award stuff

dennis grace amazing at mail.utexas.edu
Tue Jun 24 07:58:10 PDT 1997


Hi there. Aquilanne here.

Daniel de Lincoln wrote:
>Not to criticize Their current Majesties in particular -- it's common
>to many Crowns and Barons/esses -- but there seems to be a really
>common line of reasoning of
>
>1) X is a Good Thing.
>2) We should reward those who do it.
>3) This reward has to be a new award or order with a name and a dangly
>   and a place in the order of precedence.
>
>I agree with steps 1 and 2, and wholly disagree with 3.
>
>Sometimes they go onto
>
>4) We can string together any combination of words with modern meanings
>   and get a period-style name, and make any design we want as a
>   badge.  (Don't Ask Me About The Badge Of The Order Of The Sable Garland.
>   Full Stop.)
>
>Or am I just a stick-in-the-mud curmudgeon to worry about such things?

If Ansteorra's list of official awards and potential places in the Order of
Precedence is as full-to-overflowing as it kind of sounds to me, then
concern about adding new paperwork seems more than reasonable. (Daniel,
maybe when you have the time and inclination, you could fill me in a bit
more on how that works here; maybe by private email to keep list clutter down.) 

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said about developing traditions of
particular _types_ of recognitions for particular _types_ of things. Some of
us got together the other day to talk about ideas for dealing with
newcomers, from day 1 through a few events. One of the things that
wementioned that we did when we stepped up as Baron and Baroness in our old
barony was to create a new award (wait, don't throw anything yet) that
recognized enthusiastic/substantial newcomer involvement (ie, they worked
really hard to make their first garb very period, or at their second event,
worked half the day in the kitchen, or went out of their way to be outgoing
and chivalrous and capture the essence of the SCA at one of their first few
events, etc). We did present a little dangly thingy, but there was no
precedence, no extensive heraldry involved, no huge piles of paperwork to
kill a tree. It was strickly a local, baronial thing. 

People like little tangible things, and people like tradition. I think
awards/recognitions are good things, whether the official kind or the
non-official kind.  So many of us get so little recognition in mundane life
just because of the way society's set up--recognition and status and worth
is frequently measured by how much money you have. That's one of the things
about the SCA that's so appealing to so many folk--not that they can come in
and collect awards like merit badges (I don't think most folk have any idea
of the scope of "available" award types when they first get involved; I sure
didn't)--but that they *do* get recognized when they do good stuff.  (It's
very, very important to recognized people for doing good stuff, most
*especially* in a _volunteer_ organization.) Doing good stuff in
mundane/non-SCA environments is frequently like the old Charley Brown quote
"doing a good job is like wearing a dark suit and wetting your pants--gives
you a warm feeling but nobody notices." In the SCA, you shouldn't have to
wet your pants to get a warm feeling or (with a heraldicly/administatively
conservative approach) kill trees to stay dry at the same time.   ;->

Aquilanne




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