May. 17th, 2009

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Investiture yesterday saw [livejournal.com profile] duchessletitia properly installed as Princess of the Mists (oh, yeah, there was a guy involved somewhere in there too). It was a bit of an odd day. Being on court, I didn't want to bring or plan other stuff to do (too easy to get distracted) but there were plenty of courtiers and not that much to do, so I spent a lot of time just wandering around and chatting. And there wasn't much on the day's schedule other than the courts, a handful of competitions, and some fighting in the middle of the afternoon. On the one hand, it's good for an event not to be crazy-overscheduled, but I think that sometimes we lean a little too far to the other side. If I'm going to drive several hours and dress up in funny clothes, I'd like to focus on the otherworldly experience, not simply sit around and chat with my friends. I wrote a brief rant about this in comments elsewhere regarding A&S Tourney, where evidently lots of people have been saying they don't want to be bothered with having classes on Sunday -- they just want to laze around in camp and hang out with their friends. I love hanging out lazily with my friends but I can do that on my own time and my own dime. When I go to an SCA event, I want to do medieval (or at least SCA) things.

Getting back to Investiture, the feast was delicious, if a trifle drawn out. I brought home some of the leftovers and this morning's lazy brunch-on-the-deck was an omelette filled with mussels in bruet and aquapatys, followed by fruit rissoles.

I had some really lovely conversations with [livejournal.com profile] aureellia about the economics of medieval lawsuits over manure. Hmm. I just got a truly crazy whacked-out idea for an in-persona collegium presentation -- not for any particular topic, but just as a general structure for presenting information in an entertaining way. Enact a medieval lawsuit. Over whatever the topic of the class is. Have people present their claims and counterclaims before a presiding judge (or nobleman). Have lawyers chime in with precedents and recollections of similar cases. Have neighbors and such like as witnesses, whether of material fact or simply of character. The presentation could be educational not merely about the topic of the lawsuit, but also about the processes and nature of medieval law. And, of course, there are a variety of legal systems that could be used, depending on culture and era (and different likely topics for lawsuits). This could be a lot of fun. Shall have to think further.
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Those books I was telling you about? The series is published by Penn State University Press, specifically their Magic in History series. The specific title that caught my eye in the display at Kalamazoo was The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia not, alas, a cheap book!
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I was asked yesterday about resources for studying medieval Latin via audio (hearing and speaking aloud), and while I don't know if the asker has an LJ, others might be interested in checking out Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., who specialize in teaching materials for classical languages (among other historical topics). (I will note for the record that I'm a little concerned that their "among other historical topics" include recordings of Hitler's speeches without a larger context of interest in 20th c. political rhetoric, raising questions about the political leanings of the company.)

Hmm, to make up for my uneasiness about the preceding company, here are some other audio resources for Latin that I turned up on a brief Google search:

http://www.haverford.edu/classics/audio/
http://latinum.mypodcast.com/
http://www.frcoulter.com/latin/links.html

Now I feel a little better.
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Saw the new Star Trek movie. *yawn* I agree with the feminist-oriented reviews I've been reading. "Boys and their toys", "alpha male idiocy saves the universe", "women can do anything as long as they're girlfriends, wives, and mothers ... but if they aren't one of those three, they aren't going to get screen time" oh, and also "women can drive the action as long as its by dying and becoming the revenge-motivation for some man." I'd stopped keeping up with new ST movies several movies ago ... should have remained stopped.

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