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Pennsic in bullet points
(I'm home now and won't be catching up on a week and a half's worth of LJ. If there's something I should see, please tell me.)
+ Our camp (Polyhymnia) worked really well together.
+ Potentially-challenging land negotiations worked out in the end.
+ Goodies from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
magid!
- The weather the last few days sucked. I can't remember a Pennsic where I felt so enervated. I almost went home a day early.
+ Rain was mostly overnight, not during less-convenient times, and our road never became impassable like it sometimes does.
- 20+ gallons of water a day? Yikes.
+ I Sebastiani (commedia dell'arte) performance was a lot of fun.
- Except some unfortunate staging in the final act that meant we couldn't see anything from the side seats.
- And a really annoying sign-language interpreter.
+ I Genesii (commedia dell'arte) was very good this year; they've moved up a level or two in both plotting and execution.
? What's with the "I Something" naming pattern for commedia dell'arte, anyway?
+ Went to the "meet the BoD" session and it was mostly good.
- But some people really need to learn what sorts of things really, truly are not the BoD's problem (take it up with your kingdom, autocrat, etc).
+ From a BoD member after the meeting: "I wrote down nine good questions requiring followup and you asked four of them; who are you?".
- BoD members present did not seem to grok that they are raising, not lowering, exposure to lawsuits through some of their policies. (Though I guess someone wrote it down because I only asked four questions.)
+ Way more vegetables in camp meals than in the past. Also fish and vegetarian options, yay!
? All three propane sources (water heater, grill, stove) ran out while I was cooking. Unlucky much? :-)
+ Bourbon slushies. Who'd've thought?
+ Our choir performance went really well!
- But the lighting was terrible; could barely read music on stage because of floodlights pointed at us.
- And I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I flubbed our one-on-a-part piece because of it. :-( (Naturally, we had nailed it in rehearsals...)
- According to the person in charge, other configurations of those lights are not possible. Reminder for next year: get some sort of booklight to mitigate this problem.
+ An audience member commended me on my breathing (he commented that my diaphragm was moving several inches).
+ "Subtitles" during the Pennsic Choir's performance of Matona Mia Cara. I assume the vocal performance was good too (the rest of their concert was), but most of the audience had its attention elsewhere. :-) (I do hope the person responsible makes that "translation" available somewhere.)
+ Class by Cariadoc on Jewish civil/criminal law was interesting even though I'd read much of his material on his blog as he worked through it.
+ He turned to me a couple times for help. Cariadoc knows who I am?
+ Class on evolution of the haggadah was interesting. Teacher has a copy (via the Library of Congress) of Amram's haggadah (9th century); remember to ask about getting a copy of that. I didn't know Amram had a haggadah; I wonder if she has his siddur too.
- Another Jewish-themed class was rather disappointing. Oh well; can't win 'em all.
- Skipped some interesting-sounding classes because the class tents were way too hot for the previously-mentioned horrible heat.
- Failed to go dancing. (Scheduling conflict for the most interesting ball.)
+ "Pennsic planner" calendars distributed at July barony meeting were a big help.
+ "Flash mob" choral singing at kingdom party got a lot of compliments.
+ "Random acts of choir" in camp during dinner, party, random other times.
+ We had a few more visitors from the rest of the barony camp this year.
- But I didn't visit as much over there. Oops.
+ Got to seehlinspjalda, Mr. hlinspjalda, baron_steffan, mikekn, osewalrus, and sue_n_julia.
- But not for nearly long enough, and missed many others entirely.
+ Signs in the nearby privies by the urinals, changing approximately daily, including: "drinking fountain out of order", "real vikings hit their targets", "this is not a clout shoot; get closer", and "armrest low, also wet and smelly".
- Air mattress lost structural integrity on my antepenultimate night there.
+ Tear-down today finished by 12:30.
+ Upon filling in the sump and noting its resemblance to a (large) freshly dug grave, someone in camp erected a headstone ("RIP Pennsic 39") and planted flowers.
