interviewed by 530nm330hz
1. How did you get involved in the SCA?
I was in college, walking across campus one day, when I saw some guys (they were all guys) in armor who seemed to be fighting with swords. That seemed enormously cool to me, so I walked over to take a look -- and stood there, and stood there, and finally asked someone how I could try that out. Only later did I learn that the SCA did things other than fighting.
(I think this must have been a regular fighting practice and not a demo. As best I recall there were no displays and no one approached me.)
2. What is your favorite midrash?
Oh, my. Only one?
Ok, I think it has to be the one recounted in Tractate Sanhedrin, 89a-b IIRC. In summary: when Moshe goes up on Mount Sinai to receive torah, the heavenly host objects to God. "Master of the universe", they say, "how can you entrust your holy torah to humans?". God turns to Moshe and says "answer them". (Aside: Moshe gets major points in my book for not fleeing in terror.)
Moshe says to God: "what is in this torah?" and God says "I am the lord your God who took you out of Egypt". Moshe asks the angels "were you in Egypt?" "What else?", he asks God. "Do not make graven images." "Do you angels make anything at all? What else?" "Honor your father and mother." "Do you even have fathers and mothers?" It goes on in this vein for a while, until the angels finally conceed that yes, the torah should be given to Moshe.
Why do I like this one so much? Well, first, it says that it's not improper to engage directly with heaven; we are not to simply shut up and do what we're told, but are expected to participate, question, and challenge. Second, it shows Moshe as sort of a partner to God (I don't mean as an equal or in ways that raise presumption questions); God could have answered the angels himself but didn't. Third, well, Moshe is right. :-)
3. Have you ever written filk? If so, of what song are you proudest?
I seem to be utterly incapable of writing lyrics. I've set a couple texts to music; the most effective was probably Abort, Retry, Ignore. (Widely uncredited but written by Marcus Bales. I no longer remember how I tracked that down, as the top Google hits on the first stanza don't turn it up now.)
4. What person or book has most changed the way you think?
You said "changed", so I will leave out my father, who was very influential in the formation of my worldview in the first place.
I will also leave out my rabbi and torah, which, while also highly influential, were not so much about "change" as "development". The foundations were already there or I wouldn't have sought out my rabbi in the first place (nor continued the reading I was doing on my own before getting that far).
I'm not sure this is the right answer (I have trouble with "most" or "favorite" questions), but I think I'm going to say David Director Friedman, known in the SCA as Cariadoc of the Bow. We haven't actually had that many direct interactions; I don't know him well and I suspect he doesn't know who I am. But his ideas about politics, social policy, and organizational behavior were quite influential when I first encountered them over twenty years ago, and that feeling has not passed in the intervening time. He supplied a label for my budding political beliefs (libertarian; I knew I wasn't a democrat or a republican but I didn't know what I was) and, through his writings, helped me to see logical consequences. I don't agree with him on everything, but he opened new territory for me. Within the narrower scope of the SCA, well, I think the organization would be a lot stronger if we heeded some of his ideas about structuring the modern-world side of things.
5. What's the funniest thing you saw or heard on Purim this year?
A performance by our local (SCA) commedia del'arte troupe. Commedia del'arte is sort of like Bugs Bunny cartoons (hear me out); situations might change, but the stock characters are the same. Bugs Bunny might be playing an opera singer, but he still has the personality of Bugs Bunny. So, we had the stock characters of Italian-Ren theatre, transplanted into the Purim story, and it worked really well.
There was also some weirdness that you probably don't see in most purimspiels; when we first approached them about doing this show the event autocrat made a typo, so they thought they were doing the story of Easter -- we straightened that up really quickly, but it did lead to the "Esther Bunny" making an appearance, and that actually worked. :-)
I was in college, walking across campus one day, when I saw some guys (they were all guys) in armor who seemed to be fighting with swords. That seemed enormously cool to me, so I walked over to take a look -- and stood there, and stood there, and finally asked someone how I could try that out. Only later did I learn that the SCA did things other than fighting.
(I think this must have been a regular fighting practice and not a demo. As best I recall there were no displays and no one approached me.)
2. What is your favorite midrash?
Oh, my. Only one?
Ok, I think it has to be the one recounted in Tractate Sanhedrin, 89a-b IIRC. In summary: when Moshe goes up on Mount Sinai to receive torah, the heavenly host objects to God. "Master of the universe", they say, "how can you entrust your holy torah to humans?". God turns to Moshe and says "answer them". (Aside: Moshe gets major points in my book for not fleeing in terror.)
Moshe says to God: "what is in this torah?" and God says "I am the lord your God who took you out of Egypt". Moshe asks the angels "were you in Egypt?" "What else?", he asks God. "Do not make graven images." "Do you angels make anything at all? What else?" "Honor your father and mother." "Do you even have fathers and mothers?" It goes on in this vein for a while, until the angels finally conceed that yes, the torah should be given to Moshe.
Why do I like this one so much? Well, first, it says that it's not improper to engage directly with heaven; we are not to simply shut up and do what we're told, but are expected to participate, question, and challenge. Second, it shows Moshe as sort of a partner to God (I don't mean as an equal or in ways that raise presumption questions); God could have answered the angels himself but didn't. Third, well, Moshe is right. :-)
3. Have you ever written filk? If so, of what song are you proudest?
I seem to be utterly incapable of writing lyrics. I've set a couple texts to music; the most effective was probably Abort, Retry, Ignore. (Widely uncredited but written by Marcus Bales. I no longer remember how I tracked that down, as the top Google hits on the first stanza don't turn it up now.)
4. What person or book has most changed the way you think?
You said "changed", so I will leave out my father, who was very influential in the formation of my worldview in the first place.
I will also leave out my rabbi and torah, which, while also highly influential, were not so much about "change" as "development". The foundations were already there or I wouldn't have sought out my rabbi in the first place (nor continued the reading I was doing on my own before getting that far).
I'm not sure this is the right answer (I have trouble with "most" or "favorite" questions), but I think I'm going to say David Director Friedman, known in the SCA as Cariadoc of the Bow. We haven't actually had that many direct interactions; I don't know him well and I suspect he doesn't know who I am. But his ideas about politics, social policy, and organizational behavior were quite influential when I first encountered them over twenty years ago, and that feeling has not passed in the intervening time. He supplied a label for my budding political beliefs (libertarian; I knew I wasn't a democrat or a republican but I didn't know what I was) and, through his writings, helped me to see logical consequences. I don't agree with him on everything, but he opened new territory for me. Within the narrower scope of the SCA, well, I think the organization would be a lot stronger if we heeded some of his ideas about structuring the modern-world side of things.
5. What's the funniest thing you saw or heard on Purim this year?
A performance by our local (SCA) commedia del'arte troupe. Commedia del'arte is sort of like Bugs Bunny cartoons (hear me out); situations might change, but the stock characters are the same. Bugs Bunny might be playing an opera singer, but he still has the personality of Bugs Bunny. So, we had the stock characters of Italian-Ren theatre, transplanted into the Purim story, and it worked really well.
There was also some weirdness that you probably don't see in most purimspiels; when we first approached them about doing this show the event autocrat made a typo, so they thought they were doing the story of Easter -- we straightened that up really quickly, but it did lead to the "Esther Bunny" making an appearance, and that actually worked. :-)