Symposium 2015
This year in the rare book room I found a 460 year old Phoenix:
Saturday morning we picked up palusbuteo at 7:30 and drove off to the University of Massachusetts Renaissance Center for its annual conference of sword fighting.
For the second year in a row I did not present anything. But, given how busy I’ve been getting my robots into the box for the trade show lately, I didn’t have the time to prepare anything.
I like the Ren Center a lot. It is a converted old house on the edge of campus.
Others liked the flowering trees, but I was sad about the trees as my allergies gave me a terrible headache.
But, the green is nice.
And, it has a wonderful view of the Connecticut river valley.
Next week we are doing a show at their festival there. They are clearly ready.
We got there at the start. The first hour is a meet and greet time with coffee and pastry.
It starts off when the Director of the Ren Center gives his speech.
Then, Jeff introduces the guests.
The first and last speaker was a woman they flew down from Toronto. Her first talk was about the history of trial by combat.
One of the things she talked about was how it is different from how most people think of it. Often it wasn’t nobles doing it in armor with swords.
It was ordinary people doing it with T shaped clubs, small shields, greased leather armor and strange short haircuts.
And, it was nasty. Plucking out eyes nasty. Crushing other round items on men nasty.
(This is a photo of a stained glass window commemorating the miracle of the loser growing back what he lost.)
Of course, all of the Phoenix Swords folks listening said "we could do that stuff, where do we get those clubs?"
The second talk was by Kendra. She was on the old Higgins research team with us 15 years ago when she was half her current age.
She did a talk on the difficulties of translating Latin from manuals written 600 years ago.
I’m not the biggest fan of her, but this was the best presentation I’ve seen her give. And, the problems of working through an old book like this is a very valid thing for this sort of conference.
The manual she was talking about was found "lost" in a French library by someone we know, and don’t like, who talked about finding it at a previous symposium.
http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/190871.html
One of the things I did get out of her talk, which I don’t think was her intent, was what a bad ass Master Fiore was 600 years ago.
Here’s the instruction on how to take on three people on horseback charging at you.
Here is the one on him throwing you, and your horse to the ground.
That’s right. You fight Master Fiore, he takes you down and the horse you came in on.
I was clearly very interested.
That guy next to me didn’t talk much. I like that at a lecture.
At lunch time perrin_o_ravnos and I asked Jeff, the librarian at the center, for a rare book tour.
If you’ve read any of my stories from previous years you know that being let into the book vault in the basement is always one of my favorite parts of the day.
(Not just because the climate controlled air was well filtered and my allergies almost instantly stopped bothering me. But, that did help.)
Jeff was happy to show off his new rare books, most of them in the 350 to 450 year old range.
I’m interested in a modern translation of the one about the Ethiopian pirate princess.
A lot of the new books are small.
This one isn’t so rare because of the book itself, but because an even older Papal Bull was used to wrap it.
Jeff’s favorite has wind cars, arrow shooters and other strange inventions from a few centuries ago.
And, science books from back when telescopes were new.
One of the ones I particularly like is the 450 year old, full color illustrated, book of plants and animals.
Given how old it is, the colors have held up very well.
There are all sorts of illustrations in it.
It is clear that not all of them have been seen by the author like two headed snakes, unicorns, basilisks and such.
But, some are common like pheasants and owls.
And, of course Phoenixes.
While I was in the basement looking at books, my wife was looking around the grounds. They are also very nice. But, I’m happier in the filtered air.
And, as said before, the signs of spring are nice, even if they make me sick.
After lunch time there was a dagger demo with Kendra and Mark.
My wife also wanted a photo of us there.
I am always very good about posing for them…
The Mike Chidester’s talk on missing manual pieces.
My wife’s favorite sword manual has long been known to be missing pages. There is now some evidence of what those pages might have been. People copied that book and maybe some of the copies have the missing pages. It’s hard to tell, because when people copied books they often added or subtracted other material. So, it is very hard to tell if it came from the original or not.
But, sometimes things line up really well. And, that’s what’s been suggested.
He had some stuff from some other manuals too.
Finally the keynote speaker again about how the manuals fit into a bigger sword fighting culture when the books were written.
It was very interesting.
Then, we went into town for dinner.
For some reason this place stood out to us.
About a dozen of us went out to eat.
Service was a bit slow, so I took to building things out of napkin wrappers and coasters.
But, the food was good.
Then, we headed off home. No matter what the temperature says, the amount of daylight certainly shows we’re out of winter. It was light almost until 8PM.
