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weekend so far (mostly SCA)
Yesterday after I got home from services we went to kingdom 12th night, about an hour north of here. We got there just as a court was finishing; I hadn't known there would be more than one. There was an artisans' exhibition, but there was very little time to look at anything before I had to go to my first meeting. (I thought the meeting was later. Oops.) This was very much the day of long meetings, and next time I end up with multiple meetings at a single one-day event I will choose one to attend and not attend all of them.
The choir performed before court (the later one, I mean). I could actually hear the tenor parts! (This has sometimes been a problem with our choir, I'm told. I'm usually in the choir, but not for Christmas music.) The altos and sopranos were down in numbers compared to the tenors and basses, and each of the upper parts had one weak singer, so balance was a little off. Aside from that, though, and one piece that really suffered from this week's rehearsal being snowed out, it sounded good. The environment wasn't really all that good for performances, unfortunately. (There was one large room with lots of background noise.)
The site for the event was a little strange. They were using a high school, so most activities took place in one large room (the cafeteria), which was plenty big enough to accommodate that. But changing rooms and meeting rooms were separate, and they were far away. (This event would have benefitted from a published map.) We had to walk quite a way to get to the changing rooms, and had to go to a different building to get to the meeting rooms, yet we walked past many suitable classrooms on the way to those destinations. Was the school unwilling to let the SCA use rooms that were actually close to the cafeteria? How odd. I felt sorry for the people who have trouble getting around. (Oh, and pretty much all of the parking was a good distance from the building, too.)
The feast was good. Starch-heavy for vegetarians (few veggies), but that's normal. I guess I should start packing raw veggies when going to events. (I am not complaining about the cook here; most feasts have this issue, for various reasons.)
A lot of people took off right after the feast. I had planned to spend that time schmoozing with people I didn't get to see during the day because of meetings, but had limited success. Some of them will be at today's baronial party, for which I'll be leaving soon.
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dagonell and Cigfran got snowed in,
so they didn't make it down after all. Pity.
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No. It doesn't work like that. The grant level awards are pretty much thought of as stepping stones to the peerage. At this point, I don't think you could give out a peerage to someone who didn't already have the grant level award. The restriction is that the grant level award can't be given to someone who's already passed beyond it, ie. a peer. In fighting and service, this makes a certain amount of sense. If we've already acknowledged you as having done superior service by giving you a pelican, why would you want acknowledgement that you've done well above average service with a grant award. However, I could see someone getting it for excellence in a second totally different art form. Of course, I've also heard the chivalry make this argument for a second totally different weapons style. I really have no strong complaints with the ban. When the principality of AEthelmearc was forming, one of the arguements being used to get people to vote in favor was that we could issue our own awards and honor those individuals who were overlooked by the kingdom. The principals of each order were all peers, not my idea of someone who's been overlooked
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I don't think service is that much more ubiquitous than arts. Suppose someone gets a pelican for being an amazing administrator -- autocrat of bunches of successful events, effective kingdom seneschal during rocky times, and so on. Now suppose time passes and he becomes very effective in fostering some other area -- an art, or youth fighting, or hound-coursing, or whatever -- and his work has an impact on the kingdom. I would give that person a Millrind (or at least a Keystone!) in that case. Especially if the new work was service specifically to the kingdom; after all, peerages can be for society-wide scope, or work in other kingdoms. But the AEthelmearc awards recognize good work done specifically for AEthelmearc.
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That seems strange to me, perhaps because it seems to me to be a modern mentality; it sounds like merit badges and similar stuff, and I've been taught that SCA awards are not like merit badges.
Of course, I've also heard the chivalry make this argument for a second totally different weapons style.
How is your fighting order set-up? Heavy only or does it include rapier, combat achery, equestrian, etc? Any seperate field would seem to be worthy of inclusion as well (the knight who picks up rapier or equestrain or whatnot).
When the principality of AEthelmearc was forming, one of the arguements being used to get people to vote in favor was that we could issue our own awards and honor those individuals who were overlooked by the kingdom.
