Medieval Living

Each Friday I am at the coffee shop at the Barnes and Noble bookstore on the west side of town (Cottonwood). We start around 11:00 am and go until . . . well, when ever we end. Last Friday, we didnt get out of there until 1:30. Two games seem to have the most interest . . . Byzantine Chess and Tablut (King’s Table). Both games are from Medieval times. Byzantine Chess, like I have discussed before, is very similar to modern chess, with a few differences in how some pieces move. And of course, Byzantine Chess is played on a round board. When people passing by see the round board, they all stop and ponder what they are looking at . . . which is an excellent opportunity to explain to them who we are and what we do. I also came upon a homeschool student who was there being tutored in math. . . I’ve invited him to join us next week . . as long as it doesn’t interfere with his math work. We have a few consistent people showing up . . . I would love for the number to grow so that we make a real statement about the homeschool community.

The other game, King’s Table, is really alot of fun for students of all ages. The rules are simple enough – I have two seven-year-olds who play the game with alot of energy and sophistication . . . yep, they are learning to think!

I’m also excited as one of my students (who also happens to be one of my grandsons) has come up with his own version of a board game, using a traditional chessboard and checker pieces. All of the checkers move like a knight moves in chess . . . but jumping as in checkers. The object is to get a piece to the opponents back rank. It’s actually a fun game. I think I will build a gameboard for him (he’s made up a few rules about unusable spaces) and some unique pieces. Maybe we can put something together and market a new board game! Cool! Nice to see some creativity being developed.

More later!

Scott

As the public schools gear up for a new year, so are homeschoolers throughout the state. We’re looking forward to the phone ringing off the hook as those families who are studying Medieval History begin planning their lessons and activities. As I’m also homeschooling my two grandsons this year, I’ll be wearing many hats!

We’d like to start out the year with some Medieval era board games. Many of these games can be played by all “school-aged” children, and include Nine Men Morris, King’s Table (Tablut), Shut-the-Box, and Byzantine Chess (circular board). We will be meeting at the coffee shop in the Cottonwood Barnes and Noble bookstore. There is no sign-up – just show up and play. We will meet between 9:00 and 11:00 am on Fridays – beginning August 19.

The difficulty of being a small non-profit is that almost everything rests on the shoulders of a very few. And if those very few have any personal events that take them away from “the business”, then “the business” suffers. Such is my case – after spending several weeks dealing with the death of my mother (which affected everyone here at Medieval Living), my daughter scheduled a wedding in Las Vegas for the Fourth of July weekend. Not a problem, other then it interfered with some of my planned activities. (Yes, we did stay at the Excaliber! Where else would a Medievalist stay in Las Vegas?!?!)

Plans for next week include being at the homeschool play day on the East side of Albuquerque. I will be bringing materials for teaching introductory classes on chainmail, weaving, spinning, and Nine Men Morris. As this week progresses, I will be more active here on the blog site, as well as scheduling new events, classes, etc.

On a semi-related note: I will be vending at the Idalia Road Marketplace in Rio Rancho – hoping to earn a few bucks to support myself so that I can continue providing free classes for homeschool students. Most of what I will be selling is related to what I teach – and so that also serves as a “springboard” for preaching the values of homeschooling.

I will also begin private tutoring – for both public school and homeschool students – as well as parent coaching. The biggest issue that I saw in our public schools was not the teachers and administrators, so much as it was the parents who just won’t get involved with their students education. I think our public school teachers would be able to do a much better job if they were supported by parents, rather then assailed. Oh well . . . time will tell. My truck is packed and I’m ready to go to market (just like in Medieval days).

Well, the past several weeks have been difficult. In the midst of my personal fundraising event, I received word that my mother had had a massive stroke and was in a coma. The prognosis was unknown. I hurriedly packed my things and made preparations for the trip to my mother’s home in Ohio. It was difficult to see Mom all wired up there in the intensive care unit of the hospital. A ventilator was helping her to breath; however, she had a living will in place that requested that there be no “heroic” efforts to save her. She had bleeding around the brain-stem, and the doctors’ prognosis was “poor” – which is the nice way of saying that she most likely will not survive. The family gathered and, with much sadness, agreed that the life support should be removed – it was what Mom had requested. She passed away about ten hours later.

Next came the daunting task of going through all of her personal possessions. Deciding what to keep, what to throw, who gets what . . . fortunately, our family is very agreeable with each other, so there was no bickering about who received what. It took longer then I could have imagined – I don’t think any of us realize how much “stuff” we have. Anyway, once things were reasonably organized and under control, I left my sister and brother to finish the process, and I returned to New Mexico.

I am back, and getting myself ready to organize some new classes and activities. A suggestion made by one mom, which I thought was insightful, was that I will come to the play-days in the various parks around town. I will bring a handful of different projects that students may work on if they are interested. Since they will already be there, it makes sense to offer activities for them to do in addition to their normal play-day offerings.

So, next week, I hope to back in the “swing of things”. If you are interested in having a class or two at your coop or family group, please let me know.

Scott@medieval-living.com

Now that the homeschool convention is behind us, it’s time to get moving with a full schedule of activities. I’ve updated the calendar here on the blog page. The previous plugin just wasn’t working right, so I loaded a “better” one and loaded the upcoming events into the database. Seems to be working correctly.