Over all, a pretty good time.
Saturday morning we picked up palusbuteo at 7:30 and drove off to the University of Massachusetts Renaissance Center for its annual conference of sword fighting.
For the second year in a row I did not present anything. But, given how busy I’ve been getting my robots into the box for the trade show lately, I didn’t have the time to prepare anything.
I like the Ren Center a lot. It is a converted old house on the edge of campus.
Others liked the flowering trees, but I was sad about the trees as my allergies gave me a terrible headache.
But, the green is nice.
And, it has a wonderful view of the Connecticut river valley.
Next week we are doing a show at their festival there. They are clearly ready.
We got there at the start. The first hour is a meet and greet time with coffee and pastry.
It starts off when the Director of the Ren Center gives his speech.
Then, Jeff introduces the guests.
The first and last speaker was a woman they flew down from Toronto. Her first talk was about the history of trial by combat.
One of the things she talked about was how it is different from how most people think of it. Often it wasn’t nobles doing it in armor with swords.
It was ordinary people doing it with T shaped clubs, small shields, greased leather armor and strange short haircuts.
And, it was nasty. Plucking out eyes nasty. Crushing other round items on men nasty.
(This is a photo of a stained glass window commemorating the miracle of the loser growing back what he lost.)
Of course, all of the Phoenix Swords folks listening said "we could do that stuff, where do we get those clubs?"
The second talk was by Kendra. She was on the old Higgins research team with us 15 years ago when she was half her current age.
She did a talk on the difficulties of translating Latin from manuals written 600 years ago.
I’m not the biggest fan of her, but this was the best presentation I’ve seen her give. And, the problems of working through an old book like this is a very valid thing for this sort of conference.
The manual she was talking about was found "lost" in a French library by someone we know, and don’t like, who talked about finding it at a previous symposium.
http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/190871.html
One of the things I did get out of her talk, which I don’t think was her intent, was what a bad ass Master Fiore was 600 years ago.
Here’s the instruction on how to take on three people on horseback charging at you.
Here is the one on him throwing you, and your horse to the ground.
That’s right. You fight Master Fiore, he takes you down and the horse you came in on.
I was clearly very interested.
That guy next to me didn’t talk much. I like that at a lecture.
At lunch time perrin_o_ravnos and I asked Jeff, the librarian at the center, for a rare book tour.
If you’ve read any of my stories from previous years you know that being let into the book vault in the basement is always one of my favorite parts of the day.
(Not just because the climate controlled air was well filtered and my allergies almost instantly stopped bothering me. But, that did help.)
Jeff was happy to show off his new rare books, most of them in the 350 to 450 year old range.
I’m interested in a modern translation of the one about the Ethiopian pirate princess.
A lot of the new books are small.
This one isn’t so rare because of the book itself, but because an even older Papal Bull was used to wrap it.
Jeff’s favorite has wind cars, arrow shooters and other strange inventions from a few centuries ago.
And, science books from back when telescopes were new.
One of the ones I particularly like is the 450 year old, full color illustrated, book of plants and animals.
Given how old it is, the colors have held up very well.
There are all sorts of illustrations in it.
It is clear that not all of them have been seen by the author like two headed snakes, unicorns, basilisks and such.
But, some are common like pheasants and owls.
And, of course Phoenixes.
While I was in the basement looking at books, my wife was looking around the grounds. They are also very nice. But, I’m happier in the filtered air.
And, as said before, the signs of spring are nice, even if they make me sick.
After lunch time there was a dagger demo with Kendra and Mark.
My wife also wanted a photo of us there.
I am always very good about posing for them…
The Mike Chidester’s talk on missing manual pieces.
My wife’s favorite sword manual has long been known to be missing pages. There is now some evidence of what those pages might have been. People copied that book and maybe some of the copies have the missing pages. It’s hard to tell, because when people copied books they often added or subtracted other material. So, it is very hard to tell if it came from the original or not.
But, sometimes things line up really well. And, that’s what’s been suggested.
He had some stuff from some other manuals too.
Finally the keynote speaker again about how the manuals fit into a bigger sword fighting culture when the books were written.
It was very interesting.
Then, we went into town for dinner.
For some reason this place stood out to us.
About a dozen of us went out to eat.
Service was a bit slow, so I took to building things out of napkin wrappers and coasters.
But, the food was good.
Then, we headed off home. No matter what the temperature says, the amount of daylight certainly shows we’re out of winter. It was light almost until 8PM.
Over all, a pretty good time.