Symposium IX
This morning a bunch of us drove out to the University of Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies for their annual symposium on sword fighting.
(My wife took the photo, which is why she isn’t in it.)
It was a very nice day.
Before things started we practiced what we’d be showing.
The center provided a breakfast and lunch to folks who show up.
Then, Jeff the librarian got things started.
Jeff the sword guy introduced the first guess.
Michael Chidester reviewed several centuries of German sword manuals in about an hour. His web site has a good amount of information on them and he did an excellent job of giving an overview and tying them all together in a short amount of time.
There was a great debate about the possibility of a pretzel fighting technique...
And, he has a woodcut of the hanging of one of the great fight book producers.
He was also night enough to point folks in the right direction for more study.
Then, it was my turn.
I was comparing a German and an Italian sword instruction book both written in 1570 to see if there was any evidence that they influenced each other.
There isn’t. My wife said my using a green laser pointer to point things out was funny.
I’m not sure why. It was just the most visible laser pointer I have.
(Yes, I’ve got at least 10 different ones...)
Then we went outside to show some of the techniques.
I thought we were supposed to end at noon, and we didn’t move outside until 10 of noon. And, as we did the first demo, I saw someone come out of the ren center with a sandwich. So, I did sort of speed through the physical demo.
I guess I should have explained things more. But, no one seemed to mind when I said that was only a short demo and lunch was ready.
I did find it ironic that folks who spend a lot of time looking through old manuals for instructions can’t follow the ones posted on the walls now.
Then, it was tour time.
We started with the center’s printing press and its very small movable type.
Then, we moved on to the rare books! My favorite!
They have a new champion for “oldest book” at almost 500 years. But, sadly, the cover was redone with shelf paper in the 1970’s.
No, really. I’m serious about that.
The inside is still the original.
They still have many other rare books that we got to see and touch.
Jeff the librarian described this one as a scribes book where the handwriting gets worse as the book goes on and the scribe realizes no one is reading the records he took.
The climate controlled basement full of books is something that is practically heaven for me.
But, then it was back up for the afternoon presentations.
First Russ Mitchell talking about “The Hungarian Saber Tradition”.
Few of us were familiar with this tradition.
But, it was a very interesting talk.
With both sword and book examples.
He even passed around the sword so folks could try it.
And, used sword Jeff for some of his examples.
Then, outside for more practical. I found it funny that Tom went right to the stage and took a place on it.
To do most of the work, he needed assistants.
He seemed willing to teach Kendra some of the basic moves.
Then he used sword Jeff for some more.
He chased him back under the stage.
He also picked on little old ladies.
And, John from our group.
John was called up to demonstrate some horse maneuvers. As John works with horses all the time and leads a mounted performance group, this worked out well.
But, now John is excited about it and saying maybe Phoenix should try some of this stuff with horses. I’m not sure about that...
Anyhow, then my wife was called up to help the demo.
She was quite triumphant.
Mark was brought up to try rapier technique against the Hungarian style.
Mark was not as triumphant.
Finally the first presenter was brought up to try some as well.
Then, Kendra was brought back to see if it would go better for her.
It didn’t really.
Then, back inside for the last talk of the day, again by Michael Chidester on a possible tie between the German and Italian schools.
It was very interesting and gave examples from some manuals I had not even heard of before this.
And, again a suggested reading list.
We decided to join folks for supper and after it was over drove off to the restaurant.
My wife and her friend Amy got the 12 beer sampler and a very large pretzel.
No fighting was done with the pretzel, but it was consumed.
A lot of folks showed up for the dinner.
The jambalya I had had some of the tiniest shrimp I’ve ever seen in it.
Not much bigger than the rice.
Then, off towards home.
We did drive by the spot of my car accident a month ago, but did not get off the highway to count the lanes.
All in all it was a pretty good time. But, I think the 2008 one was still the high point.
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