Living History

In this episode Alena and Stephen take a look at evaluation. There have been a number of blog entries on the topic:
• The Companie of Saint George wrote up a list of questions they are using to help in their own evaluation process.
• Gobae writes about keeping Living History fresh,
• And Folo writes on the pitfalls of not doing enough evaluation
So we’re jumping on the hot topic and are bringing you a show about looking inward, at your group or even at your individual impression. including topics like:
• What is the value of Evaluation
• Some reasons to make periodic re-evaluations
• Different things to evaluate, like interest level, authenticity, type of roleplaying
• Group evaluations versus personal evaluations
• Events evaluating participating groups
• Research, research, research

Download: Making Evaluations

In this episode Alena and Stephen attend a couple of LH events as members of the public. We attended the reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg and we attended a Revolutionary War reenactment to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the town of Needham, Massachusetts. for both events we talk about :
• Getting in and out,    parking, checking in and leaving
• The Event site, shade, battlefield layout, facilities
• Battle reenactments, visibility, audio, excitement value
• Camp Layout, Interactions and attitudes, authenticity
• Vendors, both food and sutlers
• and our final impressions.

Download: Being the Public

This week we’re bringing you two short interviews, One with Rebecca Tulloch and one with Susan Spencer.

Rebecca is a reenactor and a film producer. Her company: Prairie Star Productions focuses almost exclusively on history topics. She is also the administrator behind the Midwest Reenactors Casting Database.

Susan Spencer is the force behind Spencer’s Mercantile which is both a well known shop at many events and a storefront located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. While Susan and the shop got their start focusing on the war of 1812, they have since branched out to the late 17th century, then the rest of the 19th century, and most recently even into the 20th.

Download: Making a Living

This week we delve deeper than clothes, down to the fabric itself. We talk about:
• weaving fabric and the different types of weaves,
• fabric finishes,
• Knits.
Different materials that fabric can be made out of,including:
• Wool and other animal hair fabrics,
• linen, canvas and other plant based fabrics,
• cotton,
• silk,
• Mixed material fabrics, including places you might still find them.
• Different dye properties, and historical uses

Download: Textiles

This week we bring you our last panel recorded at Military History Fest, this one run by Alena and the females of Das Geld Fahnlein. We had a great audience and plenty of discussion about food including topics like:
• Food is relatable to wide audiences
• Raw ingredient choices
• Historical cooking methods
• Cooking tools
• Recipes and food presentation
• what food can tell us about culture

Download: Everyone Eats