- Text and Photos by Robert Garbisch

What a month September was!

This past month of September was truly an unusual month of mixed blessings and tragic news for LXF. We started off with the grand presentation at the Scottish Highland Games in Pleasanton, over the Labor Day weekend. There we had the company of the Celts and Picts to add some dashing color and excitement to our standard presentations. But alas, our own Roman ranks were quite low in numbers present for duty. We managed to do the best we could with what and who was available, and I might add we did a grand job of it. The public really enjoyed our LXF presentations. In fact, LXF has been asked to return next year. That's good news for us.

What came next? In preparation for our next scheduled event at Lagoon Valley, near Vacaville, we contacted the local newspapers for some event coverage. Our first interview was with the "Daily Republic" of Fairfield. Ian Thompson and a staff photographer came to our home to gather some facts on LXF. When his special report came out, on the front page too, we received several interesting inquiries regarding LXF. What came from this report was the scheduling of three class presentations at two different schools in Fairfield.

Our first show was at Dover Middle School. Here we enlisted the aid of four volunteer students to dress up as Roman soldiers from different time periods. Images of them can be seen on page 4. Our show was presented to the Latin students. Shown at right is Lady Lydia and Centurio Marcus. (Linda Garbisch and Robert Garbisch).

From this presentation we received a lot of interesting letters from the students. A few examples have been placed in our LXF event album.

After this event, we traveled over to Vanden High School for two shows to the Latin student classes there. We didn't have the time to dress up some volunteers to serve as Roman soldiers. Instead, Centurio Marcus gave a singular presentation that was well received and appreciated by the students.

In fact, several of the students here were so interested in our event that some of them came dressed up as Roman civilians. And a few of them actually wanted to volunteer to serve LXF as Roman soldiers and even as Gladiators! This really helped u since we once more suffered a very low turnout of LXF mern They really helped us in giving a great series of exciting shoirfsor the public, Two of the students, in fact, even helped us break camp and pack up. Who knows? We may have some future members here!

For those who did attend this event, we were richly rewarded by the many wonderful comments we received from the appreciative audiences who came from Sacramento to the East Bay areas. Several local schools gave their students some fact finding assignments to fill out. Local churches, we were told, even based their sermon on the Romans and suggested to their members to go see us. Praise the Lord!

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