I learned medieval stuff this weekend!

On Saturday, February 10th, 2018, The East Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism held it's annual Arts & Sciences and Bardic Championship the Crown Province of Ostgardr (the greater NYC area). This event gives folks the opportunity to showcase their work in making things and historical research.

I learned so much at this event! I have been in the SCA for about 30 years and while I do my share of research and making things, I have never dedicated myself to a specific project or discipline to the degree and focus that the top levels of this competition do. The remarkable thing about doing this kind of research is that not only do you learn how a thing was done, you can learn why a thing was done, you can learn how a thing fit into a culture, you can appreciate the journey that humans have made in culture and technology.

I learned that "bowed cotton" is fluffier than cotton batting, and that sewing your gambeson pattern pieces as a pillow and beginning the quilting in the middle is a thing that can be done and can benefit your final product. Also that if you make a sample piece of your quilted garment, you can calculate the reduction in measurement of the pattern pieces that happens during quilting so that you know how much to over-size the piece when cutting it.

I learned that people carried wax tablets on which to write things, either they wrote temporary things meant to be erased later, like grocery lists, or else the tablet was turned over to a scribe to copy down in ink, then erased. This meant that some folks carried three, or five, or even ten tablets on which to write things, like business deals or tax assessments. This made me wonder if there were medieval "copy shops," in which scribes worked and one could deliver one's wax tablets to be trans-"scribed."

I learned that papercutting is an art in just about every culture with paper. A fellow at the event is researching evidence that the creative art of papercutting traveled with the technology of papermaking itself as it traveled from culture to culture. Of course, as each culture had different paper (the Chinese had rice, the Germans had wood pulp, and the Aztecs had tree bark), each had different tools to cut the paper (knives, scissors, and chisels, respectively). Multiple layers of different colored paper an also be used for different effects.

I learned that Welsh breadmaking did not involve a lot of wheat flour until late in the medieval period, so bread baked in the 1100's in Wales may have used oat flour, but it seems to be difficult to recreate a recipe and baking technique for bread used in a particular Welsh festival feast without it, using only ingredients that could have been found there then.

Putting all this together, it made me think of a story in which a fellow went to a tailor to have a new gambeson made, and the tailor wrote down his measurements on a wax tablet. He took the tablet to a scribe, who wrote it down on a small piece of parchment. This parchment was lost, however, and found by a papercutter, who used it to cut a design in celebration of the Welsh festival coming up.

I look forward to learning more!

What should I do about my knee?

OK, here is the story with my right knee, and I will need some pros and cons: The ACL is completely torn, disconnected. There is a little tear in the rear meniscus, and some arthritis beginning to kick in. I am a perfect candidate for ACL repair, which would take one day, outpatient, have me on crutches for a couple of weeks, and then therapy, and I would be back to full strength in about 9-12 months. I have insurance that will cover it, with Dr. David Pereira, one of the best-reviewed doctors specializing in ACL repair at NYU-Langone, doing the work.


Here is the video that shows the original injury:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsmiZiwwNgc
If I don't get this work done, I could spend the rest of my life simply doing things that do not require any twisting or pivoting at the knee, like elliptical machines and bicycles, and I could wear a knee brace at any time that I feel risk. So no more swing dancing, basketball, soccer, BJJ, sword fighting, armored combat, and even stage combat would be limited.

I am currently unemployed, and will start receiving benefits this week. I have some part-time work opportunities that will help me extend the benefits (performing at birthday parties, working for a comic convention, etc). I have a plan to use my unemployment period to train for work in film production that (if all goes will) will start early next year. If that falls through, my back-up plan is to go back to work in an office job in the insurance industry when the open enrollment season begins.

Of course no surgery is without risk, so I have to consider these risks before jumping into the surgery.

Some options being presented to me are:
1. Get the surgery done right away. This would limit my birthday party work for a few months, so I would be living mostly on Unemployment, but the work would be done sooner.
2. Wait until I get a "real" job, so I can take sick leave to get the surgery and recover (at one hour of sick leave earned for 30 hours of work, it would take me 1200 hours of work to earn one week off. That's 30 weeks of full time work).
3. Never get the surgery and live a careful life, using a knee brace for anything risky, and changing my physical activity to those that don't twist or pivot at the knee.

So what do you think I should do? My Facebook friends have never been shy about sharing opinions and I have found a wealth of new information that I would never have found on my own without you. So now I need to hear some pros and cons so I can make the best decision.

Final report from Battle of the Nations

Polish TV and a local documentary crew interviewed me. I tried to give them the best answers I could regarding why I am doing this, what I thought about the fights, how I would compare SCA combat with this full-contact fighting, if my BJJ experience helped me at all, etc.

Here's the TV show that interviewed me. The segment on the Battle of the Nations starts at 5:10...

Interestingly, it seemed that every interviewer asked why Americans would do this when the United States has no medieval heritage. The stock answer for this is that the majority of Americans come from Europe, and thus do have a medieval heritage. I would also add that Asian-, African-, and even Native American-descended Americans also have some sort of chivalric warrior heritage. There is a sort of universality to the concept of the "warrior elite," just as there is a universally to the hero myth. Medieval entertainments have been very popular in America for decades, as has physically challenging contact sports and martial arts. The Battle of the Nations is a challenging combination of these things, and Americans don't like to back down from a challenge!

My lady joined me in Warsaw the day before the competition began. She helped the team greatly with water bearing and fighter support and helped me by holding the camera to shoot video. She had been unsure about coming to this event. She had wanted to go to Italy, and there was thought that we might do both. But the seriousness of the Battle of the Nations preparations started to make it look like that plan would be unlikely. However, she was won over by the passion and the adventure of this endeavor, and by the end was extremely happy she came.

The team was likewise glad to have her. Her help enabled the fighters to concentrate on their fighting without having to worry about hydration, nutrition, and other aspects of staying alive at an event like this.

Many people on the team told me that I had done very well over the course of the week. In fact, several times I was told that I was awesome, a superhero, and had a pair of brass ones the size of (fill in the blank). That made me feel really good about myself, that this trip, and all the effort was worth it. Here were these guys, most of whom were bigger or stronger or more skilled or tougher or had more badass cred than I, and they were accepting me as one of their own, simply because I was doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to fight. I wanted to fight and not give up. I wanted to have a good time fighting. I wanted to have a good time fighting in front of a lot of people and cameras, and I wanted to have as much fun as possible during this trip, to make people laugh, to entertain them. I wanted to make history. And I wanted to be accepted. I have two words for the result: Mission accomplished.

This was the first time that Americans had competed in an international medieval armored combat competition of this scale. We came as a team and every man fought to their utmost. We all sweated and bled out there, and we came together as a team of Americans. I have never been prouder to be part of something. This is something no one can take way from us.