A Midsummer Night's Dream (Abridged)

Found where this was hiding on Vimeo. I need to have a convenient link to it.

 

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Abridged) on Vimeo.

German Longsword Drills

I really need to practice more of this stuff.

Medieval Weapons Technique

This is just cool stuff. Around 1:19, you see why the period masters considered quarterstaff technique to be the core of all polearm technique.

Trenchmore

There was, of course, a ball at the Royal University of Meridies. I didn't take video, but Fiona's husband did.



Some of the dancers said I was understating things when I said that Trenchmore is a moderately aerobic dance. The music is a live band, by the way; it's nice to see that becoming a more regular feature.

Gulf Wars XIX Open A&S Performing Arts

The Pregnant Farmer


La Chanson de Roland


The Counting of the Twenty and One

I'm not at all sure why I thought it was "The Counting of the Thirteen and One" when I first captioned it. I need to fix that.

Overdue Gulf Wars XIX Post

Sunday
After staying overnight in Jackson with Shimofuri on Saturday, we caravanned down to the site on Sunday to help set up camp. We arrived in the early afternoon, and I immediately joined in the raising of the kitchen/dining tent. Here I received my first injury of the war. The roof frame is made of fitted pipe sections, and I asked someone to push on the other end of one of the pipes as I was getting it fitted. The push came a bit sooner than I expected and my hand got pinched, so I went through the war with a bandage on the web of my right hand next to the thumb. Fortunately I was up to fencing by Wednesday.

Monday
Monday I found a very nice merchant who provided me with some tape to properly secure the bandage on my hand. That served me most of the day, and I obtained a small roll of tape from the chirurgeons to keep me going through the rest of the war. On top of that, Her Excellency Katherine got me some bactine, more bandages, and more tape. I was being positively doted on, but that suits me very well.

In the early afternoon, I went to the dance hall (Bede Hall) to help teach a dance class. This was simple 15th Century Italian dances: Amoroso, Petits Riens, and Anello. Since the planned teacher was unable to attend the war, Lady Sibyl was teaching, and I happily assisted. It's always nice to have some ringers when you're teaching a dance class.

Following the dance class, I ventured down to the Fort for the Verona Street Brawl. I wasn't up to fighting yet – just trying to hold a rapier hurt my hand – so I volunteered as a marshal. I don't think that brawls were quite as amusing as they were two years ago, when I last attended the war. The attempts to frame the other family were rather hamfisted, and the Governors were shamefully oblivious to the bloodbaths in the streets.

That evening I hosted the Beginners’ Ball. I planned it with lots of common, easy dances. Basically, if you didn't already know the dance, any ringer on the floor could drag you through it with minimal coaching. The list worked out quite well, if I do say so myself, as we worked our way through the dances at a steady pace and had plenty of time for requests before we had to close down the ball.

Tuesday
Early Tuesday afternoon I taught my dance class. This year I taught two variations of the Contrapasso. The standard variation is for a couples, and the Contrapasso Nuovo variation is for a set of three couples. Contrapasso itself is not really very difficult and the students learned it with plenty of time to spare. Contrapasso Nuovo is similar, but there are definitely some tricky maneuvers, and it has l5ess repetition, making it more difficult to remember. Fortunately Lady Ginevra assisted by providing live music; you can ask a musician to play just a particular section of the music, a request that recording just can’t seem to accommodate.

Wednesday
On Wednesday morning,I was up to fighting, and the Green Dragon Inn hosted a Tavern Brawl. Nothing rocks quite like a tavern brawl in an authentic tavern. Don Mateo organized several different scenarios, some involving just staying alive, others requiring an effort to loot the place. Some of the survival scenarios were real meat grinders.

In the afternoon, I competed in the Everyman Tourney. I didn't make it past my first round robin group, but it was a near thing. Three of us tied for second place, and we had to fight another mini round robin to see which two would progress. I had some really good fights in this tourney.

Thursday
Thursday morning was the Ladies of the Rose Rapier Tournament, and I again fought on behalf of Duchess Katrina. I don’t exactly have a stunning track record at the Rose tourney, but it’s always a fun time. The tourney had 110 entrants this year, which is a new record. I drew Don Iago for my first bout, and I actually dispatched him with surprising speed. I’m thinking of adding a white ribbon to my outfit every time I win a tournament match with a Don, now.

My second draw was Warder Sibyl Sevenoke, and I couldn’t have asked for a better second draw. Make no mistake: Sibyl is better than me at this game, but that makes the fight all the more fun. I am especially pleased by the fact that when she disabled my left hand with a cut to my thumb, she did not put down her own dagger; I like for my opponent to continue to treat me as a threat even after scoring a significant blow. She got my other arm a bit later, putting me out of the fight in a way that Joseph Swetnam – the historical fencing master I study – would definitely have appreciated (i.e., no one “died”).

