Mission

PiP '07 was my first full blown pirate event and I heard scuttlebutt in the campsite about being on a cannon crew. Since I was writing the surgeon's journal, I decided to do anything I could related to the event so I would have something to talk about. I asked Mercury Quartermaster William Red Wake how to get on one of the crews. He told me to go to the fort about an hour before the battle began (2pm) and hang around where the cannon were. Like you, I was looking for some sort of commitment, so I asked someone there (probably Harry) about firing a cannon. As a result, I was paired up with Mark - a local volunteer - who taught me how to fire a cannon in the field. You can read my (brief) account of that here. Since there are cannon in the field and in the fort, there are several opportunities to get on a crew. As vintagesailor said, the Viceroy has several on the fort wall. They fire them during the battle and at sunset. There are three battles and three sunsets resulting in lots of opportunities. You do have to be there early enough to get trained on your role in the crew (which varies - depending on how many people there are volunteering.) M.A. d'Dogge was in charge of the crew I was on last year - we had a team of five or six people (you can see my account of my '08 experience here.) It really is mostly just a matter of being around about an hour or so before battle from my experience. They're nearly always looking for volunteers.

Stynky was talking about rolling PiP into the other pirate event forum and every time I bring it up (because it really does make sense) he just says something like "Yeah, but it's different than the other events." And so it is. Thus it stands on its own for the nonce. BTW, I added a few more links into the mondo-links post up there. If anyone sees or can think of a relevant post that isn't in there, pm me - with a link, please. It would be nice to keep it focused on informational posts (as opposed to the ones we start to amuse each other), but who knows what will work? Sometimes it is the amusing aspects that are the most informational.

Now, c'mon...it's the Keys! You just stand around long enough and wait until someone mentions that they're looking for cannoneers. (You're looking for organization where little exists. Come to think of it, I've never been to an event - even the more formally organized ones - where they had sign up sheets for cannon crews. Someone mentions that they're looking for cannon crew volunteers (they're always looking for cannon crew volunteers) and that they need to be somewhere that day at some time and it all just sort of happens.)

My god...you could be the fourth twin! Except, while May and Brig may get into kit for the danse du ventre, Mission will not. Nope. Never. Seriously. (I don't care what Luther Billis did.)

I agree with you but then, what about pirates raiding a village by land or by the port? What about Henri Morgan? How would they fit in that definition? Again, technically, that wouldn't be an act of piracy, it would be one of theft (or, if you like, ransacking, pillaging and/or looting.) Note that many sort of consider Morgan a buccaneer as opposed to a GAoP pirate. (That's a very fine line, to be sure.) As for privateering....I believe the difference between a pirate and a privateer is which side of the fence you happen to be sitting on. The Spanish certainly considered him a pirate while Oliver Cromwell and Queen Elizabeth thought otherwise.

For your first time, the events in the fort are probably the ticket. Wednesday (Dec. 2nd) - Monday (Dec. 7th) is just about right. You'll most likely be less than cogent on Monday, so I suggest scheduling your departure for later in the day. There are other events going on around town before Thursday, but I don't think the fort will allow you to set up camp before a certain day - isn't it Wednesday? I personally like to stay an extra day to get my head straight and recover from some of the exhaustion, but it's a little depressing. Suddenly, after 5+ days of non-stop dressing up as a pirate and hanging out with friends (new and old), constant action, excitement and fun...you find yourself in a mostly empty park with everyone gone. I suggest if you stay a few days post-event that you plan to do something to stave off the dolor that comes with realizing that the world is only like PiP for a few days. (Fortunately, there are lots of things to do on Key West if you go that route.)

Technically, stealing on a river is not piracy - it's theft. The legal definition of piracy involves stealing "on the high seas." According to this definition, an act of piracy must occur in international waters.

You can't really go wrong with your clothing at PiP. Like Key West itself, most people's attitude about dress at the event is pretty casual. You might consider simple rope sandals for footware if you want to go cheap. They look pretty PC and they're not too expensive. I know poster Mark G. wears them to events and I believe he wore them at PiP last year, so he might have some insight as to how they fare on the coral-strewn landscape at Fort Taylor. As silas mentioned, you will definitely not want to be barefoot unless you have very calloused feet. If you want to save some money, boarding axes and daggers are mostly just for show. If it were me, I'd skip buying such weapons and get on a cannon crew this year. (Cannon crewing is fun and even a little educational and saves you the cost of a weapon.) You can often find someone to let you fire their blackpowder weapon if you seem responsible. (Then you'll realize why you should save your weapon money... ) I also suggest browsing some of the topics in the PiP Index Thread to get up to speed on how past events have gone. There are links to past schedules, topics of interest to newbies and journals of what happened from various people's points of view. But I think your best bet with PiP is to 1) Hang around here and read and post - you'll have a feel for the folks here and they for you allowing you to introduce yourself when you get there - and 2) Show up with whatever kit you get together and go with the flow. It is Key West, after all. Since you're a Keys local, you may also want to get in touch with the Bone Island Buccaneers - the Key West based pirate re-enactors. They have a lot to do with organizing this event and some of them live near Marathon.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx It looks like the national average is about $2.50. Good old Michigan is in the gas price red zone. So we're leading the nation in something other than unemployment numbers.

