weekend so far (mostly SCA)

[cellio]

Friday night was another dinner for the 20s/30s group. Attendance was about the same as last time (around 25), but there were some new faces, including some people who are checking out the congregation. It was a pleasant dinner. This time there was fish in addition to meat, which I appreciated. (They didn't use a kosher caterer, so last time I ate lots of pasta and salad.)

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.

dagonell and Cigfran got snowed in, so they didn't make it down after all. Pity.

Comments

[alienor.livejournal.com]

At this point, I don't think you could give out a peerage to someone who didn't already have the grant level award.

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.

[cellio]

How is your fighting order set-up? Heavy only or does it include rapier, combat achery, equestrian, etc?

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.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Our fighting orders are set up strangely, though not as strangely as yours seem to be ::grin::. The Sea Stag is our fighting Order of Merit, but it emphasises teaching. But then it didn't. But then it did (there's some difference of opinion, and whether it did or not depended upon who had been on the throne most recently). But the Sea Stag was for anything; heavy, rapier, equestrian, and archers have all been made stags (we don't have scouts and thrown weapons is still relatively new). And the rapier fighters had their own seperate order for the white scarf treaty.

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.

[jducoeur]

Richard pointed out that sometimes an award is a part of a monarch's pet project

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...