I drew Lord Silvani for my final fight, and he’s definitely been keeping in better practice than I, too. I managed to stretch it out for a while, though, before being legged and then finally eliminated.

The schedulers moved the Rapier Field Battle up from Saturday to Thursday afternoon this year, and I turned out for it. We were fighting with Trimaris this year, and the first battle of the two-out-of-three contest was something of a cluster-fail. Meridies was positioned at the left end of the Trimarin line, facing the Hellhounds from Northshield. When the battle started, our front line ran out to make contact with the enemy while the rear ranks (consisting of some people who don’t move very fast due to knee troubles and such) closed at a slower pace. It’s not a good idea to take on the Hellhounds piecemeal; each little unit gets cut to shreds as it arrives. It would have been better to all march up at an even pace and make contact at full strength. Yes, I died pretty quick in that battle.

I’m not sure what the plan was in the second battle. After changing sides of the field, Meridies was on the right end of the Trimarin line, next to the Atlantians. When the battle started, the Atlantians quickly moved out and crossed in front of us to engage the Hellhounds while we looked for a place to reinforce. Our commander pointed out a thin spot for us to fill and I stepped into place to engage some Trimarins and Midrealmers. I soon noticed that our line was still pretty thin to the right of me; then it was also thin to the left of me; then I realized I was on my own against about six opponents. Well, I managed to keep them busy for a while and I got three of them, so I think I did my part pretty well in the second battle, but it was still an overall loss.

With the war point settled, round three was a “friendship battle” which my side won (due in no small part to the Hellhounds defecting to our side, I suspect).

Friday
Friday morning I took my camcorder down to Bede Hall, where the open A&S competition was taking place. I recorded the performing arts entries, and one of them is already posted to YouTube. Hopefully I'll get the others up shortly.

Later in the day there was a Ribbon Tourney, and I assisted as a marshal, as I was saving my energy for the Ravine Battle.

Like the Field Battle, the Ravine Battle was pretty lop-sided. I also couldn't seem to get any cooperation from my allies. On the way to the line, I'd ask the fighters on either side of me if they would take shots if I blocked blades, but when I knocked blades down, the shots didn't materialize. I eventually gave up on that and decided to just cause a bit of havoc, and I actually did get into the enemy backfield once, killing several of their fighters in the process. Moments like that make the whole tiresome business worth while.

Saturday
Rain was threatening Saturday, and I really didn't want to pack a wet tent, so I broke camp early in the day, did some final shopping, and for the first time at Gulf Wars, I actually left site early.

Gulf Wars XIX

Yes, I did return from Gulf Wars... I am being slack about posting. Please be patient.

Black Gryphon 2010

Just a few pictures from the event. Many wonderful classes were enjoyed by all, I think.

Magna Faire 2009

Well, I have a day off today, so I suppose it's high time I at least posted some pictures from Magna Faire. Magna Faire was essentially an all-dance event for me, as I didn't think I'd have time to get in and out of armor around performance times.



Yes, we had live music for the ball. Very good for three musicians who had never played a note together before, if you ask me.

I have video my entry with Juliana, but I'm waiting to do a little editing before I post it.

Crystal Ball

Sadly, I didn't get a whole lot of pictures from Crystal Ball because, during the dinner break between class time and ball time, I left my camera at Tsire's place. I do have a few pictures from the early part of the day, but nothing very exciting, with the possible exception of this video from Mistress Alphia's Spanish Pavan class.


She graciously consented to doing it with me for video after teaching it. Spanish Pavan is from Orchesography, Thoinot Arbeau's 1589 dance manual from France. I haven't gone back to read the original text yet, but I gather that the actual choreography isn't specific; Arbeau only describes the music and the basic steps: the actual movement around the floor is arbitrary. This choreograph is, I believe, from a team A&S entry of Alphia's.

Overachievement

This is a picture I took on my last trip to Pennsic, made into a poster with the BigHugeLabs motivational poster maker.



The Ashleys should get a kick out of it.

Yes, I'm a Slacker

I know. I haven't updated in nearly a month. In my defense, I have to set up a weblog for the Saltare Guild. I've got a few events coming up in the next couple of months, including this year's Saltare event, which will be on the weekend of February 14th. I'm finding that I have a few other Saltare related projects to do this year, as well, like get an accurate roster of members who can teach.