We currently have two locations to meet – First Christian Church on the east side of Albuquerque is letting us use some of their facilities on Fridays in May, and we will meet at Haynes park in Rio Rancho on Tuesdays, starting the last week in April. Still trying to work a meeting place in Los Lunas – will keep everyone posted.

I’m sending out an official newsletter – hopefully today. It is written, but need to have some other eyes proof read and double check my information. I now have a contact list of around 80 people; and I have nearly all four corners of the state represented: Clayton, Bloomfield, Las Cruces, and Portales are the furtherst points each direction. Alot of people at the convention were very interested in having us come to their community to teach some classes. So the newsletter will give them some information to work with for planning classes. I will create a “newsletter” page here and on the website where I will start posting the newsletters. I don’t have a set schedule for when I will send the newsletters . . . once a month at the most, unless something great develops – I don’t want to be spamming people with alot of email stuff.

So . . . that’s where we’re at. Some other things are in the development stages, and I will make announcements about those as they are finalized.

I few weeks ago I met with a group of homeschoolers who wanted to learn about Medieval history. They had already been working on several projects, and were now looking for an opportunity to learn more. Now I have to admit, this is the youngest group of homeschoolers that I have ever worked with . . . and they were alot of fun. They really enjoyed trying on some of the armor I have, as well as seeing some of the clothing and other artifacts from the Medieval era. The parents had taken several photos and then made a collage of some of them. What a surprise when it arrived in the mail the other day! So here’s the photo they sent me. What a bunch of fun kids!!!

Well, it doesn’t look like we will be able to open the Homeschool Activity Center as hoped . . . we just don’t have the finances to make it happen. All is not lost – we have arranged with a church in Albuquerque to hold classes in one of their rooms once a week. We are also planning to hold classes every week at Haynes Park in Rio Rancho. I am working another possible meeting place in the Los Lunas area, but haven’t finalized the arrangements – will let everyone know as soon as I know for sure.

I will be at the CAPE Homeschool Convention from the 14th through the 16th of April – I will have calendars available for everyone as well as a sign-up sheet for email and newsletter contacts. If you’re at the convention, please come by and say “hello”!

Ok – this is not a recent development . . . it came from the last time we had $4.00 gas prices in the USA. A very fun tongue-in-cheek response to the gas “crisis”.

From an Isoteru LivePost:

Albany, NY – With no end in sight to the rise in fuel prices, commuters in Albany are using a network of trebuchets to save on gas and the airlines are taking notice.

“We have a high-density of renaissance festival attendees, so it’s only natural that the trend started here,” said Clinton Decola who heads the Trebuchet Transport Cooperative of Albany (TTCA). “In medieval times the trebuchet was accurate, but with today’s technology we can make it even more accurate. People can launch themselves from house to house until they’re near enough their work to walk.”

The members of the TTCA operate over one hundred trebuchets and catapults around the Albany area. Members pay a small fee to maintain the trebuchets, then they can use the network to travel anywhere the trebuchets launch to.

Christian Rega uses the network to fling himself to work and back saving over $100 a week on gas. “I save money; I’m helping break America’s addiction to oil and defying death every day. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Rega.

Decola said that the group’s computer trajectory analyzers and advanced wind speed monitoring system result in most passengers landing within five feet of their designated safe landing area.

“We can’t account for the occasional bird collision, but that usually doesn’t throw the landing off that much,” said Decola.

The TTCA has garnered a lot of attention from municipalities and states looking to save money on public transport. Decola said that even some airlines have contacted him about long range trebuchets to replace fuel guzzling 747s. The Irish airline Aer Lingus has set up a pilot program dubbed “Aer Flingus” for sending passengers from Dublin to London.

As noted in earlier posts, I had attended a workshop on dying wool using natural materials. I had been looking at the cost of buying dye materials, such as madder and indigo, and found that some of them are very expensive. Being the resourceful person that I am, I began looking for ways to grow my own. I came upon a website that might just have the how-to information I need. Sheep to Shawls is a blog written by Donna Druchunas. While much of her blog deals with knitting, she has several posts on how to produce quality wool . . and in particular, how to grow your own Japanese Indigo to make blue dyes. She give some practical advice and suggests ways to avoid damaging this gentle and fragile plant. Seeds can be ordered through Elizabeth Merrill at P.O. Box 972
Port Townsend, WA 98368
I look forward to planting a dye garden this summer . . . I will keep you posted on it’s results.

The first day of the living history conference in Little Rock (well, actually it was considered a “pre-conference” day), I attended a workshop on using natural materials for dying wool. The smokey fire to heat the kettles of dye liquor provided a wonderful setting for workshop. I had no experience with dying anything, let alone using “old” techniques for dying wool, so the whole thing was a learning experience. By the end of it, I had two wonderfully dyed skeins of wool – both had used madder for the dying agent, but two different mordants, which produced two slightly different shades of apricot.

Since coming home from the conference I’ve been doing some more research on dying and spinning wool (cotton, flax, and hemp are later projects). I’ve come across some very nice internet sites. One is Pioneer Thinking - its more related to simple living styles. However, it has a very nice page giving reference to various plants used for producing natural dyes. Another site, a blog called “A Stitch in Time” focuses specifically on Medieval garments and techniques for making them. The author, Katrin Kania, is a “medieval archaeologist specialising in garment reconstruction and historic tailoring techniques”. She has some wonderful articles on spinning wool and the use of distaffs (the latter, being something I never see among the SCAdians using drop spindles. I’ve only scratched the surface of information in her blog – I will likely refer to her writings in later posts.