Personna views was RE: Magic Moments

[J. Michael Shew]

	May I?  As the Calontir among you, I have a lot of my local
friends who find this kind of disscussion most enlightening and in some
ways most frightening.
	This last Lilies war, I held a class called "Conversations with a
Norse Skald" in which the exercise was to just get new players in our game
of pretend to try their skills at it.
	The first half of the class was out of personna, with explanations
of where a lot of my information would come from, how I would act at
times, and where such high personna activity might be required.
	The second half was an in personna conversation between all the
class members and myself.  I was teaching in my own camp, and had placed a
"land mine" of anachronism in front of myself on purpose.  I mundanely
smoke a pipe.  I left the pipe and a modern lighter right in front of me
on a stool I had built for the war.  Durring the conversation, I "Noticed"
the pipe, lifted it, and examined the thing in great detail.  I then
sniffed at it, made the kind of face most non-smokers do when they
encounter a used pipe, and tossed it aside into a basket.  I then examined
the lighter, asked someone next to me what it was, and proceeded to Turn
things, and experiment in a way I have seen some people look at them.
Getting bored, I tossed it aside as well.
	Of course I would not have done this with someone elses gear, but
the effect worked well, and demonstrated the principle I had been
emphasising:  Anachronisms would not have made folk yell or seem upset.
They would have seemed curious and harmless untill proven otherwise.
	You also would have loved the "religion" argument that cropped up
between myself, (A 900's Norse Skald,) and two others, a 15th century
English Roman Catholic and a 12th century Moslem from Antioch.  At no time
did we find the time interferance most people complain of.  The Moslem
assumed the heathens of the Varangian were still in existence, and the
12th century Lady assumed that I was of the unlearned few who dwell beyond
the mountains, in her recconing.  We also had a fun time trying to set the
date, as I was counting in Norse Kings, she in Catholic feast days and
years past the Crusades, and he in the years of the moslem calendar!
	Mikal 

____________________________________________________________________________
    Mikal the Ram; an annoying Bard of no redeeming qualities
__________________________(jshewkc at pei.edu)________________________________
High up in Asgard     Loki was hiding
Watching the gods     and all of their works
Planning his mischief    a master of tricks
And watching Thor's hall     he noticed Sif's hair 

			(Loki et Sif,JOHNSAGA)