[Sca-cooks] ISO Hints for Teaching at Pennsic

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Daniel wrote:
> Is anyone familiar with the old saw "It is easier often to gain 
> absolution than permission"?

Angharad replied:
> That usually works ok if you only want to do the deed in question once...

Indeed.

Having read the Pennsic handbook which is given to each attendee, Pennsic officials have the power to throw people off site for certain infringements of the rules, and the ability to ban people from returning to future Pennsics for certain violations.

The four short rows of the 15 A&S/University tents are all clustered in one place, with A&S/University Point tucked into one row of those rows, all of which are close to several official tents: The Motor Pool, Chirurgeons, The Watch, etc.

While i may on occasion follow that old saw (Gee, i didn't realize i wasn't supposed to do that. I'm sooo sorry! I'll stop now and never do it again, i promise!), i have no desire to be thrown out of Pennsic and especially no wish to be banned. Although i think that both are unlikely, i think i could be forbidden from teaching any other classes.

Since i want to teach several classes: a couple hands-on cooking classes (and one lecture class perhaps twice, once in each week), i therefore would prefer to err on the side of doing what is permitted so that i may teach all the classes i want to teach, rather than to be sneaky once and be disallowed from teaching the remainder of my classes.

I do not see this as forging my own chains, but as putting myself in a position to be a full participant without causing myself to be forbidden from doing what i wish.

Also i was told that i might be allowed to set up the stove outside a tent. Thus talking and prepping could take place in the shade of a dark, stifling, sometimes smelly Grimm tent, while cooking could take place safely away from the potentially flammable tent... if it doesn't rain while i'm trying...

Whatever the rules, there is always the option of teaching hands-on cooking in someone's camp site. This means, as many have pointed out to me on several lists, that only a small number of people may show up, since it can be tricky to find some camp sites, or it can be quite a trek there or back or both, although some have said that once a teacher becomes well-known more people are likely to be willing to make that trek... Now, i am on far too many lists and far too chatty, and as far as i know, i'm the only Urtatim, so i am somewhat known...

But i would still prefer to teach in the central teaching area where i will be easy to find and to which it will be relatively easy for me to drag all the necessities... for some definition of "easy" in all that heat and humidity.

On a more practical note, i am not sure how i would advertise a hands-on cooking class in an official teaching tent in that aforementioned Official Handbook, which passes through the hands and under that eyes of Pennsic Officials, if hands-on cooking is not allowed in said tents...

Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
still looking for actual hints on teaching to people from kingdoms with whose traditions and expectations i am unfamiliar