Busy weekend

[fbhjr]

Out at the University of Massachusetts they have a renaissance study center that has an annual sword symposium. We’ve been going since the beginning and have often done presentations and/or sword demo as part of it.



This year we agreed to bring back the one we did at the German Sword museum in 2018 doing techniques shown in the earliest known sword fighting book from Europe written about 700 years ago.





The sword fighting books they had displayed are very similar to my collection. I’ve since ordered the one they had I didn’t.


The ren center has some nice original books in it’s collection too. I don’t have those.





It’s a small event with only about 30 folks attending, but it is a good bunch of folks.


One of the main speakers declined to be videoed for it. So we didn’t get video of her two talks, but have some stills.

One of the talks, by a researcher in Canada, did theirs by Zoom.


In the afternoon, between talks, the librarian there let us go downstairs to the printing press and the library. I love that library.




Jeff likes showing off his newest acquisition like the first book of Shakespeare printed in North America.




Or a script of Romeo and Juliet from a century ago with the signature of Basil Rathbone.



Or a play ad for Macbeth starting John Wilkes Booth


He’s willing to show us the really rare things too, that are kept locked up, like first edition Shakespeare, pages of Chaucer or the Gutenberg bible.







I used a "self aware" camera stand that is supposed to turn the camera to face any speaker and find faces. Sadly, the speakers were behind a very tall lectern so the camera kept looking around for the reflected sound and seeing me and my wife.





Eventually, I gave up and shut it off.



But, the talks were good, even if the only photos worked from off side.





Our presentation went well. But, it was raining. This did not stop my wife and myself from doing the sword demo on the lawn. But, no one got photos. Or at least not and shared them with us. So, I’m afraid you’ve got to trust us on that.

The symposium got over at 5 and we had 7:30 tickets to a show in Worcester 90 minutes away. And, had to stop for moms dinner.
We did make it with about 20 minutes to spare.
https://thehanovertheatre.org/event/mochrieandsherwood/







No photos of the show, but it was very funny. We’ve seen them a bunch of times and always enjoy it.

Today, although still raining on and off, we went off to practice.






We’ve got shows every weekend in May and so polished up the historical bits.


But, mostly we worked on fire, especially with our drummers there.













It was very windy, which made the fire difficult.
It was windy enough that the Polar Cola Polar Bear was doing yoga as we drove home.


We ate dinner and then had a long call with our goddaughter about how grad school is going for her.