Mission

The Cocoanuts Why a duck? ...my favorite Marx brothers movie.

Nah, I like it the way it is. Put the events or the groups that form to participate in them at the center of the organizational requirements, not the hobby itself. Then each person can take responsibility for their individual participation by asking the event and group organizers if they're doing what that individual wants. Each person can then decide what they want to be involved with from there. This increases interest and participation in the general hobby, but allows those who want strictly elite-level or party-/fun-type activities to confine themselves to such. Our world and many of its organizations, groups and people in it are gradually becoming less rule-bound and more flexible while still allowing people to chose their level of involvement in each aspect of the overall structure. I think what we're discussing here is just one small example of that. I expect we'll see more and more of that in the future if things continue along this path.

It occurred to me this morning that the goals of the people involved in re-enacting are as wide and varied as they probably were for actually turning to piracy during period. It's sort of appropriate since pirates were not known for being particularly unified in their approach to things. (Then again, people are not known for being particularly unified in their approach to things, even when they appear to be so from the outside looking in.) Still, I like the idea that someone becomes a pirate re-enactor because it is not quite as rigid and structured as other re-enactments sound like they might be from what I've read here. Still, it's a two-edged sword, especially for those who want something in particular from their pirate re-enactment experience. This again suggests to me the benefit of belonging to a group of like-minded re-enactors if you are seeking any particular structure or another - either hardcore adherence to historical precepts or complete freedom from such.

I'm confused. What is this girl's first name or character name? Willie says it's Gretchen, but Michael Browning tells me this is Gretchen: They both show up in the Journal enough to at least merit a first name if I can get it. While I'm asking, does anyone know these folk's names:

Somehow I doubt it.

The Creeper by Steve Ditko. (In addition to a bunch of other stuff.)

"Well, you see, I didn't know where your office was. So I asked the newsboy. He didn't know. So I asked the fireman, the green grocerer, the butcher, the baker, they didn't know! But the liquor store guy... he knew!"

I don't think you could actually use that as evidence that such things actually happened. The lyrics could have just been something that amused the sailors which happened to fit the tempo of that song. Think about the lovely camp/folk song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts." I don't know about any of the camps you guys attended, but those things were never on the menu of the places I went. (The song was, just not the contents.)

I'm not sure why you asked the same question in two forums, but since it really belongs here I deleted the post in the Shipyard so this one would get all the attention. It's better to have all the info collect in a place where people would expect to find it, especially since I don't think you'll get more traffic by posting it both here and in the Shipyard.

We're getting off topic...Oh, wait, I see! The punishment is imagining you guys singing! Very clever.

That sounds really neat. We used to do things sort of like that when I was in my 20s - minimal gear and several days as far from civilization as we could get. We didn't do period, but that just makes it all the more interesting IMO. (Although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to do that any more. Then again, if I weren't writing the Surgeon's Journals, I wouldn't like things like the pub crawls either. They have almost always seemed like a waste of time, but the Journal adds a fun aspect to them.) I don't come from a re-enacting background at all. I probably wouldn't still be doing this if it weren't for the people I've met, Michael's help in keeping me on the straight and narrow, the opportunities to spout off about the horrific aspects of period surgery and the chance to do the Journals. I have a love/hate relationship with the Surgeon's Journals. (I love them when I'm thinking about them and I hate them when I'm trying to pull everything together and get them done.)

'Tis the season...for peepshi! http://www.neatorama.com/2010/04/02/peepshi/

Happy Birthday, guitar hero.

Actually, as I recall it, what Little has to say on positioning the pirate vessel in relationship to the wind and the ship to be boarded probably had more to do with successful boarding than the actual mechanics of the thing. Once your prey was secured from escaping it would seem to me that the mechanics of getting aboard would have more to do with common sense than anything.

