Aristotle again

I recycled the class that used Aristotle's Poetics as a foundation for persona development, and hence for improving the drama of SCA (see the April 13, 2009 post). I presented it to a couple dozen people at Warriors and Warlords, Northshield's "big event". I added some visuals using a flip chart. Projectors don't work as well as I'd like in a pavilion on a beautiful sunny afternoon.
Of course I plugged the Challenge -- especially the persona development track.

Now I know my A B G...

Have you ever wondered why our alphabet begins A B C, when almost everybody else begins theirs with A B G? (That includes Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and others.) That was the question that inspired a class on the history of the alphabet for Bardic Madness in Border Downs (Sioux Falls SD) on June 20. The theme of this year's Bardic Madness was "Letters" so the class fit right in.

I presented a history of alphabets from way before period (Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform) to well past period, when I and J became separate letters. Period inventions included punctuation, printing, and the use of small and capital letters.

I'd been working on this class since November, doing little else. It was so interesting, and I learned a LOT. I'll tag some of the books I used "letters" in LibraryThing, so you can have a look if you want to know more. (I also hope to do this class again.)