Sjöröveren

I was at Big Island Rendezvous in Albert Lea, MN last weekend, and saw this amazing original firearm: It's hard to get an idea of scale in this photo. It is roughly 150% the size of a brown bess, and close to 5 feet long. There was usually a large crowd around it, so I was only able to eavesdrop on the owner's description. He said it was a sniper's musket, circa 1820, of the type used by both American & British forces on land and at sea. It requires one man to load the charge and another to aim and fire. They fired three small - (for this gun, 95 grains is small) - rounds, missing their target at 200 yards all three times. Quite an impressive firearm!

Red Bess has accused me of collecting hobbies, but I've more or less settled on reenacting for the past 15 years or so. My primary collection jones is for antique medical stuff, especially surgical instruments. (Like most pirates, I love edged tools. I just prefer the tiny ones!) I've begun collecting navigational instruments recently. I got a nice boxwood parallel rule off ebay last year, but it's huge -24"- so it's hard to display. I'm also looking for 60's automotive decor. I want to decorate our basement bathroom to look like the men's room in a gas station on some remote highway, circa 1966 (after it's been cleaned, of course.) There's lots of stuff out there that's close, but it's very hard to find the "just right" stuff.

I have a scrap of a batik shirt that I got in Malaysia in January of 1976, which I tried wearing once, but it's too fragile anymore to do anything but lie flat in a drawer. So I guess that doesn't count then, does it!? Damn me eyes, I thought I had it!

I cut off some white duck broadfalls to just under the knee, and left them ragged for a year, mostly out of laziness. I really didn't like the look. Much more like Halloween than I knew was right. So I hemmed them up, though not as trim as a proper seaman would have done. Perhaps this winter I will rip the hem and do it all a-tanto.

-buy a fairly large island, big enough for a couple of reconstructed GAoP villages, room for an airstrip away from town. Good harbour with plenty of anchorage, slips, etc. for sailing vessels. -Hire as many of the best traditional craftsmen as needed to construct these villages and keep them running and supplied with everything the inhabitants need to get by. -Invite everyone here to come spend a week, a month, a lifetime living as we wished we could all the time. -Don't forget the secret underground bunker for all of us rejoin the 21st century when we choose. Plasma TV, big modern kitchen with all the best food. Broadband access, dance floor, laser tag whatever we want. That's a start.

I'm hoping for pics too, been looking for another blade and maybe a blunderbuss.

Well, Baconfest Midwest and Baconfest North-Midwest are taken, so I better barge in line. Red Bess are claiming Baconfest Minnesota! Take that Iowa! BACON IS MEAT CANDY!

Weally Ware Wenison, provided by Elmer Fudd.

Several Swedish Side-dishes. Skål!

Time to hoist the Blue Peter! We'll be there - the 4 of us, come hell or high water.

It's been great meeting folks at Port Washington these past 2 years, but it would be nice to get together more frequently too. Red Bess & I are always open to gatherings in the Minneapolis area, but there's only a dozen or so of us that I know of around here. As for winter meetups, I have made a solemn oath to attend the 2008 Reenactor Fest in Chicago come February. I still wake up crying into my pillow for missing the last one.

I've looked at the photos in more detail. I look at them in 3D, from above, so it's a lot like hovering in a helicopter over the bridge. Very fine detail, and from an angle impossible to show on TV. My first reaction was amazement that many more people weren't killed. There are vehicles that fell 50+ feet, onto rocks or concrete, with hundreds of snapped ends of rebar sticking out every which way. Cars caught in the bent girders like bugs in a spider web. How do you get out of your car when it's balanced on an I-beam, 20 feet over a river, at a 60 degree angle? I won't be able post any photos any time soon, probably never. I'm not an engineer, so I'm not going to say anything about possible causes. But I do hope that someday the public will be able to view these photos the way I have been able to. '

OH MY GOD DID THAT SUCK!

