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[SCA] Castle Schola
We had a very nice schola event this past Saturday at the baron and baroness' castle (hence the event name). The classes I went to were quite good, lunch was tasty (including a nice vegetarian soup), and the feast (cooked by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
illadore) was excellent.
We missed the first couple class sessions (it would take an awful lot for me to willingly miss Shabbat morning services...). The session that was just about to start when we got there didn't have anything that grabbed me (good stuff but topics I already knew); I wish I had noticed the last-minute addition of a battle-tactics class. I would have taken that for the novelty. But I didn't notice it so instead I ate lunch and talked with people.
Leifr andrisiko gave a slide show on their trip to Scandinavia -- not the typical vacation pictures you might expect, but lots and lots of stuff from museums off the beaten path. It appears that in Scandinavia, like in the parts of Israel I visited, they are perfectly content to let people crawl around ancient ruins instead of protecting everything behind glass. That definitely enhances my experience of such sites. (In contrast, I remember visiting Plymouth Rock decades ago and being surprised to find that it was roped/walled off so you couldn't get near it. Also, that it was much smaller than I had imagined.)
After that I went to two cooking classes taught by a visitor from the Cleftlands (we had a bunch of people from Ohio, which isn't usual for us even though it's nearby). The first was on mustards and the second on sauces. Mustard might be worth getting a blender for; mmmm. :-) (A tip he gave: mustard seed can be gotten in quantity from Indian groceries. I wouldn't have thought of that.)
At dinner we sat and conversed with some visitors from Cleftlands. The feast, as I said, was excellent. It was all from Forme of Cury (except one sauce that was ~20 years later, Illadore told me) and it hit that rare combination of tasty and well-balanced and vegetarian-friendly (without short-changing the meat-eaters) and aesthetically pleasing and well-timed and a plausible re-creation. It had chicken with mustard sauce, roast beef (with sauces), tarts for ember day (cheese/onion pie, more or less), cheese, nuts, fruit, pickled vegetables, a salad of greens, peas, mushrooms, and more, with apple pie and gingerbread for dessert. We often eat well in this barony, but especially well this time.
This was a free event with a lunch and feast that cost money. I don't think we've tried that model before; we've had completely-free pot-luck events (usually though not always with a donations basket set out), and we've had events where there is a site fee and food fee (the usual event model). A (good) feast adds a lot to an event for me so I prefer that to pot-luck, but I also want us to do free events, so I'm glad to see this combination being tried. I wonder how we did on donations.
illadore) was excellent.We missed the first couple class sessions (it would take an awful lot for me to willingly miss Shabbat morning services...). The session that was just about to start when we got there didn't have anything that grabbed me (good stuff but topics I already knew); I wish I had noticed the last-minute addition of a battle-tactics class. I would have taken that for the novelty. But I didn't notice it so instead I ate lunch and talked with people.
Leifr and
risiko gave a slide show on their trip to Scandinavia -- not the typical vacation pictures you might expect, but lots and lots of stuff from museums off the beaten path. It appears that in Scandinavia, like in the parts of Israel I visited, they are perfectly content to let people crawl around ancient ruins instead of protecting everything behind glass. That definitely enhances my experience of such sites. (In contrast, I remember visiting Plymouth Rock decades ago and being surprised to find that it was roped/walled off so you couldn't get near it. Also, that it was much smaller than I had imagined.)After that I went to two cooking classes taught by a visitor from the Cleftlands (we had a bunch of people from Ohio, which isn't usual for us even though it's nearby). The first was on mustards and the second on sauces. Mustard might be worth getting a blender for; mmmm. :-) (A tip he gave: mustard seed can be gotten in quantity from Indian groceries. I wouldn't have thought of that.)
At dinner we sat and conversed with some visitors from Cleftlands. The feast, as I said, was excellent. It was all from Forme of Cury (except one sauce that was ~20 years later, Illadore told me) and it hit that rare combination of tasty and well-balanced and vegetarian-friendly (without short-changing the meat-eaters) and aesthetically pleasing and well-timed and a plausible re-creation. It had chicken with mustard sauce, roast beef (with sauces), tarts for ember day (cheese/onion pie, more or less), cheese, nuts, fruit, pickled vegetables, a salad of greens, peas, mushrooms, and more, with apple pie and gingerbread for dessert. We often eat well in this barony, but especially well this time.
This was a free event with a lunch and feast that cost money. I don't think we've tried that model before; we've had completely-free pot-luck events (usually though not always with a donations basket set out), and we've had events where there is a site fee and food fee (the usual event model). A (good) feast adds a lot to an event for me so I prefer that to pot-luck, but I also want us to do free events, so I'm glad to see this combination being tried. I wonder how we did on donations.
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We made about $30 in donations by the time I left, which was just after feast started.
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I love places that let you touch and walk amongst the ruins. When I was in Rome a few years ago, we went to Ostia Antica, just outside Rome, which is entire town of ruins and, except for a few places that are roped off (maybe 3% of the entire place), you can walk in and on and through everything. It was awesome! I totally wasn't expecting it, and I fell in love with it because I could touch everything! (I like touching things.) A few days later we went to Pompeii, and I was disappointed at how almost everything was roped off there.
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Ok, so we've done this a few times now and it worked in all cases, so we should keep doing it.
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This line really struck me, because I can't say the same. It might be that unless i went back to Israel, being unwilling to miss Shabbat morning services would mean never going to events. If you can get from a synagogue to an event on Shabbat often enough for your desired level of participation, that changes things.
I would have gone to the last (Eastern) Coronation even though it was on Shabbat. However, that Shabbat happened to be Yom Kippur, which I was not willing to miss. I intend to go to Southern Region War Practice even though it is on Shabbat.
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We start with study at 8:30, service at 9, and generally finish around 11 or a bit after. (We are about to start extending study and pushing everything later by 15 minutes.) We abbreviate the torah service, reading one aliya out of the parsha, and being Reform we don't do musaf or chazan's repetititons. So events still work (to the extent that anything that involves getting into a car works), but I miss morning courts and early classes.
(On the car thing: the compromise we made is that under certain conditions I will get into a car that is being driven anyway. I do feel guilty, but not doing so would mean pretty much giving up the SCA and that's too important to Dani and me. The other dominant case for which I'll do this is visiting family.)
And yeah, all bets are off for Yom Kippur! I know we're a small minority of the population, but in an organization that generally tries to be accommodating, I'm always a little surprised by events on Yom Kippur (or Rosh Hashana) when that happens to be a Saturday. I'm not surprised by events on the chagim (really, how many people have even heard of Shavuot?), but RH and YK are the biggies. I'm told they even close public schools for them sometimes. I'm not complaining; I'm just a little boggled.
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I could see people aiming not to have events on RH, YK and seder night in areas with a lot of Jews. On the other hand, despite that my fencing practice is nearly half jews, I seem to be the only one willing to skip coronation for shul.