[Ansteorra] Why aren't we doing this?

[Chris Zakes]

At 11:01 PM 11/3/2010, Detlef wrote:

>The Medieval Recreation and Re-enactment Society, maybe?

Maybe, except that we don't really do re-enactments (at least not the 
way the Civil War folks or the guys who re-do the Battle of Hastings 
every year do.)


>I don't know. I actually like the name Society for Creative Anachronism.
>That's what we do. We create an anachronism. We don't recreate medieval
>history (if we did, King Arthur, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Saint Francis of
>Assisi, Meister Eckhardt, and Joan of Arc would be walking among us); we
>make our OWN history (so we have people like Siegfried von Hoflichskeit,
>Diana Listmaker, Willow de Wisp, Simonn of Amber Isle, Elizabeth Seale, and
>Jean Paul de Sens in our midst). We constantly struggle with the paradox of
>reconciling our quest for a medieval life with the necessities of modern
>life.
>
>We have quite a few serious medievalists among us, but unlike academic
>medievalists, we don't just study the Middle Ages. We LIVE the Middle Ages,
>in our own weird way, by taking what we learn in our research and giving it
>a practical application. We're living an anachronism of our own creation.
>Unlike historical re-enactment groups, we don't follow a script in history
>books. We make our own script as we go along--just like the people of the
>original Middle Ages did.
>
>This thread can go on and on, because there really are no easy answers to
>these questions. If there IS an answer, it lies somewhere between dropping a
>McDonald's bag onto a table during a feast and surviving on nothing but the
>technologies that people actually had access to in the Middle Ages. Where
>specifically seems hard to pinpoint.

As a group, it's impossible to pinpoint but as individuals we do it 
all the time. And I think that the sum total of our individual 
efforts *is* getting better over time: fewer blue plastic tarps and 
more period-style pavilions; more period-looking armor; Del Tin 
rapier blades with swept hilts instead of foils or epees with modern 
cup hilts; more widespread use of linen and wool for our clothing, 
etc. (And yes, there are some areas that still need improvement, or 
where we're backsliding, like plastic armor, nylon bag chairs and cell phones.)

         -Tivar Moondragon