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Cast Links Directions Rules Winners News Copyright - King of the Log |
History
The 21th Century and beyond
Fund Raising
King of the Log was begun in 1971 which was the second year of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. It began as a fund raising event for the Women's American ORT and was soon changed into a fund raising event for Barton Open School in Minneapolis. It continues today as a charitable organization with an all volunteer cast and management. Each year all proceeds are given to support arts programs in public schools such as Barton.
Managers over the years
The following individuals have provided leadership to King of the Log over the years since its inception.
Eli and Sharon Kaplan (See Sharon's early history below)
Mary Kokernot
Terry Walters
Ira Moscovice
Joe Kennedy
David Nordrum
Gene German
Dan McLaughlin
Awards
King of the Log is proud of operating a high quality, fun and safe game. It has been given a number of awards over the years by the Minnesota Renaissance Festival including:
2001 - Special 30 Year Award:
1999 - Best Game by Volunteers
1996 - 25 years of continuous service Award
Early King of the Log History from Sharon Kaplan
In 1971, Woman’s American ORT, Diamond Chapter, ran
the first King of the Log games at the Renaissance
Festival in Jonathan,
MN. The site was small and the costumes - well, let’s just say that they
would not have passed the authenticity test. We had four people per day, two
people AM and two people PM, no relief. There was one log.
I don’t
remember exactly, but I ran for only two or three weekends. - maybe four.
Eli Kaplan and I had just moved to
Minnesota the year before and my most
vivid memories are of sweatshirts under burlap sacks and freezing.
I
worked at the Jonathan site for two years after which we moved to the present
site and I took over the chairmanship of the project for my chapter. That year
we made a big wooden box to store the bags and burlap costumes which I had
designed and made over the summer. That might be the year we increased to two
logs. Initially the game was run by the female members of ORT, but little by
little we managed to involve our husbands. We were situated in the meadow
across from the Scotch eggs, diagonally across from where we are now. The
Scotch Eggs people enjoyed watching our game so much that they offered free
scotch eggs to anyone who won nine times in a row. That is what got our whole
system of little awards going. So you know who to blame when you get tired of
stamping and threading those wooden pieces!
The time commitment grew
as the festival grew both in size and in numbers of weeks. Somewhere in the mid
1970's the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, started falling on weekends. ORT was
not ready to cede this source of income but it also couldn’t work on those
days. Our youngest daughter, Adina, was in the Lake Harriet Open Program (which
later was the Open Program at Fulton and then, after the introduction of the
five year plan, merged with Harrison to become the Barton Open Program). I
recommended that the Open Program work that weekend. This arrangement worked
well for about two years, and when ORT’s interest petered out, the Open
Program took over the game with a vengeance. Eli and I jointly chaired the
project at that time.
Jim Ward designed our first hut, built with the help of volunteers. I remember crews of us riding around the countryside looking for old barns that were being torn down, scrounging whatever materials we could find. We also started replacing the burlap costumes with more comfortable fabrics. Liz Klenzman, our first coordinator, organized a sewing bee at her house. Several of us brought our portable machines and the house was filled with the sounds of snipping scissors, the whirr of many machines, the sounds of mischievous kids and much laughter. We did this for many years at several homes, Chris Jaglo’s being one, until someone volunteered to take over this job.
Around 1977, the Lake Harriet Open Program had its own
Renaissance Festival. Liz organized one full week of options devoted to the
Renaissance - all afternoon every day. We ended with a big festival in the gym
at Lake Harriet School on Friday evening. For those of you too young to
remember, Lake Harriet School stood on the triangle of land surrounded by
Upton, Vincent and 42nd Street which is now occupied by condos. There was a
class on how to talk renaissance, and some of our 6th graders ran a mini King
of the Log in one corner of the room. Internationally known belly dancer
Cassandra came and taught a belly dance class and the primarily K and 1st
graders in the class put on a little belly dance show. We had a mummers play
and maypole dance. Gordon’s class did something on Leonardo da Vinci and
flight which was on display. There was an art class - kids studied pictures of
Renaissance paintings and then created their own copies - did a terrific job!
There was a class on famous murders (oh, those Borgias!) And I don’t
remember what else. We had a huge turnout - even Superintendent Arveson and
members of his administration came!
When Adina went to Southwest, Jack
and Chris Jaglo chaired the festival. After two years, however, it looked as if
things were over. At an open program board meeting, Mary Kokernot, who pleaded
for the continuance of the program’s participation of the game, drew this
concession - if she would chair it and find four other people to be on a
committee with her, the game could continue. Adina must have been the secondary
open’s student representative (the secondary portion of the program was at
Southwest, but we considered ourselves one open program), because she came home
and told us that she had volunteered, completing the committee. She, of course,
went off to camp the following summer, which is how Eli and I got re-involved
in planning side. That is when we instituted King of the Log classes run about
a week before the festival in Mary’s yard fashioned after a large one
given by the people who owned the festival in the early days.
The King of the Log had been moved to its present location in the meadow. We
built a new, bigger, stronger building. We were up to four logs. Little by
little, the committee got reduced in size until Mary, Eli and I jointly ran the
show and spent almost all of the weekends at the festival. We now
had seven weeks of people to fill. Adina graduated from high school and
Mary’s kids were in high school. We were running the game with a high
percentage of “regulars”, people who asked if they could work even
though they were not in the open program. The game would have folded without
them. Their dedication was unbelievable. We were there all weekend and set up
our own little “tent city” every Saturday night, right in the middle
of our bales and logs! The only “pay” they got was that we took them
all to the Lyon’s Tap, which was still a small little place in those days,
for pop, hamburgers and fries on the last day. Didn’t matter. It usually
rained so much and was so cold then that all we made was enough for our
“party”. When one of our young friends died in an automobile
accident, we all mourned.
When Mary’s kids graduated, we told the
Open Program that they had to find new people to run the game. We no longer
knew anyone and had lost our school connection. We still worked on weekends
occasionally. The last three years my hayfever got so bad that I was on
prednisone and I finally realized that I was always okay until the weekend I
went out to work at the festival. So, after 19 years of commitment to the King
of the Log, I bowed out totally.
Several actors got their starts at our games. I remember Lara Kokernot, a 2nd or 3rd grader at the time, taking my hand and asking me to teach her how to approach people. Lara joined the Children’s Theatre Company in the 4th or 5th grade and has become a distinguished actress. I recently saw Jay Underwood (?) in a movie. He lived with Mary K. while attending the Children’s Theatre Company school. Jennifer Blagen, now an actress, worked at King of the Log for one summer. They were children then, and they spent their time with us in August and September at the King of the Log.
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Cast Links Directions Rules Winners News Copyright - King of the Log |