I guess in terms of a new kingdom it makes sense, but not in terms of an established one. Especially when you consider how mobile our population is nowadays. Seems to me that it would make better sense as a custom than a rule/law, since customs can be overlooked in odd cases and have more flexibility than law.
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At the AoA-level, we have the Golden Alce, a single martial award that can be given for fighting, archery, scouting, equestrian, thrown weapons, unit tactics, or whatever -- or a combination. It nicely parallels the arts and service awards, which are not sub-divided by field either.
At the grant level, in order to be part of the White Scarf treaty we apparently had to give fencing its own award; it couldn't be part of a general martial award. Some of us argued for having just two martial awards, fencing and everything else, but that idea was defeated. We have five such awards now, all grant-level, and I think this is overkill. In no other area do we have multiple parallel awards. And we have broken parity in another way: you can get a grant-level award for competence in several arts or several areas of service, even if no one of them is enough to get the award on its own, but if you are a competent fighter and a competent fencer and a competent archer but not excellent at any of them, well, no award for you. It seems silly to me.
I'm not one of the merit-badge-focused people, but I see things like this cause way too much angst for the benefit gained among some of the populace, and I really wish we weren't set up this way.
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Because of the Sea Stag controversy, they created the Order/company (some arguement about which) of St. Aiden (which doesn't allow peers of any flavor and if you become a peer you must resign, which is why I asked that about your GoA orders). St. Aiden is heavy only (I think). And they made the Kraken an AoA order (equal with the other orders of merit). I don't quite understand the role that the Kraken will fill, it's new at this level.
So we aren't specializing in the same way that your kingdom is, but doing something else entirely, which I don't really understand. Huh, I hadn't realized that we were so messed up until now.
Richard pointed out that sometimes an award is a part of a monarch's pet project (I think that equestrian is worthy of recognition, let's give them a GoA order). It does seem strange that the arts and service community is satisfied with one order, but that the fighting community isn't.
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Frequently. These make me nuts, because they contribute very heavily to the "merit badge" mentality. The problem is that few Monarchs have any sense of perspective: they all think, "hey, it's just *one* award I'm creating -- what's the big deal?". Too few grasp the fact that, if even a small fraction of the Royals do that, you wind up stacking up little special-purpose awards pretty damned fast...
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Interesting; AEthelmearc has definitely diverged from the East in this regard. We've argued about this back and forth, but the general consensus seems to be that the High Merits are explicitly not steppingstones, and shouldn't be. Of course, they're AoA-level rather than GoA-level, but they're the nearest cognates we have.
We've had peers receive the High Merit version in all three tracks: it isn't common, but it certainly happens. I'm a typical example on the arts side, having gotten my Manche for gaming long after getting the Laurel for dance. It's pretty common for Pelicans to get Crescents (especially immigrants who do lots of service for the Kingdom). Don't know how often it happens in the fighting track, but it's so phenomenally difficult to get a belt these days that the sample size is small...
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I know that the phrase "he doesn't have his [whatever] yet; let's get him that first" has not come up in the peerage discussions I've been involved in. Occasionally someone will say "this person isn't ready, but hey, he doesn't have a [whatever] yet so maybe we should recommend him for that in the meantime" -- but that's not the same thing. And sometimes someone is nominated to both the peerage order and the grant order, and the royalty (who are in a position to see that) may decide to act on the grant even knowing that they or their successors might give the peerage. But again, that is not the same thing (nor is it at all consistent).
Things have also changed as the kingdom has aged. In the beginning, there was a perception that we had some overdue peerages, and we certainly weren't going to wait to climb an award ladder to give them. Now the grant-level awards have existed for a few years and people are tending to get them at about the right times, so people who end up on peerage polling lists now stand a better chance of already having those awards than those who became peers a few years ago.
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Atlantia split off earlier than AEthelmearc, but we seem to echo East in this regard (at least, from what I've been told, I'm not part of any polling orders, nor am I ready yet!).