A Parting Glass

July 4, 2022
1 min read

In 1996 it was the best photo I had ever taken.

It was early morning and we were in the faire parking lot, preparing to perform at the Ohio Renaissance Festival. It was late summer/early fall, and the morning light cast golden hues on her skin and hair.

We were dating then, and we loved Star Wars, film, the faire, and Dungeons & Dragons.

In the years after dating, we became better and truer friends.

We have been friends for twenty-seven years. Our conversations throughout our lives have been a compass.

I received news of her passing from COVID complications today, the Fourth of July—the day her family traditionally watched the musical 1776, and which they introduced to me.

I mourn for her husband and children. I mourn for her father. I mourn for her family and friends.

As for me, she was part of our faire family. She was one of my gaming companions; she was Eladora Brea Le, last queen of the elves. She was a councilor and close friend in good times and bad, and I will miss Jenny for the rest of my life.

Of all the comrades that e’er I had
They are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I had
They’d wish me one more day to stay

But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be with you all

Jennifer (King) Petersen and Steven Townshend, 1996. Photo by Sam Townshend.
Jennifer (King) Petersen, 1996.
Friendship day one, 1995. Photo by Joy King.

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Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

  1. Practicing Patience with Personal Projects
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The All Worlds Traveller

Welcome to The All Worlds Traveller, an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from a Distant Era. Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories. This is a blog about photography and narrative; history and myth; fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird; creation and experience. This is a blog about stories.

Steven Townshend

I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print. It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds. Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.

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About a Distant Era

Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away. We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.

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