This week is a nice long episode on cookfires. We were asked for more detail on the making and keeping of fires for cooking so we’ll tell you about:
• fire starting, and building a bed of coals
• Equipment including wood types, bases, tools and more
• keeping a fire going, and putting that fire out
Musical Interlude: Buttercup’s Air by Night Heron Consort
Download:Cookfires
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So many Living History enterprises happen in front of the public. In this episode we’ll let you in on our methods to make your encounters more fun and engaging. We’ll cover tips and tricks like:
• confronting strangers
• Rehearsing what it is you are going to say
• Using improvisation
• using endowments to draw them into the story
• Keeping it positive – Not negating
• playing off other members of your group/team.
Musical Interlude: Southern Girl’s Reply performed by Jeff Warner
Download: Public Interactions
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This week Stephen and Alena were joined by Amanda Sullivan to talk about cooking in a Living History setting. We talked about:
• Food as a metaconcept and our modern relationship with food
• Cooking on an open fire, in a hearth, or in a wood-fired oven.
• Fire Safety
• adding cooking to your activities
• teaching cooking
• working with period recipes and ingredients
Musical Interlude: Grimstock & Sellenger His Rounde performed by Diabolus In Musica, off the Skirmish Presents: All in Tune with History CD
Download:Historical Cooking
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This week Alena and Stephen talk about their favorite places on the web, and how living history folks can utilize the web for research, community, information gathering and tons more. We talked about:
• Unit and LH group webpages – like the Saint Maximilian Landsknecht Reenactment Guild,
• Blogs – like Historic Cookery, Drifting Focus, Colonial Williamsburg’s Blog, and Tempus Fugit, and aggregators like the Civil War Interactive, and SCA Today.net.
• Forums – like Landsknecht.org, Living History Worldwide, The Muzzleloading Forum, and Armour Archive
• Digital Archives and Collections – like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Parker Library on the Web
• Vendors – including Reconstructing History, Jas. Townsend and Son, Amazon (in various countries)
• eBay & Etsy
• YouTube
• Google books
Musical Interlude: Come and I Will Sing You performed by Great Big Sea
Download: Living History on the Web
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School-aged kids can be a great audience for Living History. In this episode we will talk about presenting history to school groups, scouts, and other groups, we’ll talk about navigating the class curriculum, and all the different methods available for engaging kids in Living History, including:
• Dealing with different ages/grades
• Assemblies/classroom sized group
• How much of a script do you need
• Prepping a class for your visit (how much are classes willing to do?)
• Providing info for school decision-makers
Musical Interlude: The Leaving of Liverpool by 3 Pints Gone
Download: Working With Schools
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