Sjöröveren

This is great news! I can totally empathize, being unemployed myself. And you do have a great radio voice! Working at a radio station in Iowa seems to have a good place to start for Ronald Reagan, so who knows? The sky's the limit!

They began selling this at the Minnesota State Fair last year, which I missed. Can't wait to try it at this year's fair - starts in a few weeks.

I've got the same problem with 2 coats. They both have pockets in inconvenient places. One has a horizontal breast pocket, the other has 2 diagonal side pockets. None of the pockets are located near seams, or where a seam would likely be made during an alteration. Both coats are heavy wool, and there is some matching fabric inside the pockets, before the liner material starts in each. I can remove the flaps easily, but the problem is the remaining slit. Is there a kind of blind stitch that would make the slit disappear?

an excellent point! This is in that fuzzy line between accuracy and acting. We strive to present the most accurate historical perspective that we can acheive, but we are presenting it to an audience, after all. Communication fails if the speaker fails to make their message comprehensible to the listener. And if the listener doesn't get the message, you may as well have not delivered it in the first place. For those of us unable to visit foreign ports, the next best thing may be reading fiction in which the author has a good ear for transcribing accent and dialect. Patrick O'Brian does this very well. Although set in the early 19th century, his seamen speak in what strikes me as authentic West Country, Scots and other English accents. Many of his seamen are from the Wapping, Limehouse and Seven Dials areas of London, which was home to many seamen since the days of Drake. For American accents, Mark Twain does a great job with mid 19th century Midwest and Southern accents. I haven't read enough fiction from the GAoP to know of any authors who write in dialect from that time. I'm sure folks here will have some recommendations. As an aside, I have to admit that I first read this post because I thought it was a reference to Talledega Nights.

William Dampier visted Campeche, or "Campeachy" as he called it, in his early buccaneering days. I think it was near here where he initially tried to make his fortune in the logwood trade, and found that the Spanish harassment of the logwood cutters so upsetting that he decided to harass the Spanish for a while.

My first exposure to Renaissance Faires was very negative, because everyone seemed to be either English or Irish. If you're really trying to portray the Renaissance, shouldn't there be quite a few Italians, Spanish, French and Dutch around? Not to mention pretty much every other nationality on Earth? Of course, nowadays you do see Chinese, Japanese, Arabs and Africans at Faires, but also Romans, Vikings and Klingons. So I guess the Renaissance part is really just a suggestion. I will sometimes do accents at events where it fits, whether for historical or entertainment purposes. When I worked at an historic site, I used a French Canadian accent for awhile, trying to model it on former Canadian PM Jean Chretien, who would occasionally over-emphasize his Quebecois accent to make a point with Anglophones. Eventually, I realized that I wasn't doing a very good job with it, so I dropped it. I occasionally use a Swedish accent nowadays. I grew up hearing my grandparents speaking with this accent, so it's been imprinted in my brain. It's quite different from a modern Swedish accent, which I think add something to the authenticity. Today, Swedes speak more and more as if they are all from Stockholm, and the various regional accents are disappearing. My ancestors came from Dalarna, in central Sweden, and spoke in what today would be considered to be "hillbilly Swedish". And since I find "hillbilly English" to be quite interesting, my ancestral accent and dialect holds a special place in my heart. I think one reason that some pirate re-enactors use the "Newton dialect" is that it is based on English syntax, vocabulary, etc. So it's already familiar to them. One of the things that I found challenging while doing a French Canadian accent is speaking English in the manner of a non-English speaker. Most languages have syntax very different from English. French and Spanish usually put the the adjective after the noun, for example, chien noir translates literally as dog black, not black dog. Scandinavian languages incorporate articles and plurals into the noun itself, so each noun can have several versions. Example: hund = dog, hunden = the dog, hundar = dogs, hundarna = the dogs. Archaic Swedish, the version I try to use in re-enacting, didn't allow for addressing someone as "you" unless you had a very close relationship - spouse, child, sibling, etc. Only upper classes were addressed by "Sir" or "Madam". Everyone else used either the person's Christian name, or a nickname (there were lots of people named "Sven" and "Lena" after all) or referred to by their profession. I have ancestors who were called "Russian Pete" and "the Drunkard Anders"! But to get back to the point, these idiosyncrasies of a foreign tongue should be reflected in how someone speaks English, if you want to sound authentic. My other big problem with poorly done accents is when people think that over-enunciating will pass for an accent. Only if you're doing a school marm! I tried doing the "Newton dialect" the first year at the Port Washington Pirate Festival. I figured the little kids expected their pirates to talk like pirates. My voice took most of the next week to recover from two days of "talking like a pirate". Maybe that's why TLAP Day is not a big deal to me.

