I did mention a little while ago that I had a talk coming up about pirates…
…which all said seemed to go pretty well. I got a chance to turn my research notes for Raging Gail into a presentation, customizing it a bit for the audience (stressing that night the Jewish contribution to the Golden Age of Piracy, for an audience that was approaching the Age of Sail with a limited background). I had a few technical issues with the venue, which is why I only have stills from the presentation as opposed to footage:
Photo courtesy of Peter Mones
Yes, I did come with visual aids; due to technical considerations, I had to bring physical materials as opposed to projecting files via a PowerPoint presentation. Which was probably for the best, as one of the technical challenges was discovering the death of the sound system with moments to go before we started.
Out of this came a valuable lesson: If you’re going to make a presentation, have two versions of your talk ready to go, as the version you hoped to give with a mic is just not going to work so well when you have to shout to the room…
Photo courtesy of Peter Mones
The one part of the speech that did go as I had rehearsed: Yes, that’s a small bottle of rum on the podium. Which I brought with me as a living artifact, as the history of mercantilism in the New World is best told by holding up as an example one of the main resulting products thereof, a bottle of rum.
No, I won’t go into what was said then right here; in fact, if you are interested in what a talk like this covers, I am willing to give a version of this at an event that is willing to book me. The main body of the talk (about the history of piracy in the New World, covered in Raging Gail) can be amended to stress specific aspects noted in the novel, such as the influences that Jews and women had on the Sweet Trade. The talk can also be geared towards material covered in the work The Pirates of New York. As I said, the main body of the talk was geared towards people coming to this subject without an intense background, so it can serve audiences approaching this time and place cold.
If you wish, you can contact me via my Facebook page.
And as you can see, if I come to where you are, I will bring drinks…
James Ryan 