Mission

I present all day and I still do gate duty. It's just something that has to be done to fulfill our part of the agreement with the fort.

My surname is based on a misspelling. (Seriously.) The first name I chose out of a list of period French names, looking for one that had something to do with medicine.

Oh, you MUST post a link now that you've 'fessed up. I like bucket boots. They're cool looking. They're wrong, but they're cool looking. I'd like 'em even better with big ol' shiny skulls-n-bones emblems on them. (I would never wear them normally because it's not what I'm going for, but I like 'em. Yep.)

I never said it was bad - it's just not what I wanted to represent. It was all the cast-off clothing that Jill could assemble for me when I went to my very first event with their group back in 2007. I recall those boots being quite comfortable. (See that forelock of hair peeking out? It is my constant companion.)

The Surgeon's Journal for the September 2012 Talk Like a Pirate Day Weekend aboard the Santa Maria in Columbus Ohio can be found by clicking on this link. Enjoy!

Happy B-Day Jess!

If it weren't for Michael Bagley, I would probably be dressing like this: (Photo copyright Red-handed Jill via Mission's crappy phone. Not for use by people who won't share their photos.) Yo ho! Ha hah ha hah ha...

Isn't that basically just the But I stole 'em from a... argument? I try never to tell anyone they should wear something or shouldn't because I like almost all of it. However, if you want to aim for being period correct, you have to present period proof of whatever it is you want to do. (And if you want to be really correct, that proof should really come from more than one independent source.) But the nice thing is that you don't have to aim for period correctness if you don't want.

Yeah... Symptoms of living in the 17th century with Type 1 diabetes: Agonizing Death I think I'll stick with pretending to be a pirate surgeon and not wishing I had actually lived then.

I'll bet people would pay to ride it. (Maybe I should have watched the Coast Guard Safety video...)

Shealey is a wonderfully cool name! Since you're down there, look into the Fort Taylor Pirate Invasion coming up in late November. It's one of the best Florida Pirate events I can think of and registration starts in a few days.

Oh, crud. Now I'm a ship. I have to go back and find those instructions Stynky gave me to re-enable my admin abilities so I can reset my post count to skull again...

It's what I do. I would actually like to comprehend how my mind is wired because it seems to be just ever so slightly different than a lot of other people's. In a weird way.

I don't think you'd have much use for any of the pirate magazines with all the period doc reading you've done, Ed. It's not that they're all bad, it's just that the best I've seen them do is hit the high points of a highly nuanced topic while managing to avoid printing legend and lore as fact or sensationalist stuff like responses to these questions. So even in a good mag, you really don't come away with much more than what you could read in any of the decently-researched modern books on piracy. At least that's been my (admittedly limited) experience with them. Oh, and no less than David Lee Roth has reenacted a cannibal. Sort of. "Gimme a glazed donut a bottle of anything. To go!"

No, he's not really a troll, he's been around this site for a long time, mostly peddling his publication.

Jim I think he is doing his own research by posting the questions. He can do quite the sensationalist article that quotes opinions by everyone who answered the offensive questions. It was, "reposted everywhere to get the most responses" after all. Plus everyone who answered is likely to read the magazine which will boost his readership.

I actually wouldn't have been a pirate. It's part of the reason I chose the surgeon's role. BTW, Black Fox, please do not use my name as a source in your magazine, although you can feel free to use anything I said if you find some value in it. (And I consider this mighty nice of me considering you once told me I couldn't use your material in my free-to-all on-line Journal because it was copyright of your magazine.)

This is based on what, exactly? We do have accounts of pirates doing all those things, but I don't see how that makes it some sort of 2 our of 3 laundry list for accuracy. The only one that's absolutely true is number 2 because it's in the definition. Oh, and I've seen several photos of Nazi reenactors.

The problems we all seem to be encountering have to do with Florida State Park rules and the Fort's desire to have everything set and ready well in advance. I really can't blame the park system or the fort for that. But there seems to be no allowance for changes this late in the game. So you just have to hope that next year we think of all this stuff well in advance. (Although I think you may be stuck with the blackpowder stuff.) It would be nice to be asked for suggestions, although for all I know this was done and I've just forgotten it. Even if they were, I doubt I would have thought of the pogs in January because I am looking back on the event then and not forward to the next one quite so much.

Hmm. Maybe next year instead? My desire to have them is also a bit selfish - fishing for that damned card in my pocket full of junk each morning while standing on my bike in front of the guard shack is a big pain in the ass. For next year's reference - cuz' I'll forget what I've learned... http://www.wooden-nickel.com/shop2

Tell you what - if you let us use them instead of the cards, I'll pay for them. I'll get multi-color, use the skull and swords from the multi-color image on the top half, the year in bright freaking red so even the blindest gate attendant can see it on the bottom half and drill and thread them with leather thongs. I'll get 250 of them, although I'd prefer to know how many we need threaded since that will be several hours of work (say ~the number of attendees + 20%). What do you think?

Oh, man - I just learned that they are also called wooden nickels. Now I really wish we could do it. (Wooden nickels... ha ha ha!)

Ha ha ha. I never thought of that side of it. What if we pre-drilled and threaded them with rawhide straps? I'd be willing to do that if we could get them. I'd even buy the rawhide. Then we could tie them around people's necks and tell them, "If you lose it, you better have a hotel reservation ready." (Having said that, I lost my pog and had to ask you for a new one. But I had no strap!)

The pogs were cool! At the Michigan Pirate Festival they gave us those gaudy day-glo wrist bands which, while they really contrasted with our period linen and wool togs, weren't quite as spiffy as you'd hope. Pogs - no problem. They fit right in.

No, I figured this year was already settled. I'm just thinking how we might be able to make it more palatable for the fort for the future. I know some people who didn't return (in part) because the camping got moved into the fort. (It's sort of ironic if they moved it inside the fort to make sure we could get enough people out which resulted in some people not coming out.) What was wrong with the pogs?