Say 'gesundheit'

When you hear someone sneeze at the Renaissance Faire this weekend, don't fear the swine flu, just say "gesundheit."

In honor of the faire's monarch, Queen Soari Minai, and a famous inventor, the Alabama Renaissance Faire at Wilson Park aka Fountain-on-the-Green in Florence, turns a little German.

Rebecca Linam, the queen and a math teacher at Shoals Christian School, had been waiting to be crowned for a while.

"It was something I had hoped I was going to get for about eight years, and I had stuff planned just in case," said the 30-year-old.

That includes giving her royal speech in German and victims of the Black Plague walking around. Call it black humor.

"I had always wanted to do something related to the Black Plague because that was big in Germany," Linam said.

She became a German enthusiast after visiting the country for a few days while she was a Muscle Shoals High School student. She studied there while attending the University of North Alabama, and later got her master's in German at the University of

Alabama.

Even the meal served at the annual Renaissance Feast, was taken from an ancient German menu. "Chef Jim Matterer did a great job with recipes from the mid-1300s taken from historical documents in Munich's university library," said Billy Warren, leader of the Roundtable, which plans the faire each year.

Speaking of libraries and books, the real star of the faire might turn out to be dead.

Johannes Gutenberg, a German who invented the first printing press with movable type, made manuscripts usually limited to authority available to the masses.

Under a 10-by-20-foot tent will sit a Gutenberg exhibit, including a replica of a printing press from the Renaissance period, thanks to Renaissance Faire Roundtable member Don Green.

Green found the model on eBay and drove to New York to pick it up.

An electrician by trade, he knew little about the history of printmaking. But did he learn. Since January 2008, he studied Gutenberg, discovering all he could about the elusive icon.

"There's not really a lot known about Gutenberg," Green said. "Historically, all they can find is information on three lawsuits."

The challenge of learning about the inventor may be because notoriety wasn't his thing - news didn't smack with information about bluecollar workers. Reality shows about inventors would have been laughed at.

"He was a master craftsman, but he was never out to be famous," Green said. "He knew it would make money but he really didn't care about it."

Visitors to the Gutenberg tent also will see composing sticks - modern and recreations from Gutenberg's time - parchment paper and papyrus.

Green made two handcasting type molds by cutting a piece of steel in the shape of a letter in reverse, waited for it to harden and then punched a copper block. A matrix made the face of letters.

But like the printed word traveled into the home, parts of the exhibit came into the schools.

"Gutenberg and the early history of printing via movable type is part of the repsentation by members of the Roundtable in local schools, especially Florence High School," Warren said.

Jennifer Crossley can be reached at 740-5743 or jennifer.crossley@timesdaily.com.