As mia_mcdavid wrote, this weekend we going to Mankato for colgaffneyis “Muster”, an internal training event. Experienced members will be teaching newcomers the skills we need for events, and everybody will get a refresher course and additional practise.

My assignment is to talk about the historical background and context of what we do. I am working on my handout and notes for this. I do not want members to think the history is an arcane subject only accessible to specialists. The information is out there, and I want to encourage members to study it themselves, and be in a position to challenge anything strange they might hear from some pompous old-timer who does not reveal his sources. To that end I am preparing an annotated list of some of my sources. You can see the current draft here.