P-stories-msg - 4/16/08
Stories from the SCA Pennsic War fought each August at Coopers Lake Campground about an hour north of Pittsburg, PA.
NOTE: See also the files: P-history-msg, BPThingie-art, P-storage-msg, Pennsic-ideas-msg, SCA-stories2-msg, SCA-hist2-msg, Quest-f-Scotch-art, P-tale-MWIFO-art.
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NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: justin at dsd.CAmb.INmet.COM (Mark Waks)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Pennsicland, Pizza Yurt, and Post-Period People
Date: 3 Jun 1993 18:08:39 -0400
Greetings unto the Rialto from Justin du Coeur of the Infinite Projects!
Re: Pennsicland, USA
Yaakov suggests, in the get-a-permanent-Pennsic-site discussion:
>2) Set up a permanent renfaire/SCAland open to the public. Close it down
>for August (open only to Pennsic goers);
I love it. This is *exactly* what Yosef Alaric described as happening
sometime before Pennsic 45, in his "There We Were" series of books.
(Right down to closing down for the month of August.) He names it
"Pennsicland, USA", and has it covering much of Butler County, but
we can forgive some modest exaggeration.
It's terrifying, how often I find those stories to be prophetic...
(Of course, for all I know, Yaakov might have gotten the idea from Yosef.
But self-fulfilling prophecies are still prophecies...)
Re: The Pennsic Pizza Yurt
Ellisif writes:
>The Coopers used to hold a big demo every June, in large part to sort of
>alert the locals about what would be happening later in the summer. One
>year after the demo some of us (still in garb) went to the famous Pizza
>Hut that "everyone" goes to the final Sunday of Pennsic, and we encountered
>a very shocked waitress who said, "No! It's not yet, is it?". Guess the
>demo publicity didn't reach that far. :-)
Actually, I've discovered that many folks these days don't know about the
Pizza Yurt. It's one of the odder bits of Pennsic lore, so for the
trivia-buffs out there, here are a few background details:
There's this Pizza Hut a few miles from Cooper's Lake that is legendary
amongst many Pennsic-goers. Every year, on the last day of the War,
thousands of people pack up in the evening, in preparation to leave in
the morning. Many are left with little desire to cook dinner, and are
looking for something semi-mundane to decompress in, so hundreds head over
to the Pizza Hut. It's far and away the place's biggest evening of the year,
with toasts to assorted Queens, mock duels in the aisles, and *big* tips
for the waitresses. Fun time, although the lines can get pretty long...
Of course, there was the year when Meister Fryderich and a few friends
decided to go get some dinner after setting up camp on the first weekend
of the War. The owner saw them, turned ashen, and whispered, "I thought
that was *next* weekend -- I don't have any extra staff tonight!" (They
assured him that they were just coming in early, lest he have a heart
attack on the spot...)
-- Justin du Coeur
Who wonders when the Ceremonial Period
Nikes came about -- they certainly
were after *my* tenure as Provost Fenmere.
Of course, they probably couldn't compare
to the slashed-and-puffed running shoes
Don Tivar was wearing to the Fencing
Academy this weekend...
Random Quote du Jour:
"Confessionals (an aspect of the Middle Ages not found in the SCA, since they
are forbidden by the BOD policy on religion) were a place where all sins were
revealed and shortcomings made known. The only place in the SCA where all
sins are revealed and shortcomings made known is the Pennsic Swimming Hole."
-- from The SCAtanic Verses
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: nusbache at epas.utoronto.ca (Aryk Nusbacher)
Subject: The Longest Pennsic Journey
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 17:04:57 GMT
I am sure there are people who have travelled longer distances to
Pennsic than I did this year. I am sure there are people who had
longer trips than I did. So this year was not so much a record-
breaking trip to Pennsic as it was a personal landmark. I have had
long trips before -- two years ago with the aid of time zones I
made it from Israel to the Pennsic troll booth between 5am and
midnight of one calendar day, and once I moved apartments and went to
Pennsic on the same night -- but this one was a killer.
On Monday, the 16th of August, while many of you were drowsing in your
tents at Pennsic already, I was on the Via Maris, which has been in
use since the Romans tramped it. Now it is the principal coast road
in Israel, and if you want to avoid traffic it is a good way to get to
the airport. Sure, I got to the airport two hours before my flight,
in time to be bumped and told that I was going to Copenhagen. Thus
began my trip to Pennsic. Running through Ben Gurion airport, making
an SAS flight that would eventually connect me to London.