I'm not saying we should settle for imperfection. But even the absololute best human endeavor can never be perfect. So while striving for perfection, in the back of your mind there must be the awareness that it is impossible to be perfect. I think that's at the heart of civilization. Humans naturally try to change their environment, in an imperfect attempt to improve it. And with every improvement come errors and unintended consequences. Yet we try again. You can argue whether any of these "improvements" are actually good for us. Maybe it was a mistake to come down from the trees and start walking upright. But we tend to learn something from our mistakes, just not enough to be perfect. Doesn't mean we should stop trying. And speaking of not learning from our mistakes, the local debate is begining to devolve into the usual party politics. Raise taxes. Don't raise taxes. Plan for future technologies. Get it done quickly. Get it done right. It's still mostly in civil tones, but I don't hold out much hope that we'll make even most of the people happy.

I just found out today that my company is doing some of the high-res mapping of the bridge collapse. I saw the aerial photos this afternoon. More to come as I am able to divulge -- some of this stuff may be under pretty tight reins as far as public info, until the investigation is done.

Speaking as a life-long Minnesotan, who had crossed that bridge hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, I feel that Gov. Pawlenty is one of those naive people he points the finger at. During this past legislative session, a modest increase in the gasoline tax was passed with bi-partisan support, though Pawlenty warned from the first that he would veto it. And he did. An attempt to override his veto fell short. This was just the latest in a long line of decisions made by both political parties to willfully ignore long-term problems in favor of short term agendas. But I can't blame the governor, nor any other politician for the bridge collapse. I don't think the blame is on any one person. It is a collective blame. We have come to believe that we are in control, and we expect that everything should go according to plan. Most of the time it does. Most of the time bridges don't fall down, buildings don't collapse, planes don't crash. When they do, we try to figure out why, and sometimes we even find an answer that seems to work. Until the next time. We are imperfect creatures, striving towards a perfect world. We will never get there. Sometimes the paths we take turn out to be strokes of genius, sometimes they are miserable failures. But we keep trying, knowing that we will never achieve our goal, because it's what we do. So I will keep driving over bridges. It's just part of this imperfect life, the only one I've got.

We're sailing right off your quarter, shipmate. Raise the signal high if ye are in distress!

Is this the end of Evil Peaches? I think not. An evil twin is never really dead, right?

Not concertina, nor any of the accordion family. They didn't come around until the 1830s or 40s. There's a thread about that from a year or so around here somewhere. For period instruments, there's really just the basics- fiddles, fifes and whistles, drums. And probably not in their current forms either. Hopefully a real expert will see this thread in the next few days. I know they're out there...

Way too busy during the event, even busier these days following. (I thought I would get to slow down when I got old!!) So many Pub folks I would have like to have met! I was fortunate enough to quickly introduce myself to Capt. Sterling, Rats and Cheeky Actress before returning to my Fool's Gold duties. Now I know the faces of more, thanks to all the great photos. I will really, really try to get around more next year! Here's a photo of most of the crew of the Fool's Gold, boarding the Windy II shortly after the tornado warning. L-R: Lady Barbossa, Daniel, Andre (my & Red Bess' sons), Merrydeath, Sjörövaren, Mad Grace Flint, Red Bess. Evil Peaches and Long Shot stayed ashore to guard the treasure!

1- 3, if memory serves. 2- 1. Maybe 1 and a half. 3- historic 4- no to first part, it's mostly escapism, but I also try to teach people real history, not fantasy.

Congratulations to Mom & Grandma alike! Now the Fool's Gold has a bilge rat to go with our 2 powder monkeys! Skål och Välkommen, Xavier!

Heartiest birthday wishes to the grandest pyrate poet around!

Wishes be upon ye for a most glorious birthday to me own dear Captain! Here's hopin the weather cooperates better for ye than it did for me!

somewhere in the middle of an 8 hour party mix of piraty songs. Currently it's "A Capital Ship" by Bounding Main. Oops, while I was typing that, it changed to "Blood Red Roses" by Sting from "Rogue's Gallery" (both from my 2 favorite CDs of 2006, BTW)