Letters... we get letters...

A few people in the Shire asked about calligraphy, so we moved our regular Research Night to Sunday afternoon and had a little workshop. I used PowerPoint to demonstrate a little bit of the history of lettering styles in SCA period, and then we tried writing a few lines.  We took the opportunity to write with different instruments (reeds, quills, metal, and nylon  tip).
I didn't know that the word "calligraphy" was coined post 1600.  Guess what, scribes. You need a new job description.
I hope the shire folk have a new appreciation of the work that is put into the scrolls that are presented with their awards.
 

Man's Speech Must Exceed his Grasp, Else What's a Meta For?

Normally, my classes tend to explain some aspect of the medieval mind. Sometimes they are even taught in persona, from the point of view of a 13th-century woman who has no knowledge of the modern world.
In my last class for a Bardic Madness (at least for a while) I broke with that trend, and used cable TV and 1940s radio to encourage bards to more interesting speech. My plan was to demolish trite phrases, cliché expressions, weasel words, and pleonasms by encouraging more engaging metaphors.
Aristotle suggests how to do this in On Poetics XXII, so I'm not making stuff up. He says that the poet must see the scene portrayed with "utmost vividness". Metaphors, which both deviate from normal language (thus being distinctive) and conform partially to normal language (bringing it clarity) aid in that portrayal.
Old time radio programs depended on language alone to draw the scene. For some examples, I recommend listening to "Pat Novak for Hire", a radio program that shot smart similes like a nervous gangster with a tommy gun.
Period examples of metaphoric scene-painting include Norse kennings, Chaucer's Prologue, and even Dante's Divine Comedy.
I brought some objects, pictures, and scenes for the class to describe in metaphor. (Look at the object on your left. Describe it as a skald or a Pat Novak writer might.)

Knowing the Known World

Had I known that I was going to buy a house during the preparation time for this class, I might have considered something smaller. However, this was the Stellar University of Northshield, so I had free rein to be as geeky as possible in a two-hour session!

Knowing the Known World is an overview of many of the differences in perspective between the modern world and the medieval/renaissance world.  Time, space, nutrition, politics, art, philosophy... lots of stuff.  Some of the subjects, such as the post-period seven-color rainbow, the realist/nominalist debates, and the theory of the four humors were discussed in previous classes. Other topics, such as the heirarchy of minerals, and Charlemagne's observation on bilingualism were new.  Some, such as the changing role of the individual were barely touched on... stay tuned for further developments.

Happy 800th Birthday

This June we celebrate the 800th Anniversary of the "Articles of the Barons", a document which, with considerable editing, became the "Magna Carta" or "Great Charter".  Since the theme of Hvitskogar's "Over the River - Part Fork" event was the Magna Carta, I thought an introductory class on this great document might be in order. Beginning with the 1066 death of King Edward the Confessor I reviewed some of the issues that beset the English Crown and people, such as legitimacy of rule, ballooning taxes to pay for foreign occupations and wars, complete disregard for the lower classes, and the notion that the English Crown would bow to no other authority, sacred or secular.

I'm glad things aren't like that today, thanks to this charter and its successors.

Gnomes - Short and to the Point

A challenge was issued at Bardic Madness XXV to present a work that used proverbs to prove a point. I had been playing around in psalters, trying to see if the marginal illustrations had any connection to the text.

What did I discover?  Aesop's fables!

Apparently, from around the 11th through the 14th centuries, there were books of sermon illustrations written to help priests put a little more punch in their sermons. They drew from many sources, which included popular sayings and proverbs, the legendary lives of the saints, and the fables that are usually attributed to Aesop.

I tried to give an overview of how some of this material (some of which had roots in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and India) had come to be in Psalters and books of hours, and how proverbs could indeed be used to prove a point.

I must say, this project was overwhelming in the best possible way. Every rock I turned over provided loads of little critters proclaiming earthy wisdom.  I'm so glad I had a deadline, or my bill at Amazon would have been enormous.

I put the text of my PowerPoint talk on a page here on Blogger. I haven't formatted a true bibliography yet.

Officers' Day

Officers Day in Northshield is a semi-event, intended to help officers learn their job, or decide if they want to hold a local or kingdom office. We don't do any re-creation of the middle ages -- we wear street clothes, and eat pizza rather than feast. But we tackle the mundane work of making the Society work.

I taught two classes. One was "Autocratting 101".  I've got several events under my belt -- from little one-day localish events with a pie as the site fee, to half of a Known World event in August 2014.  I shared a few tips, especially about calendaring and publicizing the event. I also compiled ALL the expected reports, and where to send them, or where to fill them out online. Since a piece of paper full of hyperlinks was rather silly, I posted the list on my group's web page with live links.

