Got an e-mail a few weeks ago from an old friend, Ted Capkanis, of whom I had heard relatively little for the last ten years or so. Was reasonably close friends with him ever since he dragged me into Student Government at DBCC with the argument that it was really fun, he was president so we could goof off, and if I got elected to office I got my tuition back and didn’t have to tell my parents about it. The political life beckoned! The remainder of that year is still blocked to all but federal investigations and is a large part of why DBCC didn’t have a Student Government for many years afterwards.
Turns out he’s now in a band called Blackrose, which was going to play at the DeLand Art Festival. Even a slacking, nonsocial person such as myself could hook up with an old friend who lives less than an hour away but that I still haven’t seen in ten years, so Teres and I and our friend Alynia went to see him, his wife, another old friend named Dave Clipp who is quiet and funny and can play anything with a string on it, and a couple of other people we don’t know play 45 minutes of Celtic Folk Music.
Ted Capkanis, Kathi Capkanis, and Dave Clipp on stage, out where people can see them and everything. Photo by me.
Had a lot of fun clapping along and jeering in a goodnatured way, then spent the next couple hours wandering the festival, having lunch at Chili’s, and generally discovering that after a decade none of us have changed that much. Aside from some body weight and hair issues, anyway. I am, however, appalled that the people I grew up with, people I have seen drunk and in ill-fitting togas, are now molding the minds of our youth. Ted is a high school teacher, Alynia is teaching a creative writing seminar at Stetson this summer, I write a newspaper column, and Dave has some schoolyard candy distribution thing he didn’t want to talk about. I fear for this nation’s future.
Fun day, though.