According to the Facebook page for the Schooner Amistad, the ship was unattended when the fire broke out. In their words, "fire on wooden vessel is a deadly tragedy... Posting as a memento for every single ship and for ALL those who think that a ship can be left unattended... Ships die without crew!" This tragedy reminds me of the fire that destroyed the Cutty Sark a few years ago. Has anyone heard anything new about that? At the time, there were some who said that the destruction was not that bad, and that they hoped to rebuild. Anything ever happen on that front?

Just polished off some leftover chorizo & eggs, with some fried Yukon Gold potatoes on the side. Mmmm! Makes me want to watch Midnight Run!

Jas. Townsend has a good fishing kit for sale. The picture gives a good basic idea of how the pole, line, floats and hooks looked like. One big difference is that small hooks like this didn't have eyes - the line was tied around the shaft of the hook instead. There must have been quite a few lost fish! As far as fishing for food was concerned, I'm sure that nets, seines, weirs, etc were the methods of choice, rather than hook & line. There were no game laws in the modern sense, so there were no worries about catch limits or methods. Of course, the concept of all waters being open to public fishing is an American concept. Back in Europe, fishing rights were (and still are in many cases) are held privately by the land owner. At sea, from what I've read, fish were often purchased from local fisherman, who could be an important source of intelligence if sailing in enemy waters. Also, sailors would fish from the ship when becalmed or not on watch, if the captain permitted it. I imagine the ship's armourer could easily fashion hooks of the appropriate size for whatever quarry was available. Tuna and sharks were both mentioned in books I have read, both of which would require larger hooks. I'm sorry I don't have my references in front of me, but these are just general things that I recall. Don't take them for gospel.

There's a couple of minor little things missing that I wish were back. When looking at the list of new content threads, you can see who posted the most recent reply, but not who began the thread. Also, the mini-profiles next to each post used to have the "home port" of the person posting. That was handy when they made a reference to their location, but didn't specifically mention where they were in the post. For example, someone writes "the weather here is awful" but doesn't mention where they live. With the old way, you could easily see where they lived. No big deal, but they were handy.

I wish someone would study whether rain can make you wet!

Flintstones chewable vitamins.

Paul Bettany is a great actor, and he did a great job in M&C, but he is so unlike the Stephen Maturin of the books! Bettany's Maturin is tall, good-looking and fair complexioned, where O'Brian's Maturin is short, rather ugly and dark-complexioned. But I suppose it's too late to change now. And it wouldn't ruin the movie or anything. In an ideal world, they would make films of all 20.5 books, but that would mean calling the next film Master and Commander since that's the name of the first book. Reverse of the Medal would make a great film, but my personal choice for most cinematic would be Desolation Island. The scene with the Surprise being chased by the Waakzaamheid through the southern ocean, during violent storms and enormous seas, and the shocking ending to it all would make an incredible film.

sorry for the non-communication. I just sent you an email confirming my interest.

Apparently the only volume I'm missing is The Luxury Yachts, which is not a big deal to me. But knowing me, It will bug me until I find it!

I had a few volumes from the series already, including The Pirates, so I may have to divest myself of some of the duplicates. Stay tuned.

I would like to, but since I had to pull out of the last one, I'll wait a bit before I commit myself.

