Teaching History in a Home School setting can be a challenge, especially when we are faced with teaching ages 11 and up through High School. Most of us learned what little history we know from textbooks that sucked the life out of the stories and bored us nearly to death. A few of us were fortunate enough to run across writers of histories who are anything BUT boring. Historians like Dr. Warren Carroll whose books (like the very short 1917, Isabella, and Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, and the heavy duty Christendom series) challenged and delighted … Continue reading
Category Archives: SCA
I fairly commonly go on about the fun I have in the Society for Creative Anachronism. My favorite part, that dovetails with my love of history and my interest in learning enough to live and breath and write in my chosen time period, is the Arts and Sciences competitions. I find such things very exciting and am eagerly working toward the day when I am able to compete. This years Kingdom Arts and Sciences competition, for our Kingdom, took place last weekend. I could not go but a good soul (THANK YOU) filmed the exhibits and the announcement of who … Continue reading
Ice and Fire Crown Tournament is a big Society for Creative Anachronism event for Ansteorra, hosted this year by the Shire of the Shadowlands. I attended, had a lot of fun, and participated by helping to prepare all the food for the Soup Kitchen we set up for lunch for what may have been around 150 people or so. [official count 206 persons attended the event!] The cooking started in December. I prepared the base for the beef stew and had planned to take it to a work day at Isabelot de Florin’s house but had a wreck that morning. … Continue reading
I have recently discovered the joys of browsing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Online Collections. It began with my favorite time period and region to study which is Byzantium during the reign of Basil II. Someone pinned a photo of a bracelet from around that period on their pinterest page and I saw it and followed the link to see more historical information on this artifact. Thus began a several day, every spare moment, fascinating walk through the website. I pinned lots of bits of fabric from around and before my period to aid in finding embroidery patterns that would … Continue reading
Byzantium or the Eastern Roman Empire survived the fall of Rome for another thousand years or so. During this time the people still played games and had lives that grew out of the Roman culture. I discovered this fun set of videos on YouTube, and they have several others I did not embed that you ought to go see if the subject of Ancient times interests you. These are about games people played. There have been found game boards and game pieces and dice, but the rules are much more difficult to discover. Scholars have attempted to accurately recreate the … Continue reading
At an SCA event we are recreating the age of chivalry “as it ought to have been”. So the clothing we all wear is an attempt at period garb but while in history many people wore hardly more than rags, when we play anyone can wear anything that is at least an attempt at period. When we play, the culture mix freely, as do the time periods. So while I am fascinated with Byzantium around 1000AD, my persona can be sitting next to an Anglo Saxon from 1200, and a Viking from 800. History is our inspiration but this is … Continue reading
Tourney of Squires, Cadets and Aracarius was full of fun. It takes a certain amount of effort on the part of each person attending to keep the atmosphere. It also takes a lot of preparation by those setting up the event! Everyone did a really good job! The autocrats for this event did a fine job with the location. The fields were mowed very short and they had sprayed for insects so nobody was bitten by fire ants. It was what they call a primitive site, so it was still possible to get bitten, stung or pick up a tick … Continue reading
I had so much fun this Saturday! Baby in tow, outdoors, social FUN! The fun of an organization like the Society for Creative Anachronism is that it encourages a study of history that is oriented to the people and how they actually lived, then creating aspects of that way of life without the elements that were, well, not so fun. This weekend’s event, only an hour from where I live so I could easily drive there, enjoy the day and drive home, was an outdoor event. Here is the top of the blurb from their facebook event page: Tourney of … Continue reading