What does your name mean?
If you plug Les proches de la grande tortue into Babelfish or an equivalent translator, it's going spit back something like, "Close relatives of the large tortoise." Having a linguist or two among us, we're translating it idiomatically to mean, "Kindred of the Great Turtle."
But what does that mean?
Interesting fact: "Mackinac" is the French pronunciation of a native name that means "Great Turtle." Most of us met while living and working in Mackinaw City, Michigan. It seemed appropriate, yet suitably pretentious, being French and all.
What do you demonstrate?
Pick something period-appropriate and chances are we have someone in the group who has at least a passing acquaintance with it. Open-hearth cooking, fingerweaving, spinning, sewing, knitting, blacksmithing, woodworking...we also have a fifer and sometimes a visiting fiddler. We also recently took up English country Dancing as a group.
Where are you from?
We're from various cities throughout Michigan, although some of us travel out-of-state for school.
Do you sell ______?
Only a couple of our members sell their wares. Tyler Putman is the proprietor of the Superior Cap and Regalia Company, makers of fine reproduction Civil War "Type I" Federal Forage Caps.
Gwendolyn Basala is a soon-to-be graduated illustrator. She sells original art pieces at her Etsy site: Binding Eyelets.
What do you do in real life?
We're a traveling circus troupe.
But no, really, our studies and professions run the gamut from archaeology to photography and quite a few things in between.