+ Good cat-sitters!
+ Our camp (Polyhymnia) worked really well together.
+ Potentially-challenging land negotiations worked out in the end.
+ Goodies from
magid!- The weather the last few days sucked. I can't remember a Pennsic where I felt so enervated. I almost went home a day early.
+ Rain was mostly overnight, not during less-convenient times, and our road never became impassable like it sometimes does.
- 20+ gallons of water a day? Yikes.
+ I Sebastiani (commedia dell'arte) performance was a lot of fun.
- Except some unfortunate staging in the final act that meant we couldn't see anything from the side seats.
- And a really annoying sign-language interpreter.
+ I Genesii (commedia dell'arte) was very good this year; they've moved up a level or two in both plotting and execution.
? What's with the "I Something" naming pattern for commedia dell'arte, anyway?
+ Went to the "meet the BoD" session and it was mostly good.
- But some people really need to learn what sorts of things really, truly are not the BoD's problem (take it up with your kingdom, autocrat, etc).
+ From a BoD member after the meeting: "I wrote down nine good questions requiring followup and you asked four of them; who are you?".
- BoD members present did not seem to grok that they are raising, not lowering, exposure to lawsuits through some of their policies. (Though I guess someone wrote it down because I only asked four questions.)
+ Way more vegetables in camp meals than in the past. Also fish and vegetarian options, yay!
? All three propane sources (water heater, grill, stove) ran out while I was cooking. Unlucky much? :-)
+ Bourbon slushies. Who'd've thought?
+ Our choir performance went really well!
- But the lighting was terrible; could barely read music on stage because of floodlights pointed at us.
- And I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I flubbed our one-on-a-part piece because of it. :-( (Naturally, we had nailed it in rehearsals...)
- According to the person in charge, other configurations of those lights are not possible. Reminder for next year: get some sort of booklight to mitigate this problem.
+ An audience member commended me on my breathing (he commented that my diaphragm was moving several inches).
+ "Subtitles" during the Pennsic Choir's performance of Matona Mia Cara. I assume the vocal performance was good too (the rest of their concert was), but most of the audience had its attention elsewhere. :-) (I do hope the person responsible makes that "translation" available somewhere.)
+ Class by Cariadoc on Jewish civil/criminal law was interesting even though I'd read much of his material on his blog as he worked through it.
+ He turned to me a couple times for help. Cariadoc knows who I am?
+ Class on evolution of the haggadah was interesting. Teacher has a copy (via the Library of Congress) of Amram's haggadah (9th century); remember to ask about getting a copy of that. I didn't know Amram had a haggadah; I wonder if she has his siddur too.
- Another Jewish-themed class was rather disappointing. Oh well; can't win 'em all.
- Skipped some interesting-sounding classes because the class tents were way too hot for the previously-mentioned horrible heat.
- Failed to go dancing. (Scheduling conflict for the most interesting ball.)
+ "Pennsic planner" calendars distributed at July barony meeting were a big help.
+ "Flash mob" choral singing at kingdom party got a lot of compliments.
+ "Random acts of choir" in camp during dinner, party, random other times.
+ We had a few more visitors from the rest of the barony camp this year.
- But I didn't visit as much over there. Oops.
+ Got to see
hlinspjalda, Mr. hlinspjalda, baron_steffan, mikekn, osewalrus, and sue_n_julia.- But not for nearly long enough, and missed many others entirely.
+ Signs in the nearby privies by the urinals, changing approximately daily, including: "drinking fountain out of order", "real vikings hit their targets", "this is not a clout shoot; get closer", and "armrest low, also wet and smelly".
- Air mattress lost structural integrity on my antepenultimate night there.
+ Tear-down today finished by 12:30.
+ Upon filling in the sump and noting its resemblance to a (large) freshly dug grave, someone in camp erected a headstone ("RIP Pennsic 39") and planted flowers.