Here's some more from Navarrete on this king of tropical trees. (Match for firearms!): “Before the Coco-Nut itself sprouts out they draw an excellent Liquor from the nib of the Branch, this these Indians call Tuba, and the East Indians call it Sura. [Footnote 1: Sura, or toddy, is fermented palm sap, not coco-nut milk. Nor should it be confused with toddy in the Scottish sense of whiskey, sugar and hot water (Dalgado, II, 330-1; Hobson-Jobson, 874] What runs from it at night is a pleasant and wholesome Drink, and if boil’d in the Morning, it holds good all day, they make of it excellent Sirrup, and good Honey, as I have done my self. What drops in the day is made into Wine, and delicate Vinegar. Of the outward rind of the Coco they make a sort of Okam to caulk Ships, and make Ropes, and good Match for all sorts of firearms which the Musketiers there make use of. Of the inward shell are made fine Bowls to drink Water, or Chocolate. The Juice within, when the Coco is fresh, is wholesome and a pleasant drink for sick People, who roast the Coco and, after laying it out all Night in the Open Air, drink the Juice and find a good effect of it. Of the white Nut, into which the Juice by little and little is converted, they extract Milk, and use it several ways, particularly to dress Rice. Besides, they make an excellent Preserve of it, which the Indians call Buchayo. It also yields good Oil. Of the Mash that remains, the Indians and Mulattoes make a very good Dish with Rice. There remains the Trunk of the Tree and Branches, which serve for many other uses. Canes are also very serviceable, some are as thick as a Man’s Thigh, of which they make Chairs, Tables, Houses, __ Churches, Enclosures for Cattel, Scaffolding for Buildings, and many other things. [Footnote 1: On ‘The Wonders of the Coconut tree’ which included an ‘Impression against Atheism’, see R. Knox, An Historical Relation of Ceylon [1681] (London, 1911), 413-24. Another English contemporary thought it the ‘necessariest fruit that grows, making things for all uses, being both meat and drink, clothing and cables and rigging for this country’s vessels’ (Barlow’s Journal, I, 189). J. González de Mendoza, writing of this ‘plant so full of mysterie and profite’, describes an entire ship and it’s cargo as being the produce of the ‘palma de cocos’ (History of China (London, 1853), II, 266). Delgado (665) suggests that its virtues are illimitable, and concludes a catalogue of them by urging the reader to find more for himself.]” (Navarrete, p. 97-8) “The Men [natives] are always employ’d in making Oil of Coconuts, of which they sell very much, and pay a great deal of Tribute to the King of Macasar. Whilst we were there, he sent to demand of them 90,000 Pecks of Oil. It is wonderful to see the Coco-trees there are about the Fields. That Country produces and infinite number of Plantan [banana] Trees, and they are the best in the World; the Natives live upon them without sowing Rice or any other Grain. Eight days we continu’d among those People, eating nothing but Plantans, and drinking the Water of Coco-nuts. They breed Bufaloes, Goats, and Horses, which they sell, and when they have general Meetings they eat a Bufalo or two, half raw, half roasted.” (Navarrete, p. 110)

I went over to my folks (they have TV reception) to watch this. My mom said M.A. d'Dogge was the funniest pirate.

Hey, someone stole my idea! (Except I wanted to make one that was rotting like my gibbeted pirates. Doing the fish scales might be a pain in the neck...although they might be a fun challenge too.)

Very nice! I haven't seen research of this nature really take off on this forum until now. I wish I had focused on the topic so I could add to it.

Oh, I knew you weren't talking about large topics, it's just the next natural thing you'll probably find you'll want once you see how many times the same topic gets repeated in the archives. (If there aren't at least 10 topics about pirates and tattoos in this place, I'd be totally shocked.) Believe me, you're talking about something I've thought a lot about...and even argued with Stynky about...and I'm just telling you what I've seen and learned over time. If you're going to do it, I'd start with the Ship forum. I think I only wound up moving 3 or 4 pages of topics from Twill into that forum. Twill would be a sonovabeach to do. (Believe me, I culled the archives many times when we were creating the new forums. There's an awful lot of stuff in there.) If you like perusing the archives, tackle Twill second. (You could always do it in stages. Or you could establish different kinds of Index threads and then we could stitch them all together under subheads as you completed them.) I'm all in favor of it, though. Places like this tend to defy organization even though it is a dead useful thing to have.