A couple of years ago, the flight to Copenhagen would have taken a
different path. While Cyprus and Turkey would have been part of the
trip, Romania, Moldova, the Ukraine and Poland would not. We just
barelled through the post-cold-war airspace, and since the weather was
dead clear, it was possible to observe the broad wheat fields of
Ukraina giving way to the narrow plots of Poland.
The only thing worthy of note in the Copenhagen airport (aside from an
astonishingly attractive woman selling Danish pipe tobacco in the duty
free shop -- 100g for me) was a fascinating mode of locomotion.
Remember scooters? Two wheels, running board and handlebars? Now
imagine a six-foot-tall Swedish woman in airline livery shooting
through a crowded airport on one, politely warning people in Danish,
English, and with a little bell.
London was easily reached, though I still wonder which of the
Scandanavian languges is standard on SAS. Perhaps they have
compromised and are using Old Norse...
The beer is still good in London, and I heartily recommend a
restaurant called the Islamabad which is on a narrow street behind a
big building, half an hour's walk from where I was living. Also, if
you stay at the Army and Navy Club, be prepared to be looked at like
some sort of Communist by Lord Soandso in the dining room if your
paper of choice is the Independent.
An hour spent in search of a stick of whangee (whangee is like rattan,
only skinnier and denser), and I was on a plane to St. John's,
Newfoundland. It was Tuesday of war week at this point, and many of
you were sitting around and drinking beer with your friends, while I
was sitting around and drinking beer with a senile woman from Glasgow
who was on her way to visit some unspecified family member in Halifax.
She was incapable of finding her way back from the washroom without me
standing in the aisle and waving her in like the landing signal
officer at the airport. But she was happy because she was visiting
her relatives, and I was happy because the beer was paid for and plentiful.
It was a short flight from the refueling stop in St. John's to Halifax
(and in fact we must have been really hurting for fuel to stop an hour
short of our goal). It is worthy of note, by the way, that our
in-flight movie was Groundhog Day, and I was getting dazed enough to
begin planning a side-trip from Pennsic to Punxstutawney, just for the
hell of it.
After a good night's sleep in Halifax, helped along by a good few
hours' jet lag and a lot of Nova Scotian home-brew, I started by road,
continuing the long drive to Pennsic. I would have taken the ferry to
Bar Harbor in Maine, but I needed to stop off home to pick up some
stuff (all the clothes I had with me were a) suitable for hiking in
Israel, b) suitable for going to a wedding in Israel, or c) suitable
for spending a couple of weeks on an army base) Only by a real
stretch of the imagination could any of this be considered an attempt
at mediaeval clothing, though I think one or two uniforms would have
gotten me a job as a professional buffoon.
Maritime Canada is filled with interesting sites. For instance, I
paid $2 to roll my car uphill in Moncton, New Brunswick. The site is
called "Magnetic Hill", and it is part of the Magnetic Hill Tourism
Development Area (a euphonious name painted on the signs hung from
magnet-shaped brackets). Just up the road a ways is Hartland, New
Brunswick, home of the World's Largest Covered Bridge, which I
traversed once for fun and once for luck (actually once to get to the
washroom, and once to get back to the highway). The third place I
will remember is Fredericton, NB, where my tape of Rumpole On Trial
began to sound like Mickey Mouse, and I couldn't even dislodge the
tape to listen to the radio. Eighteen hours to go, and no tape deck.
