Morning Medieval Miscellany

I'm trying a new method with this Miscellany. Since it's not going to be posted for many hours anyway, I'm just putting it together bit-by-bit in my free time. We'll see if it feels disjointed, or if it works.

• Will McLean has a report on Pennsic, with lots of links to videos and photos.
• I've gotten two different e-mails praising Jonathan Jarrett's post on "Love Stories in Charter Evidence," and for good reason. Excellent post!
• Heavenfield has a post on maternal naming among the Picts, and more generally about the relationship between matrilinear succession and the relative status of women.
• JJ Cohen has a post about (not) touching in Margery Kempe.
• Magistra et Mater raises questions about when canon law becomes canon law.
• The Heroic Age has an update with CfPs and seminars enough to keep us all busy. Someone asked me not too long ago why I generally don't link to specific posts in The Heroic Age, and it's because I figure people going there are looking for announcements, so it's better for them to be able to easily scroll down and see everything recent. There are a couple of blogs I treat that way, such as "News for Medievalists" which is essentially just recent news stories, so I figure people will want to treat it like a newspaper. No, it doesn't reflect some sort of weird blog hierarchy.
• The Naked Philologist returns (huzzah!) with a meditation on Widsith that also tells us something about bagels I didn't previously know.
• Heroic Dreams tells us of a new TV show based on Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, a book I've never read, but I assume is medievalist fantasy.
• The Weird Medieval Animal is the ape, which apparently needs to work on its mothering skills.
• Medieval Material Culture Blog points us to her three links pages I didn't previously know about: men's heraldic surcoats, women's surcoats, and heralds' tabards. I eagerly await the creation of a Junior Miss Heraldic Surcoats page so I can shop for my daughter.
• Matthew Gabriele is putting together a lecture series on the Crusades: Then & Now at Virginia Tech. If anyone gets to one of the sessions this fall, post a report, please!
• The Medieval History Term of the Week is Michaelmas, and the Medieval Historical Fiction Novel of the Week is Nigel Tranter's The Isleman.
• Lingwe's going to Mythcon, and promises a later report.
• The Onion reports on an oddly-familiar archer at the Olympics.
• Jeremy Axelrod has a review of Michael Alexander's "The First Poems in English" at the New York Sun.
• Julie K. Rose finds a mention of a merman by an early-13th-century chronicler.

Enjoy your weekend! I'll be re-assembling my tenure & promotion package.