Well, it's jumped to about $2.78 on average around here. Unless something untoward occurs, I think we'll make it quite comfortably. (If we hadn't been hearing so much about the recession, I still think it would have made it by at least Jan/Feb.)

Up was everything you could hope it would be. A fine movie, up to Pixar's usual excellent standards. I wish some of the great writers working for Pixar would influence the typical Hollywood writers and studios. In addition to everything else I liked (the touching scenes, the funny pokes, the excellent CG rendering, the talking dog (Squirrel!) and the little lessons and morals) I really liked the way they used the house with the balloons. They never forgot it or what they could do with it as a plot point. Excellent. Five stars.

Actually, a lot of people won't accept less than 50% in Western cultures - most won't accept less than 30 - 40%. Anything else is seen as not being "fair" even though the people participating in the experiment aren't losing any money no matter how it is divided. Even if they accept a split of 100%/0%, the result is no different than if they reject the offer other than the knowledge that some anonymous person walked away (in this example) with $100 based on their decision. Thus, "fairness" is a sort of guiding principle in Western cultures, even though, at least in this experiment, it is not really a purely rational response. From a purely rational POV, any amount of money you were offered is better than none. This experiment has been done many times (once one psychologist finds an experiment that proves something contrary to the general principles, other psychologists try various permutations, either to test it further or to try an prove the original experimenter wrong). The one I found most interesting was Joseph Henrick's version at UCLA. You can read an overview of it here. He ran the experiment with a group of UCLA students and then again with members of a primitive tribe in Peru who had had minimal contact with the outside world. He found that the members of this tribe were willing to accept much lower splits, especially if the participants had not spent any time in Western cultures. (Those who had thought more like the UCLA students.) From the above paper: "While typical U.S. results produce a[n arithmetic] mean offer of 40%, a mode [the middle number in a group of numbers - not the arithmetic mean which is figured by adding all the values together and dividing by the total number of values] of 50% and few offers below 20%, the Machiguenga proposed a mean offer of 27.5%, with a mode of 25%, and many offers of 15%. Similarly, Machiguenga responders, with one exception, always accepted—many offers of 15% were accepted. Whereas, Americans frequently reject offers below 20%." I find it interesting that a primitive tribe is more purely rational than US College students. (Not to mention the data observed in other experiments involving several other cultures.)

Pinking sheers - scissors with blades that are sawtoothed instead of straight. Their name may have come from a flowering plant in the genus Dianthus sometimes called "pinks" (although more usually called carnations). If so, the name is based on scalloped, or "pinked", edges to the flower's petals. Patented by Louise Austin (patent 489,406) on January 3, 1893 as "Pinking shears." Pinking sheers! It just sounds funny to me for some reason. Ha ha, narf!

I thought it was ok fluff. The only part that was poignant enough that I remember it at this point was the mournfully matter of fact way she said line, "They don't remember the last one." And the other character who was about her age in her whippy charge's circle of friends replied, "No, they don't." (The movie was set on in England on the eve of WWII.)

I enjoy the rapid-fire speech of films from that era (the great screwball comedies), although I read something on Netflix about another movie which contained dialogue like that (I think it was Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day) and wondered if it was true. The reviewer said everyone in the 30s and 40s was on speed and it made them talk quickly like that. The accusation seemed a little bit sweeping to me. However, that actually was a point in the book on which Mrs. Pettigrew was based. Anyone know if that's true?

I don't know about anyone else, but I think Up might be worth the price of a theater ticket.

I've been told I look like the Quaker Oats guy. It must be the hat.

Shut that bloody bouzouki up!

If you love that one, you would've loved the old version. It was Mission's favorite smilie as I recall. Ah, yes, Phydeaux. It looked like a damned dog panting. Many people abused poor Phydeaux, using him to represent concupiscence when he, in fact (according to Paul - who I believe made him) didn't.

(Iron Bess doesn't like pirates who post silly things. Thus I am almost never on her good side.)

Why do we hate anything about folks who like to play pirate? In the grand scheme of things, people wearing fairy wings with a pirate costume aren't exactly going to upset the balance of the world as we know it. This is sort of a dumb topic - no matter how it was originally stated - and I'm sorry it got dumped in here. It focuses your attention on things you don't like. There are literally billions of things in the world on which to focus your attention and we're wired such that we can only consciously focus on one at a time. I say focus on things you like rather than those you don't. Otherwise you are choosing to focus on things that make you angry or unhappy, which leads you down the path to other such things and you eventually find yourself upset about all sorts of things. (Our minds are very associative machines.) So I suggest not bothering with this potential powderkeg topic. If you must come in here and whinge, play nice. (Which goes for folks on both sides of such crucial topics as pirates with fairy wings.) Otherwise this puppy is gettin' shut down before it turns into a flame war. Savvy?