I made it past the last McDonalds in the Maritimes (McLobster
available), past St-Louis-de-Ha!-Ha! (as God is my witness), and
through the Quebec Dictionary of Saints. Just for the record, on my
road from the border near St-Jacques, New Brunswick, I passed
through or near: St-Jean-de-la-Lande, St-Juste-du-Lac,
Notre-Dame-du-Lac, aforementioned St-Louis-de-Ha!-Ha!, St-Honore,
St-Antonin, Notre-Dame-du-Portage, St-Alexandre-de-Kamouraska,
St-Joseph-de Kamouraska, Ste-Helene-de-Kamouraska (quite the family,
the Kamouraskas), St-Germain, St-Pascal, St-Philip-Neri, St-Denis (of
that old French football cheer: MOUNTJOY! ST-DENIS!), St-Pacome,
St-Gabriel-Lallemant, Ste-Louise, St-Roch-des-Aulnais,
St-Damase-des-Aulnais, St-Jean-Port-Jolie, St-Aubert, St-Julien,
Cap-St-Ignace, St-Francois-Montmagny, St-Romuald, and Ste-Foy. By the
time I made it to Quebec City, I was envisioning the "St-" department
of the Quebec Ministry of Highways as a vast city of production, and
wondering why McDonalds didn't call their Quebec outlets "St-Donald".
Old Quebec is a wonderful place, filled with street entertainers,
Francophones, and mostly American tourists from Boston and New York.
Everyone told me how wonderful the previous week's mediaeval festival
had been, and that I should have been there. I agreed, and left for
the officer's mess at Base Valcartier, home of the Royal 22eme
Regiment, and for one night the home of me.
By now it's Thursday as I hit the road, and drive past a whole new
slew of saints, past Montreal, and finally leaving Quebec in the
vicinity of St-Polycarpe. Now I'm on familiar ground. Back in
Ontario. The signs are in English. I recognise the country. I am
now really bored. I start reading the road map for fun. I sing songs
with saints' names. I find out that Alaska is smaller than Quebec,
but biggern than Ontario. I read an issue of Time that I picked up on
the plane, balancing it on the steering wheel so that I can read the
speedometer and watch the road at the same time. As I get to the
eastern outlying suburbs of Toronto, I am saying "Goblin" randomly to
passing motorists and giggling hysterically. I am disappointed that I
cannot hang a moon out the window while driving and reading an article
on the failure of European Monetary Union. I wonder what happened to
Wednesday.
I spend the night in my own bed, and take a few minutes in the morning
to pay my rent and stuff some clothing into a bag. I don't bother to
unpack the car, after all, that is something you do _after_ Pennsic.
I consider staying in combats, so that I can drive up to the Troll
Booth and say, "is this the Reporting Centre for CFB Petawawa?" I
decide not to, and start driving again. Somewhere along the trip, my
overdrive has packed it in, so I am doing 110km/hr in fourth gear,
which makes the car vibrate a lot. I regret that I have not brought a
pint of cream, so that I could arrive at Pennsic with fresh butter.
Somewhere in the basement of my apartment building is my usual Pennsic tent.
It is huge: 12 feet by 14, and has plenty of room for my giant air
mattress, big wooden chests, end tables, chairs, floating games of
hazzard, and other useful Pennsic equipment. You will notice that at
no time in the past narrative did I take a few hours to pack this lot
of stuff. No, my only tent was an Army shelter half (complete with
bungee cords to tie it to a tree); my only air mattress was my
olive-drab therm-o-rest; and I had not the slightest vestige of an end
table. If I could help it, I would camp with the aid of a blanket and
nothing more, since even the ugliest Pennsic camp does not deserve the
sight of an infantry hooch.
Some time on Friday the 20th of August, the fifth day of travel, I
arrived at the Troll Booth. I got my highest-ever tag number (8479?),
parked my car much closer to Quebec City than the Troll Booth, and set
about drinking beer and looking for my friends. It had been 9,700
kilometres, but it was over. The tenth and most complicated time I
had come to the shores of Muddy Creek at the northern tip of Butler
County. I wasn't the most sparkling conversationalist this Pennsic,
but I was relaxed, and having a good time. I think that was worth it.
If not I'm 9,700 km worth of a fool.
Cheers,
Aryk Nusbacher
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: sclark at epas.utoronto.ca (Susan Clark)
Subject: Bringing back Pennsic....
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 01:56:47 GMT
greetings....
All the discusion on ragweed at Pennsic this year has confirme
what I had feared...
I am one of those lucky sorts with no allergies whatsover. (Before
you hit me with that bottle of Seldane, take solace in the fact that
I both caught a cold and lost my voice at Pennsic this year. Probably
because my bedwarmer...er, hubby had to stay home..). Anyways, I come
waltzing into my apartment about 7 on Sunday, tent and such in tow.