I sort of fell into leading "How to avoid burnout in small groups".  We started by filling out the seneschal's Domesday report, answering the questions with "Cards Against Burnout" -- yet one more adaptation of "Cards Against Humanity".  After playing with these cards for a few minutes, nobody was reluctant to share their experience and insight. I don't know if any flames were put out, but we had some good laughs, and that, in my opinion, is one of the best medicines against burnout.

Gods and Mortals

Bardic Madness had a theme of "Gods and Mortals" this year, so Kudrun presented an overview of some of the Christian saints who help us (meaning 13th-century folk) bridge the gap between ourselves and the Divine Mystery. It was my intention to help people find the right saint to intercede for them, since some show a particular affinity to certain occupations (like Sts Crispin and Crispinian, patrons of shoemakers), or locations (such as Cuthbert, who insisted that his bones be interred at Durham), or diseases (such as St Fiacre... you can look it up).  I was able to introduce some of the saintly stories that Tertullian considered to be "old wives' tales" (like St Thecla, who baptised herself in a pool filled with vicious seals who were supposed to kill her). I also pointed out some of the scholarly saints, such as St Bede, who reformed the calendar and charted the tides, and St Isidore, who wrote a 20-volume encyclopedia. There was a little skepticism expressed over St Adalbert's two skulls (one claimed by Prague, another by Gniezno) and over St Wilgifortis' instant growth of a beard.  (Wilgifortis' father had her crucified because she refused to marry a rich heathen man.) 
Despite the PowerPoint slides shown behind my head, the class was taught in persona, except for two saints whose cultus didn't grow until after Kudrun's time. (How can one resist St Wilgifortis?)

Kudrun on Mars

Sometimes "class" is not the proper word for a sharing of information. This weekend I was able to participate with the Barony of Nordskogen at MarsCon. A hotel room was converted into the Great Hall of Nordskogn by means of banners, tapestries, benches, and gentlewomen in seemly attire. Period food was laid out on the board, and an atmosphere of quiet calm contrasted with the frenetic atmosphere of much of the convention.
One of the beverages we served was sekanjabin, a syrup of sugar, water and vinegar, sometimes flavored. Una Duckfoot had made many jars of the syrup using apple cider vinegar and mint tea, and since I had had the most experience with the beverage, I was the mixer and interpreter. Rosanore encouraged people to try this drink-that-didn't-come-from-a-can. 
Humans (including a 21-month-old acrobat), demi-humans, Klingons, and vampires were introduced to the virtues of sekanjabin.  I was lucky enough to chat with the Con's featured author, Esther Friesner, who had traveled in al-Andalus, the source of the 13th-century recipe for the drink. Her description of the deserts of Spain, where such a drink would be life-saving, reminded me of summer SCA camping events.
Here's how I make it:  Bring to a boil 1¼ cups of water and 2 cups of sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.  Add ½ cup of white wine vinegar, and simmer the mixture for about ½ hour. Throw in as much fresh mint as you can submerge in the liquid and let cool. Then strain out the mint. (Running warm water through the extracted mint will give you a few test servings.)  The syrup stores indefinitely.  To serve, mix syrup with water in a ratio of 1:5 to 1:10, according to taste. Serve warm or cold.
More information can be found here and here. 
Flavor variations I've tried include pomegranate, lemon zest, orange zest and warm spices, raspberry ginger... whatever.  Using honey instead of sugar (or with a reduced amount of sugar) is expensive, but worth it.  

Hats Revisited Again

British Library Stowe 17

When the Provost of the Stellar University of Northshield (SUN) announced that she hoped for classes on headgear, I knew it was time to dust off some research into the 13th century hat that I'd done for the 2006  Known World Costuming Symposium
It took more than dusting.  My sources in 2006 were books, including the "history of costume" books by Norris, Planché, Köhler, and Houston, and several less useful but more modern ones.  This time I was able to visit websites of the Morgan Library, the British Library, national libraries of the Netherlands, France and Austria... I lost count of how many. With their online publications I was able to pull together about 1000 pictures of 13th and early 14th headgear, focusing on the one worn by the model in the picture.  The pictures included several media, including cathedral statuary, which aided interpretation of the painted media.
This headwear, known in the literature as a coif, touret, turret, filet, pill-box hat, pie-crust hat, and coffee filter hat, had several variations during the period of its popularity  (between 1183 and 1416).  What dating was available provided a nice bell curve, peaking around 1250. The sides of the hat might be parallel or flared to varying degrees. It might be tall enough to hide the top of the head, or the head might poke through. The hair might be braided, and fastened behind the neck, or, more frequently contained in a solid or net caul. It was almost always white. The hat was almost always worn with a barbette, or chinstrap.
Though the 500 pictures of the "real hat" (as opposed to similar-looking crowns, or other types of head covering) are hardly a scientific sample of all of the evidence, I feel very confident that the people in my class have a clear idea of what "the 13th-century hat" looks like.  (And I now call myself an SCA CSI.)