LadyBrower asked me to recommend books on period surgery and, naturally, the answer is my book, when it comes out in, say, 2017. Failing that, I thought I'd list some the books that I've found most interesting and informative. #1 John Woodall's The surgions mate - The holy grail of ship's surgeon books (although it is hard to read because of the spelling and language as well as being hard to get). Contains a great deal of detail once you puzzle it out, although much of it is on medicines, which I do not find audiences appreciate as much as info on surgeries and surgical tools. But it may just be me. #2 John Moyle's Chirurgus Marinus: or, the Sea-Chuirurgion - Perhaps not quite as thorough (or confusing) as Woodall, but much easier to read and comprehend and with most of the info you would want anyhow. #3 John Kirkup's The Evolution of Surgical Instruments; An Illustrated History from Ancient Time to the Twentieth Century - outstanding book on antique tools of the medical trade. #4 John Keevil's Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900: Volume II – 1640-1714 - an excellent review of the history of sea surgery and sea surgeons from the annals of the English Navy There are literally dozens more like those, but those are the best I've read so far. For contemporary books (which are easier to both find and read): #5 Zachary B. Friedenberg's Medicine Under Sail - good overall description of sea surgery, although it goes past the GAoP. Best of the modern books on sea surgery IMHO. #6 Emily Cockayne's Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770 - a wonderfully evocative modern book that will give you new insight in to just how horrible conditions were during period. #7 Guy Williams' The Age of Agony - another wonderfully shocking modern book about period procedures. Again, there are many more, but that is probably way more than most re-enactors will ever want to read. You can also search the posts in the medicine threads here in Twill which will give you a bunch more references if you're dedicated to finding period surgical stuff. Among the better ones: Ships surgeons; Some Period Surgical Procedures; Some of the Surgeon's Tools; On Making a Medicine Chest; Plagues, Viruses and Diseases; Let's talk dental hygiene; The "barber" in Barber-Surgeon; Medicine in General; Surgical Instruments, Procedures and Whatnot. __ Be forewarned that several of the books in the first part of the list are hard to find, expensive and/or hard to read. Even recent reproductions of period references (there have been several within the past 50 years or so) are quite expensive - often costing a hundred dollars or more. If you really want period references, the most affordable way to go is through a university library's database subscriptions to obtain pdf copies. You need a library that has access to the database "Early English Books Online" to get Woodall. If they have access to the the database "English Short Title Catalog" you will find a ton of terrific resources there as well. University libraries often have a guest researcher computer or public access computers which you can use. I recommend calling ahead to see if they have the databases and if there's a way for you to get on their system. (Reference librarians are often invaluable in helping you with these sorts of things.) Also, be sure to bring a memory stick so's you can copy the resources you want. Note that I've found that most small private colleges and community colleges do not have access to this database. So consider starting with the large universities near you and always call before going. Also, for general info on a period sailor's life (including medical bits and pieces as observed at the time), I suggest the thread A sailors normal day? which contains several excellent references.

That's what I've been told. “Humans generally cope. People often get used to difficult situations or unpleasant experiences and no longer notice or comment on them. Those born into the roar and filth of the city would have become acclimatised to it during their childhood. Incomers gradually become habituated to the hustle and bustle of the urban environment. Bodies got used to their immediate surroundings in time – they became accustomed to particular tastes and smells…” (Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770, p. 241) “It is difficult for us, nurslings of a soft age, to put ourselves in the old sailor-man’s place; to picture the life and turn of mind and thought of these unlettered fighters, starving or subsisting for weeks together on rotten meat and rum, flogged with a rope’s end at a tyrant captain’s whim, sore and bloated with scurvy and syphilis, scabrous with lice and the itch. The natural recourse of such men’s minds was drink, for that made merry men of poor tortured beasts. To see other suffer cannot have affected them that much, for what did they not continually suffer themselves; to see others die (how often had not they seen their own shipmates die?) of wanton cruelty, starvation, hardships and disease.” (Leo Eloesser, "Pirate and Buccaneer Doctors”, Annals of medical history, Vol. VIII, Issue 1, 1926, p. 52) Kind of makes you wonder what we're not documenting about our own lives, doesn't it? Imagine trying to reconstruct history 300 years from now with nothing but our movies as references...

Oldman is one of the highlights, natch. (But he's definitely not the only one.) This isn't in Pop because it's not specifically about pirate movies. (Wow...I started this the first time I was using this ID...wayyy back in early '05.) If we're going to broaden Pop beyond piracy, I'll be more than happy to move it there, though.