Took the tent on the balcony to air it. Within an hour or so the Gunthar
(my husband) is wheeezing and can't figure out why. He didn't sleep
very well that night, either. Looks like I brought back an unexpected
"gift" from Pennsic!
Regards
Nicolaa/Susan
sclark at epas.utoronto.ca
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes at silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: SCA lore and legends
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 16:07:27 GMT
habura at vccsouth27.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura) writes:
>found himself standing on a small ridge, with two Midrealm spearmen below him.
>(He was fighting mace at the time.) The spearmen see him, and both take a shot
>at his legs. The spears hit his cuisses simultaneously, and skip simultaneously
>into his cup, causing (we later discovered) several stress fractures in the
>cup (but mercifully not in the underlying anatomy). Simon falls off the ridge,
>pasting one fighter with his mace on the way down, and is carried back to our
>camp in a pickup truck.
>
>I have heard several versions of this story since. Most involve serious
>damage to the organs of generation, and/or ambulances, veritable armies of
>Midrealm spearmen, and interesting surgical procedures. It has also
>occasionally shifted location to the Bridge Battle; the Calontir Shield Wall
>has played a part in those tales.
>I am interested in collecting versions of this story. Has anyone heard a story
>like this? How far has it traveled?
I haven't heard it as a legend, but I know of a parallel
instance. A couple of years ago I was acting as a water bearer/medical
orderly in the woods battle at Pennsic when I was assigned to keep an
eye on a fellow who came into resurrection point with a bad hit to the
groin. Appearantly, he too had been up a slope from a couple of spearmen
and had taken simultaneous shots to legs that had slid up his cuisses
and into his cup, cracking his cup and spoiling his whole day.
He was in pretty continuous pain and the chiurgeons eventually
had to evacuate him from the woods. I heard later that he had been taken
to the local hospital, from the chiurgeons.
Since he was a Trimaran and had ridden to war on his motorcycle,
getting someone to take his motorcycle back home from war (since he
couldn't very well RIDE the thing 600 miles after taking a shot like
that) was a problem.
While he looked vaguely like Mistress Alison's lord, he was NOT
the same person.
I believe that this was at PW 18 or 19.
Moral: Put stop ribs on your cuisses, men!
Lothar \|/
0
From: meg at tinhat.stonemarche.org (meg)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Origin of term Rialto
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 94 11:07:38 EDT
Organization: Stonemarche Network Co-op
dnb105 at psu.edu (Ferret) writes:
> Susan Clark writes:
>
> > The Rialto was recognized as a focal point in Venice long before
> >Shakespeare wrote about it. While reading up on Italian Ren culture last
> >year in preparation for an event set in Venice, 1472, I saw several mentions
> >of the Rialto bridge as a gathering spot (as well as a place where the
> >ladies of easy virtue went to exhibit their wares....)
>
> Now there's something to recreate !
>
> -Ferret-
Actually, I know of at least 2 _ladies_ at Pennsic who do precisely
that. They dress authentically for _ladies_ of their calling, and are
reputed to give an authentically medieval version of what they sell. Not
having availed myself of their services, I wouldn't know if it's truly
authentic...having followed the thread on medieval sex and the lack of
response to the queries for documentation of such practices, I suspect
not. Perhaps they merely do it forsoothly. :-)
Megan
==
In 1994: Linda Anfuso
In the Current Middle Ages: Megan ni Laine de Belle Rive
In the SCA, Inc: sustaining member # 33644
YYY YYY
meg at tinhat.stonemarche.org | YYYYY |
|____n____|
From: u_gearman at mv3800.engr.scarolina.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Pennsic and Alcohol
Date: 29 Jun 1994 21:43:00 GMT
Organization: University Of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
hedonism at aol.com (Hedonism) writes:
>ghesmiz at chopin.udel.edu (Michael Macchione) writes:
>>A few people in my shire noticed the following in the Pre-Pennsic
>>newsletter, and were wondering if we were reading it correctly:
>>
>>(page 7): ALCOHOL: No one may offer for sale or _otherwise
>distribute_
>>alcoholic beverages _in any manner_ without proper license, subject
>to
>>eviction from the site.
>
>>This would seem to imply that without a license, you can't give any
>>alcohol to anyone. (Thus if you didn't bring any, you don't drink.)