The Renaissance: Art & Science, Friday, 2nd period

[imafuturist]

Today's classroom had a map of early Renaissance era Italy hung prominently, just in case people needed a slight reminder about where Italy was or what it had looked like.

"What's known as the Renaissance Art period lasted for more than 300 years," Steve began, "which is longer than the United States has been a nation. That's padding the numbers slightly: proto-Renaissance art lasted for almost a hundred years and isn't at all like the Donatellos, Michealangelos, or Da Vinci's people think of when they imagine the era. We're going to have to break down the centuries manageable chunks and talk about the broad strokes--" he grinned because he'd made an accidental art pun, "--that took place in each era. We'll start at the beginning, around 1400. The Roman Empire had fallen and so now each major city of what will eventually be Italy is its own nation-state."

And then Steve went on for a while about Florence and the Medici family. A while.

It was adorable, really. Or maybe that was just Tony.

"The scientific Renaissance came and went earlier than the artistic one in many ways," Tony said. "Leading up to that era, a resurgence of different writings were found and translated from their original Latin or Greek or Arabic to bring lost knowledge back to the forefront or allow for discussion on the validity of many of the old theories. But these things came in spurts and waves as conflicts and plagues would wipe out populations as cities grew larger."

"Plagues will definitely come up a lot, and--strangely--would also turn political as people who didn't enjoy the new progress declared them signs from God to return to the old ways of doing things," Steve said. "Today we're going to concentrate on the works of Filippo Brunelleschi, an artist, architect, and engineer who is credited with really kick-starting the early Renaissance. He's the one who figured out how to make the giant dome of Florence's cathedral from falling in and killing everyone."

Basic Weaponry; Friday, Third Period [09/15].

[special_rabbit]

This week, the class would not be outside in Ren Faire tournament grounds, because this week was the week where Rosa got to pick the location, which meant they were basically in some kind of abandoned warehouse. All the practice dummies were wearing black ninja masks like B-movie criminals because Rosa really did need to lay off the late-night shitty action movie marathons, and there were a few tables with a wide variety of small bladed weapons waiting to be used and explored

"Welcome back, everyone," Amaya greeted the class with a nod. "Last week, we learned about swords, and this week, we're going to be working with something similiar, but smaller. In a way, we're doing this a bit backwards, since swords very likely developed from these weapons, but I do like to start with the classics. So, I hope you're ready, because today, we're going to learn about..."

Amaya had barely trailed off before Rosa yanked one of the weapons out of the wood of the table, threw it past her co-teacher, until it struck firmly in the center of the chest of one of the dummies with a slight wobble at it stuck.

"Daggers," Rosa concluded helpfully.

( Daggers! )

"Well," Amaya sighed a little, shaking her head, "I do think having a switchblade makes you cool. But that's enough about the history aspects of it. Pretty basic, pretty broad, because a dagger's just one of those weapons that's so logical that it makes its way into just about everything, but if you have any specific questions, I'll be more than happy to go into a little more detail. And if not, I'll be handing you over to Detective Diaz, who will go over with you some of the different ways to use a dagger in combat, and then you'll have the chance to give it a try with the practice dummies yourself."

Library - Friday

[onlyajones]

Jo had felt rather bad about missing her shift last week, so she came in extra early that morning to make up for it. It was a good thing she came in early too because she found that she had a lot of books to reshelve so that was how she was spending most of her morning putting away the books and doing general tidying.

At least the shelves and books seemed to be behaving today so Jo didn’t have too much trouble putting everything away and making sure everything was neat tidy.