look forward to continuing to get to know you even better and making MiRF next year. I can't wait to make progress on the Inn and Meadery with you two at my side pledging fealty to the cause... EDORAS!
Special thanks to the Kilted Shell... Thank you for your friendship, tolerance, straight talk, and for being such a great fan of me meads and me BEST customer. You are truely part of me renfaire inner-circle. I'm posting this publicly because I'm very proud that you're me friend, and that you are such an awesome person! You deserve others to know just how great you are; you deserve recognition. I am a better person for having met you, and I don't say that to many people. You've brought out in me things I didn't realize were lost for a very long time. Friendships are very important to me, and I love my friends for good reason. In many ways you are a kindred spirit. Perhaps on that level I recognized you and were drawn in like a skeeter to a bug light, only without the blood sucking. ;) Thanks for coming to me parties!
Thanks also to Strider the Assassin for being one of my best customers, and also for being a great new friend. I look forward to getting to know you better as well as our paths will cross again, my friend.
Everyone has been so good to me at MMRF, even in the face of... irregularities. I hope everyone at faire gets to know one of our late comers among the entertainers, Kevin Weekley (the Magistrate, Lord Drake). He is my oldest renfriend; he is the one who got me into doing renaissance faires. Without his help and support, I would not be there now. In the face of whatever miscommunications, misunderstandings or whatever else may have been said, just get to know him. He wants to help, be involved, and he's one of the greatest assets a faire could have. Get to know him...
Lastly, thank you to my crew for a job well done, especially newcomer Thorbeard Berserkbear, my grill-man. I think this crew is the best I've had so far. Thank you for no internal dramas on the stand... makes my job a lot easier. There, now this is long enough...
Well, gang, it's been fun, and I've made a lot of new friends; even have a new inner circle (you know who you are). I wanted to express my appreciation for all who have supported the BDI by day, and also by night, with a call out to those who have attended, but have yet to be more supportive to please consider contributing to the Meadmeister's Fund in order to make it so I can continue to develop product over the off-season. This year is voluntary donations in order to introduce myself to you as the Meadmeister. Now is the time to show me what its meant to you. Next year will be the time that minimums will need to be enforced to be fair to me and to those who do. We will do a BDI Tasters Guild every saturday nite with a minimum donation. Sorry, gang, but after the party, reality sets in and nice words don't pay the bills. My thanks to those who have spread the word, and are interested in helping get the BDI Meadery started with me. This is very important. While I hold the keys as the Meadmeister, the guy who can make it, I can't make it happen alone. See ya this weekend! Pete Wylde Meadmeister of the Michigan Realms Black Dragon, Inc.
CAPTAIN'S LOG of the Black Dragon... 'Ello there, mates! Blue Richard Sexton 'here to plunder yer booty at Kleves... With me favorite Curvy (Kilt) Girl by me side ('oo's got me back with an extremely large Claymore), we're gonna 'ave fun on Pirates and Pints weekend! (Hat over heart...) Last year we lost our very own Captain Bordeauxsa, the bloody wine-o. Aye-witness accounts seem a contradiction though. One report says he was face-down in one of the wine barrels (bung removed) amidships in the cargo 'old. One said she punched 'im fer grabbin' 'er booty and knocked 'im out. Another saw 'im staggerin' along the top rail towards the plank. Still another claims 'e was climbin' the riggin' towards the crow's nest to catch Rattie sleepin' at 'is post. Yet, after a large splash, one said 'e was face-down in the sea. Still another claims 'e saw the poor Captain grabbed and carried off by a shark. Lastly, one drunken bastard said 'e saw 'im riding the backs of sea turtles towards Tortuga. Methinks it's the rum talkin'. I dunno, I'm just glad to be rid of 'im. As First Mate, that makes me the new Captain of the Black Dragon!! Arr-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-arrrrrrrrrr! So, in celebration of me new status this year, Blue Richard's Mead will come out on Saturday nite to consummate the promotion! Feel free to slip a bit o' yer gold in me giant mug, before I 'aves to take it from ye! Remember, that's CAPTAIN Blue Richard, and I guess that makes Gabriel, the Pink Booty Pirate, the new First Mate. Now if I could only afford me overcoat...
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