I've transcribed roughly half of chapter 12 of The Schoole of Defence, having gotten past Swetnam's descriptions of the basic guards for rapier and dagger and started on his descriptions of the basic attacks. Once it's all transcribed, I'll have to format it for the internet and find a place to host it.

I also have a preliminary list of dances for the Beginners' Ball at Gulf Wars. In no particular order, I've picked...

• Ballo del Fiore
• Black Nag
• Heart’s Ease
• Half Hannikin
• Sellingers’ Round
• Amoroso
• Gathering Peascods
• Official Bransle
• Hole in the Wall
• Horses Bransle
• Petite Riens
• Grimstock
• Jenny Pluck Pears
• Rufty Tufty
• Montarde Bransle
• Anello

Obviously, I've avoided the one's that will require heavy teaching at the ball. In general, an experienced dancer should be able to drag a set of beginners though most of these without too much trouble. I'll also be working on a cheat sheet for the ball, just to make things even easier.

Magna Faire

So, I’ve had a couple of days to recover from Magna Faire, and I think I’m ready to expound a bit.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first. COLD!

Rebecca and Kaitlyn came down with me for this event, their first. I suppose I could add to the “bad” list that the directions to the site were not particularly helpful. I really should ignore the directions and make this trip from memory; the directions they used to put in the flyers were much better. Anyway, we arrived at about 9pm, unpacked, put on some vaguely period garb, and made our way to the hall to meet up with William and Juliana, where Juliana and I put in some time practicing our dance for the A&S competition.

The next morning, I armored up for the Baronial fencing competition. As usually seems to be the case, I was doing quite well in the warm ups, but not so well in the actual competition. My first fight of the tournament was Jean-Michele, who I did, in fact, defeat. My second fight was Ysabel, who defeated me. Two rounds and out, it’s a familiar tale. Of course, this was designed to be a very “quick and dirty” tournament so the Baroness, Margery, and her successor, Katherine (who would be invested in court that night), wouldn’t have to stay out in the cold very long. Thus, it was a single-round, single-elimination tournament with “wounds” retained between bouts. Harsh.

I didn’t have time to stay for classes or pick-up fights in the afternoon, as I had to go clean up and change for the Performing Arts competition. Juliana and I danced Gracca Amorosa for it, which is a fun, fast Italian dance. The floor turned out to be a little more slippery than I expected when wearing my dance slippers, and I nearly wiped out on the first turn. That made me a little nervous for the rest of the dance, and I can see it in the video (which I’ll get posted at some point). I don’t know what score we got for the A&S competition, but we did win the performing arts category in the Magna Faire competition (which is judged by the other entrants in the category, not a team of dedicated judges).

Court saw the investiture of Baron Killian and Baroness Katherine and the elevation of Simon the Wayfarer to the Order of the Pelican, among other sundry awards. And Her Majesty Gwendolyn referred to herself as the “Snow Queen”. Cool.

Kojin presented a feast inspired by the countries of the Danube river, which went quite well. He even made green beans edible, which is a most impressive feat. The meal included some of his home-made mustards, and my sinuses were extremely appreciative of the clearing out.

A really marvelous revel, run by Adriana of Tor an Riogh (which I hope I spelled right) followed the feast. I wish every event had a big dance revel like this in the evening. There was quite a bit of teaching going on, but I really can live with that if it gets people to participate. Many thanks to all my lovely dance partners.

More pictures over at my Flickr page.

Crystal Ball XXV

Another fine trip to Crystal Ball this year. I didn’t pull the all-nighter this time, crashing after the fourth set instead (around 2-3 am) so I’d have some consciousness with which to drive home.

It’s actually getting hard to go to a dance event and find classes on a lot of dances that I don’t already know. Crystal Ball also tends to offer classes on a lot of dances and dance styles that aren’t really in the SCA period at all (such as Scottish country dances). Consequently, a lot of the classes I attended ended up being more review than actual learning.

Lady Azenari taught an English Country Dance class that included Nonesuch, Heralds in Love, and Picking of Sticks. I went to this one mostly for a review of Nonesuch. Alas, the Nonesuch and Heralds require sets of eight, and I was the ninth person in the class, so I spent quite a bit of time observing.

Lady Thea (Mistress? I don’t know her proper title) taught a Bassa Dance class that included Joyos, Basso Lauro, and Franchoise Novelle. This was a class from which I was really hoping to learn something, but I didn’t make much headway. I’ve taken bassa dance classes before, and I’ve always found them hard to follow, and I was frustrated again. Seignur Yves is planning to teach bassa dance again at Saltare; I’ve taken his class before, too, and he somehow manages to get it to make sense.

