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Like many Aspies, I'm passionate about my interests. Yes, they involve books, and other assorted strange things like costumes......and
ghosts, uh, I mean ancestors.
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When I'm not pulling the Social Interaction Screw-Up From Hell, I can be found looking for twelfth-century historical
documentation on the Internet. Yeah, it's there. I have Peter Abelard's autobiography bookmarked. He died in 1142, so it's
a prize catch from the twelfth century. Or you might catch me trying to make an eleventh-century Russian court dress. I'm
a member of a medieval re-enactment group called the Society For Creative Anachronism. It's a fun group. I drive absurd distances
all over the South going to SCA "events". An "event" is a gathering of SCA members for a weekend. We pretend that we are people
who lived in the Middle Ages. We wear medieval costumes, play medieval sports, do medieval crafts (I spin wool and make headdresses),
and then have terrific medieval-style feasts! It's madness, but hey, that's my life. :-) I never go to New York without visiting
the Cloisters. Studying medieval history made it possible for me to falsely claim that I was sane when I was a student. I
didn't interact that much with the other students, except for one who was my best friend.
I've also been hunting my ancestors for years. I have had no luck in tracking down an Undisclosed Birthplace of
my direct ancestor, who was a German-speaker. The rest of my family is Scotch-Irish, English, Scandinavian, Spanish, and you
can even throw in some Russians in there!.
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Confined by no bounds, you shall fix the limits of your own nature according to the free choice in whose power I have placed
you. We have made you neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom and honor you should be your own sculptor and maker,
to fashion your form as you choose. You can fall away into the lower natures which are the animals. You can be reborn by the
decision of your soul into the higher natures which are divine.
Pico della Mirandola (1463--1494), Italian Renaissance
scholar and philosopher, from a work called "Oration on the Dignity of Man" written in 1486.
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