Timey-Wimey Stuff

Thomas More's clock

With Winter Solstice exactly one week away, the Shire of Rokeclif was kind enough to let me pack them into the TARDIS for a look at time in period.  A "day" in Kudrun's time was the time between sunrise and sunset, which was divided into twelve hours. Though there was no period way of measuring the minutes, each hour today was about 45 minutes long. (If I were really in Scotland, each hour would be 35 minutes.)

We read calendars from books of hours, and tracked the names of the days of the week and the months.  We looked at fourteen different dates when "Happy New Year" was an appropriate expression, and decided that May 1 was our favorite.
It was a challenge to describe period timekeeping without resorting to the conventions we're used to -- the 60-minute hour and the 60-second minute. What was it like in period to switch to thinking of time "of the clock"?  (Check Chaucer's Parson's tale prologue for the intersection of two ways of time-telling.)
At least we didn't have to try to reconcile the solar and lunar years, which was a challenge for Julius Caesar, Roger Bacon, and Pope Gregory. And no, we didn't attempt to calculate the date of Easter.
(We did learn that my cursor was as good as a laser pointer for entertaining the cat.)

Aristotle renews his SCA membership

Falcon's Gate, the college subsidiary of Falcon's Keep, invited me to chat about persona. We had a lively discussion, partly because of the delicious brownies that provided a sugar high. Aristotle provided what structure we had, but as we chatted about aspects of medieval "thought" we detoured into bits of my class on period maps. Garb questions also abounded. Thank you, Falcon's Gate, for a delightful evening of geekdom.

Maps revisited

I had an opportunity to rerun my class on maps (from April 2013) for the Shire of Rokeclif. We took the whole afternoon (and had a potluck afterward) so there was more time available, but there were kids in a class that was originally intended for adults. So I added some kid-friendly activities, such as using toilet paper tubes and pricked paper to make constellation maps, which the kids could project on the walls of a dark room, and magnetizing a needle to make a compass.   Sam added the directions for our Northshield compass rose.

A&S 50 Gathering at WW

The twentieth incarnation of Warriors & Warlords, Northshield's largest event, occured on the weekend of July 13. There was fighting and dancing, foodie competition, three bardic circles, and, between Smiths' Row and the Authenticity encampment, enough A&S to impress even the most jaded observer. (The local paper had a beautiful color spread featuring many activities, including my first attempt at blacksmithing.) So I wasn't worried that people were doing Other Things when I hosted an A&S 50 gathering. There were a couple actual challengers, plus several who were just there for the shade. (I tried to draw them into the fold.)  It was still a great A&S event.

How to be Dahrien

Many of you know Master Dahrien Cordell. One of his many talents is to create contrafacta instantaneously. I believe I recall him filking a song as the song itself was being written.  Since he took my name in vain in creating publicity for Bardic Skirmish, (formerly Border Skirmish, a Northshield/Midrealm event) I thought I'd get even by teaching a class in filking. It would contain a bit of background in SCA history and in period contrafacta, but the point would be to write a song, using "a tune we all know".

There were only a couple problems.  One is that most of the people who attended, including Dahrien himself, had already mastered the fine art of filking. The other is that Mistress Eliane's class was scheduled for the same time in the same 12x12 foot sunshade.  So we pretty much had a great conversation on the bardic arts in general, and then jumped headlong into a game of Bardic Kubb, which involved knocking sticks over by throwing other sticks at them, and coming up with bardic performance with any successful toss by the other team. (If you want a better explanation, ask Dahrien.  It was great fun.)

Draw me a map

The theme for Bardic Madness XXIII was "Directions" so I thought I'd teach a course on cartography. That I knew next to nothing about cartography in the middle ages didn't bother me. I had more fun researching this class than any of the others, since every turn of the page brought some fascinating new insight. I started fairly early, about 6000 BCE (lest early period folk think I'm neglecting them). I ended with a crazy map from c.1590, in which a map of the world replaces the face in a jester's hood. Sayings including "Nosce te ipsum" (Know thyself) and "Stultorum infinitus est numerus" (The number of fools is numerous). A cartouche on the map ascribes it to "Epichthionius Cosmopolites", which is essentially, "Anonymous".
Other interesting maps include one on a coin, a circular one that was about twelve feet in diameter, one that features Paul Bunyan holding runestones. (at least he looks like Paul Bunyan.), and a heart-shaped world map. Maps that hung in churches featured Eden at the top (in the far East); Jerusalem in the center, griffins, elephants and bears in the north; monsters in the far south; and the Minotaur in his maze on Crete. As India and Africa were explored by Europeans, the Pygmies who battled with cranes (reported by Aristotle, Homer, and Pliny) had to be moved from there to Canada, where they lived with unicorns.
There were many revolutions in thought hinted at in this class, not the least of which was the shift from 12 directions to eight (or 16 or 32). And how maps changed in character from geographical, to theological, to nautical, to geographical.
I hope I find another opportunity to teach this class, because it was so much work and so much fun.