Our local thrift store never ceases to cough up prizes! Today I got 21 volumes of the TIme-Life Seafarers Series. I think this is the complete series! And the best part - 60 cents a piece! Seriously, I have dreams about finds like this!

Well, if these are the same as Mary's shoes, then they are decent quality. I bought a pair from her, but they were a bit small for me. That was before I had gastric bypass surgery, and now even my feet are smaller! So these may work again. But if I buy them, I'll buy them from Mary if she still has them. Gotta support your friends after all! Mission, would a regular shoe buckle work on these if you got rid of the elastic strap? If not, maybe any buckle of the right size and shape, and with a center bar would work?

Having foresworn beginning to re-read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series for the fifth time until next April, I naturally became obsessive about another author. I have been tearing through anything by Neil Gaiman that I can get through the library. I've read American Gods, Ananzi Boys, Good Omens, Stardust, Neverwhere, Coraline, and M is for Magic so far this summer. I haven't been able to get any of his graphic novels through the library, and I can't afford to buy them, so I know that I'm missing out on some of his best stuff. I'll have to try inter-library loan for those, I guess. I actually met Neil about 10 years ago, before I had any idea who he was. His American home is near here, in Western Wisconsin, and he's a friend of a very good friend of mine who lives in the same town. I went to see a play that my friend was directing, and met up after the show. I was introduced to the other friends hanging about backstage. "This is Neil Gaiman. You know, the writer." "Oh, yeah," I said. "Sandbox or something like that, right?" "Yeah, something like that" replied Neil with a little chuckle. I like to think that it was refreshing for him to meet someone who didn't go all glassy-eyed. But he's very friendly, doesn't act the celebrity in the least, unless you count wearing sunglasses at night.

I was poking around on ebay this morning and found these shoes listed. They don't look like the best quality. They look very similar to some kids sized shoes that we got for our youngest son a few years ago. The buckle looks pretty lightweight, and they probably use a velcro closure, just like my son's shoes. But they held up pretty well, and looked just fine for the events we were going to then. They wouldn't pass muster with the serious reenactor, but they would be just fine for faires and the like. And at 30 bucks plus $13 for shipping, they may work out for someone who is just starting out.

Seems to be correct now! Although the characters in my original entry now look all garbled. That's just a curiosity though, not a problem. Thanks Stynky!

Check out MacGregor Games. The offer several different version of dice, although they are cast resin and not real bone. I've got a pair of "Lord and Lady" dice, and they rattle pretty good, though not exactly like bone. But I've known them for 20 years or so, and they are excellent folks. They have a stand at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, and several other Faires around the country, so you may be able to try out a pair in person before you buy.

And now that I can read my last post, I am even more confused, since both the ö and the � characters show up the way I entered them, so that would suggest that the problem is deeper than just the character encoding. I've also tried the Windows machine again. I'm already logged in using Firefox on the Windows laptop, but my name shows up with the � character instead of the ö. But when I try logging in using IE7, there's another problem. It recognizes my name as a previously used log-in, so it automatically fills in my user name and my password, which has not been changed. But it says that the username or password is incorrect. So the problem still seems to point to the board being able to recognize the ö character. Many times I have cursed the day that I ever chose a user name with such unusual markings, but today is the worst of all. I wonder if it is possible to change it to just plain "Sjorovaren"?

There is something going on with character encoding, as of this morning. When I logged on this morning, the 2 ö's (lower case "o" with 2 dots above it) in my user name had been replaced with �'s (a diamond with a question mark in the middle.) I was using Safari as my browser, so I tried to take a look at my profile using Firefox, but I couldn't log in (I am always logged on Safari) Firefox doesn't recognize either the ö or the � during log-in, so I can't log in at all using Firefox. I thought that this might be a Mac problem, so I tried logging on with my Windows XP laptop. Same thing pretty much. IE 7 (7.0.5730.13, if that matters) shows the ö as 2 horizontal lines, one atop the other. So the problem doesn't seem to come from the browser or the character encoding being used, or either operating system. And since this was all working fine yesterday, I have to suspect something with the board.