In my previous post, I talked about RDL (Romanian dead lift) the exercise. In HEMA practice RDL refers to something else: the writers of three famous glosses of Lichtenauer’s Zettel (a long didactic poem on sword fighting) by Sigmund ain Ringeck, Pseudo-Peter von Danzig, and Jud Lew.

So far, I’m reading a different gloss of the poem (although I’ll probably get to those as well):

Cover of Michael Chidester's "The Long Sword Gloss of GNM Manuscript 3227a"

One signifier of a fast-approaching birthday (when you get to be my age) is that you get ads for life insurance. I mentioned to Jackie that we don’t need life insurance, and she said that it especially didn’t matter because she was counting on me to outlive her.

“For one thing, you’re younger than me. For another, you’re doing all you can to do so. Well, not to outlive me, but to live a long time.”

“I’ll admit,” I replied, “It’s getting rather late for me to die young.”