+ Good cat-sitters!
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http://www.dataastris.com/misc/trebgame.html
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(Also that you had a good time, etc. :-)
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I don't know when I'll see the contact, given my upcoming travel, but will try to get ahold of him :-)
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And thank you; totally unexpected :-)
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1. When our barony wanted to host a board meeting 15 years ago we had to go through a rigorous bidding process. Last week we learned via a message on the kingdom mailing list that the next meeting would be in our barony. Could you clarify the current process?
The answer is that they now have a rotation which is informed by travel costs, but any group that wants to host a meeting should get in touch. They did not respond to the implied "why didn't anyone tell us?".
Yes, I opened with a softball. :-)
2. (After a discussion about increasing services to entice more members, and other financial discussions:) Are you focusing at all on any larger financial restructuring, or only on smaller tactical changes (like they'd just been discussing)? They asked for an example of what I meant and I said, for example, shifting from individual membership to selling services to groups or franchising. (Other examples I didn't quite get out before they started responding: sell off the stock-clerk business to recover those costs, and reduce the number of stipend-earning officers to those really necessary.)
The response to this pointed to the Grand Council, mentioned the census, and made vague "we haven't ruled anything out" noises while conveying (to me) a sub-text of "don't hold your breath". I should clarify that this was polite, not combative. Somewhere in here, I think, was also a reference to current or upcoming GC work leading to a report to the BoD; I asked if that report would be public and two people spoke at once, one saying "no" and the other "yes", before the president said it would be. But I no longer remember what this was; are any of my readers still on the GC?
3. We're all aware of the pending lawsuit against the SCA. Should we lose and should the judgment exceed our insurance coverage, I understand that you have the ability to draw money from kingdom and local-group accounts. What policies do you have in place for how that load will be distributed?
The answer to this was, essentially, "we need that" + "we're working on winning that case". There was a thread about the new per-state SCA corporations (SCA Illinois, SCA West Virginia, etc) and whether they are part of the answer; the emphatic response from the president of the board was that any action taken to hide money after they received notice of the suit would be fraud and would not happen on his watch.
4. (After a discussion of children's officers, un-sanctioned web sites, and planned consideration of rules for social-networking sites (!):) Have you considered that every time you make a rule about a medium you can't really control, or create an office with a liability profile, that you are increasing rather than decreasing the SCA's exposure to lawsuits we might not win? (I forget how I phrased this, but I alluded to the common-carrier argument used by phone companies and probably others. This also isn't quite how I really asked this, but I don't now remember what I said.)
This got another notation on the president's tablet and a non-specific response. I was hoping to provoke more of a discussion, but it was getting late and I suspect people were getting tired.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH-- *gasp* --AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
OMG, did you tell them?
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Amused by BoD member's not knowing who you were. :-D
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I have never previously encountered either bourbon slushies or mint juleps, so thanks for making that connection for me. (Are the former supposed to have marrischino cherries in them? Ours did.)
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No no, I think that would clash with the mint. I meant the slushies. :-)
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*CLUNK*
Wait....searching for jaw....ah, it rolled behind the cabinet
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Ow! I think I hurt myself....
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To be fair, none of these people were on the BoD at the time and I never made a physical appearance at their office or in court. That's what agents are for.
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You rock, yay for asking the hard questions. The recent policy against marijuana is opening them up for a lawsuit here in Canada as it's a Human Rights Carter Issue (for medical marijuana). Really we don't need a policy if we think someone is breaking laws, call the cops!
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After the meeting I asked the BoD member who's responsible for recruiting if being on the board still requires giving up 8 PTO days a year; it does. (Thursday for travel, meetings Friday and Saturday, travel home Sunday.) Unless they stop meeting on Shabbat I'm ineligible anyway, but donating that much of my annual vacation time without any compensation would require serious consideration. Maybe someday they'll do most of their meeting via the internet; that would help some people.