Over lunch there was a game of “Dance Jeopardy”, that Mistress Tsire cooked up. Something ain’t quite right in her head. Anyway, I managed to be on the winning team, thanks in some small part to my ability to completely dominate the Caroso category in Double Jeopardy. I'm glad they weren't picky about the whole "What is...?" convention, though.

Lady Azenari taught another ECD class in the afternoon, including Scotch Cap, Hyde Park, and My Lady Cullen. This one was mostly review, but a good review, as I’ve had few opportunities to dance these. My Lady Cullen is a progression dance that is quite fun and isn’t as wildly out-of-period as Hole in the Wall, even if it is a good bit more complex.

Mistress Tsire and Arina teamed up to teach a 15th-century Italian class including Amoroso, Leoncello Vecchio, and Gratioso. Amoroso is not at all new to me, but I’d never danced Leoncello before, and I hadn’t danced Gratioso since last Crystal Ball, so this was a good class for me to actually learn something, and Tsire always makes her classes fun.

And finally, Master Sion taught a 16th-century Italian class including Gracca Amoroso, Contapasso in Due, and Villanella. Okay, I was lazy. I’ve researched every one of those myself, so I was just a ringer in that class. It never hurts to practice, though, a sentiment that was apparently shared by almost everyone in the class. Even those who didn’t know those particular dances were thoroughly familiar with 16th-C Italian steps.

I don’t suppose a detailed listing of dances I did at the ball is really warranted here. Suffice to say, I danced a lot and came back with achy legs.

Gatalop XXV

I actually burned a vacation day to go to the three-day Gatalop event over the weekend of the 24th. This event is held in Fort Gaines, a 19th-century fortress built to protect Mobile Bay against invaders, originally expected to be Spanish. It ended up trying to defend the bay against the Union navy during the Civil War. It may not be an actual medieval/renaissance castle, but it definitely has more atmosphere than the campgrounds and state parks that the SCA normally uses for events.

I spent Thursday night inside the fort in a little room that was probably a magazine or something. It had been raining all day, and many parts of the fort were lightly flooded (there was a moat about four inches deep around the Troll booth), but that little room had only one tiny drip which I was able to stay out from under easily.

After setting up my tent Friday morning, I armored up and went to find Falcon, the rapier marshal of the field. Fencing activities for Friday included tunnel battles and “crow’s nest” fights. The tunnel battles consisted of attempts to force entry into the fort through the main entrance tunnel, which was wide enough to drive an SUV through with a little room to spare. With seven fighters on the field, we had slightly unbalanced teams, and I was on the smaller side, but we still gave much better than we got in the tunnel fights, winning something like three out of four fights.

The “crow’s nest” was something new for me, although we may see it at Gulf Wars. It’s basically a six foot circle on the ground with a plank or post in the middle, representing the crow’s nest of a sailing ship. Four ropes lead from the ground outside the circle to the top of the post. Basically, someone “climbs” one of the ropes into the crow’s nest and tries to “kill” the person occupying it or force them out. Anyone stepping outside the circle without a hand on a rope “plummets to a painful death on the deck”. After some practicing with the concept, we started the actual Crow’s Nest Tournament, which was basically a “king of the hill” deal. One person started in the nest, and everyone else would try in succession to take it; whoever was in the nest at the end was the winner. Falcon decided that a young fellow named Nicholas and I were the most likely to survive a long stay in the nest, so we got to go first. Nicholas got me, but lost himself soon after. As it happened, the last person in the line up turned out to be the winner.

I managed to improvise a little bit of dancing on Friday night, but the courtyard of Fort Gaines isn’t a particularly well-suited place for it. Maybe I can get a gang together to go in the future and reserve one of the big rooms under the bastions…

Saturday fencing consisted of bridge battles and a tavern brawl. Each of the fort's bastions has a cannon emplacement on top, and there’s a bridge to the cannon. We had battles for control of one of these bridges. Barely wide enough to drive a car over, and we had four people on a side at this point. Different teams, and not as lopsided as the day before, but I still think we gave better than we got on my side. We had variations on these fights, too, including a round of daggers-only, and a battle in which fighters went on to the bridge one at a time, the loser of each fight joining the winner’s team until there was only one team left.

The Tavern Brawl was not a new scenario to me. Everyone sits at the table with weapons sheathed or otherwise set aside and plays with the plastic food and mugs until the “tavernkeep” asks “Who’s going to pay for all this?”, at which point a massive fight breaks out. This was a last-person-standing scenario, although I’ve done versions in which the object was to get out with the most food items. Anyway, while I didn’t win, I was the last to die, and I managed to drag that out in sufficiently entertaining fashion (including allusions to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which always seems to help) that I got a prize for Best Death.