Sung to the tune "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" no doubt. Hawkyns, based on what I've seen, I'll bet if you could get a definition of "Living History" from every museum that purports to engage in it, you would find more than a little variance. From what you've said, I have the idea that talking in third person is not living history to you. You have to admit, that speaking in third person is not engaging in immersion - it is the antithesis of it.

I have put a few of these together. If you want index threads, feel free to create them. I have found the mods are usually happy to sticky them if they're well done and kept current. In a related vein, I am also a fan of combining some old threads into master threads, although only the mods and admins can do that. It's kind of a tricky thing to do, though. You don't want to water down the topic so much by combining "related" threads so that it's impossible to find specific info because your thread is too broad in scope and large in content. I also used to be a big fan of confining things to one topic at another forum where I was moderator (in fact, it was a rule of that forum), but I eventually found that it squelched conversation and prevented people from adding new insights. A new topic brings new people to the conversation and may even bring out new ideas from people who responded to the original topic. Confining people to a mammoth old topic scares a lot of the new posters away because some of them don't want to restate something that might have already been said, but they don't want to have to wade through pages of mostly irrelevant posts (such as when people get OT). So master topics can ruin what might have been a good conversation I personally believe combining all the topics on a single well-defined subject that haven't received a new post in, say, 6 or 12 months is a good idea. That way there's only one thread to reference rather than 6 of them scattered thoughout the years. (You would not believe how many topics there are on pirates and marriage. We haven't talked about it in several years, but I'll bet you'll find at least 3 or 4 of them in the archives of Twill.) I DO like combining two fairly current topics into one so that there aren't several threads running on the same topic in a single forum. That's just gets confusing for the posters, so it's often better just to paste them together. Feel free to create a master index thread for a forum if you're willing to wade through the archives. With Google having its hooks in here, it should be even easier to do once you figure out how to properly confine your search. Just recognize that it can be a lot of work - especially in a forum like Twill, which has almost 50 pages of threads. (And it used to have a lot more before we split up the forums...)

I'd be more inclined to make the post in the Archangel forum the master post since it came first and seems to be the most trafficked so far. (Although not all the people involved are Archangels...) I thought there was an old post in the PiP forum, but I couldn't find it. That's where I'd say this really belongs since it happened at PiP. But I'm also good with going for the Most Posted in Different Forums record because it seems to have happened by accident and with the best of intentions. (Now if someone tries something like that on purpose, it's gettin' wiped. It's only funny when it happens by accident. )

Since that is important to you, it seems to me that you should make it a point to get a clear answer about it from the organizers. As I suggested before, if you can't and it really is that important, I suggest you would want to skip that event. (Yes, maybe they should be clearer on this point when they call it 'Living History,' but as I said before, this term does not have a specific legal definition, so you can't expect rely on it to mean the same thing to others as it does to you. Unfortunately, since it appears to be of greater importance to you than it is to most others, the onus is on you to get a straight answer so that you know you'll be satisfied on that point.)

Yup. If I am going to do it the way I want to do it, then you should get to it the way you want to do it. Just as it's not for Hawkyns to tell me I have to stay in a tent to call myself a good re-enactor, neither is it for me to tell Hawkyns he shouldn't swear or do a skit where he shoots a priest to call himself a good re-enactor. Nor is it anyone else's place to say "You're only a real pirate re-enactor if you..." If you want to do that, start a group where you all agree to do that and I think you're fully justified. Otherwise, you're just trying to impose your beliefs about something on someone else. (Most of the trouble in this world is caused by such action.) But, for the most part, I think everyone has pretty much agreed with this in this thread at this point.

Actually, since it's your post at the top of the topic, you would be the best person to keep track of the info by editing your first post as things are added. People usually look at two things in topics like this: 1) The first post and 2) The most recently added post. (Trust me, years of experience doing such things bear this out.) Plus if one person is keeping track of the data, they can create a consistent format to make the list more readable, and thus more useful for research. (The web is a great way to generate useful research information of this sort, especially when we cite our sources.) I also find it's a good idea to give credit to the folks who added things to the list. That way we know who to blame praise when the list comes under scrutiny.