A day of science

The Stellar University of Northshield gathered in Rockhaven on February 9, 2013 for a day of classes, classes, and more classes.

For Science 101: Life, the Universe, and the Microcosm, Karyn had to take the reigns, since Kudrun would never have had reason to present a brief history of western scientific thought from the Babylonians to the printing press. (Especially since Kudrun lives in the thirteenth century.)  So Karyn ran through early astronomy, Eratosthenes, Plato & Aristotle, the "fall of Rome", Isidore, the translation mania that led to the twelfth-century renaissance, the scholastics, and the turn from science to other activities (art, music, the black plague) in the fourteenth century. Since the printing press changed everything, I left off there. That's another class.

Kudrun taught the afternoon class, which was an overview of humoral theory, with stern admonitions for everyone to consult their physician and astrologer, who understand the complexities of the effects of the stars, the seasons, diet, clothing, music, and exercise on the body.

50 posts! I win!

"Blogger" tells me that there are 50 posts in this blog, so I must have met my A&S 50 challenge!  Since several posts include multiple classes, I'm pretty confident that there have been more than 50 opportunities to teach. However, some of these are reruns. (Not completely, since no two classes are alike, but there was definite overlap - especially in the several incarnations of the persona classes.)  I wonder if I should tweak my challenge to "50 different classes" instead of simply "50 classes".  That sounds too much like work!

I think my time will be better used in improving the documentation for several of the classes I've already presented, and organizing the information better. I recall a class somewhere... taught by someone... that commands the listener to WRITE IT DOWN!  Like most of my shopping lists, many of my source notes were lost under the weight of a deadline. It would be a good idea to re-insert the documentation into each class script. (I remove them so they don't create a distraction when I'm doing the class. And yes, Virginia, I do use a script, as I am easily distracted, and don't wish to repeat myself by ad-libbing too much.)

So perhaps the next challenge is to create 50 booklets - one for each class - with full documentation and pictures. May be -- after I tackle a new class for SUN and for Bardic Madness.

So you want to make a pilgrimage

The event was "Boar's Head - A Celebration of Travelers" (The gate was a viking ship and the site token was a pilgrim badge).  What else could I do but give advice to those who might want to undertake a pilgrimage?  The challenge was to present information about reasons for pilgrimage and equipment for the journey completely in persona. I had my scrip and staff, and badge-filled hat (borrowed from the Wife of Bath), so I could look like a pilgrim of 1284. But that wasn't enough.
What Kudrun didn't know, was that Karyn had a projector along, and could show slides of period pilgrims and shrines behind her back. This allowed presentation of things that would happen in Kudrun's future, such as the 1388 ordinance of Richard II allowing arrest of anyone claiming to be a pilgrim without the proper credentials, and Christopher Columbus vowing that a crew member would make a pilgrimage if they survived rough seas. I could display a map of the three pilgrimages imposed on a profligate priest that basically got him out of the Archbishop's hair for three years. I don't know if anyone noticed that the gent in his undies, asking, "Has anybody seen my tunic?" was holding a bar of soap. (He had sewn his money into his tunic... and then took it off for bathing.)
Not many subjects lend themselves to in-persona teaching as well as this one did, but I recommend it for SCA teachers. I don't know how students perceive it, but as teacher, I feel that it allows more immersion into the thought of the real middle ages. One is able to say, "We do this because of that" as opposed to "In period they thought this or that."

Falcon's Gate to persona

Aristotle's Poetics was reviewed again on Thursday, October 11 (10/11/12) as Falcon's Gate invited me to UW Stevens Point to talk about persona. (We should have done class about navigation, right, Keepers?)  We also had a few side trips on the rainbow, numbers, and Terry Pratchett.

Novices, Neophytes & Knaves III

NNK is an event for newcomers, but this year it was also put on by newcomers.  Students from University of Wisconsin Green Bay did a fine job of hosting the event, with mentoring by old-timers. The selection of classes was excellent, with martial arts, fiber arts, calligraphy, and SCA culture represented.

My own contribution included Aristotle's take on persona, which you've seen here many times. I also presented "A Source is a Source, of course, of course..." which introduced some of the pitfalls of SCA research. I tried this class at Warriors & Warlords, but for this incarnation I was able to use PowerPoint to show more clearly the differences between "good enough" sources and "really awful" sources. The purpose for the research determines the level and the direction of research for a project. What's adequate for first garb is not adequate for entering an A&S Competition. (And woe betide the one who criticizes a newcomer for not having garb as classy as the Laurel next door.)