I’m going to have to watch out for Nicholas. He was my nemesis all weekend. Time to put my Age and Treachery powers to work…

Saturday night was just a bit of socializing before bed.

Things to remember: earplugs might be nice. In the wee hours every morning I heard diesel engines so loud I thought a battleship was going by… turned out to be a teeny little shrimp boat.

All in all, I think I may try to make this event every year; it’s a good one.

Archaeology is Good

Danish archaeologists say they have found a well-preserved Viking shield that is more than 1,000 years old.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Raglan Faire

I found a link to pictures of an SCA event in Wales through a LiveJournal group this morning.

I so want to go to an event in Europe now (as if I didn't already).

Preparing for Coronation

I spent some of the weekend helping to prepare for the upcoming Meridies Coronation. In particular, we'll be serving some fried fruit pies for breakfast Saturday morning, and we put those together this afternoon.

Highly unperiod kneading methodology.	William, Juliana, and Constanza work the dough.
Rectangular pies are apple.	Rolling, rolling, rolling.
Triangles are blueberry.	Triangles with folded corners are cherry.

Make the dough, roll the dough, fill with fruit, fold, crimp, freeze. That was the plan for the day. The actual frying will occur on site. As noted above, the contents are coded by shape.

The lurking puppy is Randy, who was fervently hoping we would get clumsy and drop something good. He got lucky occasionally.

RUM Has Passed

I think RUM turned out to be an excellent event. Lady Xantha really outdid herself with the buffet (I need recipes for several of the dishes), and the classes looked to be well attended despite the expense of travel these days. I managed to teach all three of the dances I planned for my class: Contrapasso, Villanella, and Ballo del Fiore. I also stayed around as a designated "ringer" for the other dance classes, and those turned out to be great fun as well. Dance after the feast was improvised, but still fun. Now that I'm nearing the end of my programming classes, I will hopefully be able to get back to shire meetings so we have dance on the schedule at future events.

Along the same lines, we now have a venue for dance classes, which should be starting up next month. This pleases me greatly, and many thanks go out to Juliana for arranging the place.

Border Raids 2008

This was actually my first trip to Border Raids. It actually wouldn’t have been a bad drive if it hadn’t taken me over an hour just to get through Nashville. Going to and from work I generally have the luxury of taking the most recently expanded freeways, but heading up to Kentucky I wasn’t so lucky.

Friday night was trying. Getting to site and setting up my tent was easy enough, but we had some nasty thunderstorms over night, and I spent a good bit of it awake making sure I didn’t get too much water pooling on top of the tent. There were predictions of similar storms for Saturday, but fortunately they never materialized and the weather was excellent all day and all night.

Theoretically the fencing activities were to start at 10am, and I actually did get my armor and equipment inspected then, but because some of the heavy fighters on both sides intended to switch equipment and play in the fencing battles, too, we actually delayed the fencing activities until the heavy battles were over. We Meridiens spent the time bearing water for the heavy field.

Things could have gone better on the heavy field. Our kingdom has plenty of great fighters, but not many great fighting units. Our heavies tend to fight as a bunch of individuals seeking to win the battle with personal heroics, while the Midrealm fields more of an organized army with a coherent plan. Consequently, we didn’t do well in the field battles, while our fighters did well in the Champions tournament that was held later.

On the fencing field, the situation was much different. We had a lot of experienced fencers on the field, and most of us have fought as a unit in field battles at Gulf Wars. The Midrealm side, on the other hand, had a lot of pretty new fighters, although they did have a unit that practiced together. All the same, we dominated the fencing field and won our two out of three rounds in quick succession to secure the war point. Lord Feodor also won his fight in the Champions Tournament.

Following the war point activities, we had a charity tournament for the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center. Together the light and heavy tourneys raised $590. Lord Tristram won the fencing prize (a spiffy baldric made by Feodor).

Their Majesties and Highnesses of both the Midrealm and Meridies held a combined court Saturday evening, and King Lutr of the Midrealm has a rather pleasant custom for his courts; he has an intermission in which food and drinks are served (including brats and beer at this event).

Taddea and I held an improvised dance that night. Not a huge turnout, but not bad for something that was never on the schedule.

I’ll see about posting some of my pictures from the event. I didn’t take them myself, but a lovely young lady at the fencing field was kind enough to put my camera to some use for me.

Edit: Pictures added. Alas, all of them are from the fencing field, since the camera's battery ran out there.