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

[jducoeur]

Awarded for Exceptional High persona play, these are the ones who create the Dream.

Interesting. Okay, I guess my information was incorrect.

That's odd, our augmentations can be given out for anything.

Technically, that's true here. But precedent says that it is only given for extraordinary and extremely long service to the Kingdom, far beyond Peerage level. I think the majority of the recipients have been Royal Peers who also served as Kingdom officers for many years. One of my favorites is Master Feral "Kingmaker" von Halstern, who hasn't yet managed to win the Crown himself, but whose dynasty accounts for a whole bunch of reigns in the past couple of decades. So basically it's generally for achievement that folks consider remarkable.

(More precisely, it's usually given to the people who have every official award they're going to get, but who everyone agrees have gone far enough beyond the pale that they really ought to get something else. So it's essentially the "this one goes to 11!" award.)

I see court baronies a lot given to those who give assistance to the Crown, but they are also often given in Atlantia as 'dead end' awards. You've done good in lots of areas for years, but for some reason or another we just can't make you a peer. I've found it a bit odd.

That happens a fair amount here as well. Basically, Court Baronies are the highest award that the Crown can really give out at whim -- where there is neither Law nor Custom restricting who they can give it to. So it's sometimes used for cases where they really want to give something extra-spiffy, but can't give what they'd really like to.

I tend to treat CBs on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes they're really meaningful and important; sometimes they're just tokens. Depends a lot on both the recipient and the Royals who gave i