My new weapon!

I have a new weapon — a foil, which is (and cover your ears, fencers) a light training sword. (Thanks, Mom — it's not every mom who would get their daughter fencing gear for Christmas!)

The reason I say "cover your ears" is that the word "sword" is very sternly frowned upon in the community of fencers. I refused to be shamed. Part of the fun is that it's a sword, okay, fencing snobs?

One of the reasons I have longed for years to fence, and why I jumped so eagerly into it when the chance finally came, was the connection with the history of my forebears. Okay, truth to tell, it's unlikely any of my actual forebears — solidly middle-class for generations upon generations — did much fencing (although I did have a great-great-great who served in the Prussian Army; I'll have to double-check the old documents to see whether he was an officer or not). But it's still part of the milieu in which my forebears lived and dreamed and worked. I love my — YES! — sword partly because it means I don't have to wait around until a club foil comes free before I can bout, and partly because I'm highly melodramatic by nature and think swords are way romantic and cool, but also because it's a fairly direct link to the past. My past.


These are Prussian soldiers of the Napoleonic era, about 30 years before my great-great-great got his honorable discharge. Army fashion changes slowly, so perhaps his uniform looked like these.