new awards...

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

Kat / "Lori Jones" <LJONES at ossm.edu> wrote:
> What's all the fuss over adding stuff to the Order of Precedence?
> I haven't heard anything to indicate that the King's Battle Ribbon 
> confers any precedence as far as the O.P. is concerned (or did I 
> miss something?)

I'm the only one to mention it (with Gunther, I think, having a
tangental agreement on one point), so it hardly seems "all the fuss"
to me.  I certainly didn't want to start one!

If I Recall Correctly, the original poster wrote "award".  It can mean
either

- broad sense: something given ("I was awarded $5000 by my boss" -- I
  wish)
- narrow SCA sense: "... bestows unto N. the Award of the Flaming Frog
  with all the rights and privileges thereto appertaining.  This is so
  done and given in our ..."

When I see "award" in an SCA context, I usually assume it means the
narrow SCA sense.

> The new banner is simply an honor, a motivator

As I wrote in my original posting, I think the banner is a lovely
idea.

My concerns are:

- does anyone have information about when "campaign ribbons" attached
  to a battle standard came into use?  (I hope the Crown checked into
  it first, for I think they should lead by example in improving the
  Society.)

- if it *is* an award in the narrow sense, do we really need it, or is
  the wordfame and the honor of bearing the banner for a year enough?

I am not particularly concerned about the paperwork or the work of
maintaining the Order of Precedence.  It's not my job, thank heaven!

In a previous life, I had some experience with the Middle Kingdom.
They have a proliferation of awards: Purple Fret, Dragon's Talon,
Dragon's Barb, Dragon's Heart, Willow, Silver Oak, ...  Then there are
the group versions.  They can't seem to give the individual awards to
groups (why not?  uhhhhh...), so they have: Purple Fretty, Dragon's
Talons, Dragon's Barbs, Dragon's Hearts, Grove, ...  (I'm going from
memory here.)  I think the only part of the dragon they don't use is
the Dragon's Pizzle for service under the Crown, and that's probably
coming soon.

The idea of proliferation of awards, all for slightly different and
narrow things, is to my mind unclean.  It's a merit badge system.
Inflation cheapens the currency; I think award inflation cheapens the
types of awards, for the same reason (you have a Flaming Frog and a
Leech Rampant?  well, *he* has 11 different awards).

> (who knows well that true excellence often remains buried by lack of
> motivation)

A fine point, with which I repeat my agreement ... but it doesn't have
to involve someone reading an award scroll for the Flaming Pile and
handing over the badge of an enflamed pile.

(That last is actually Biblical, BTW: see the story about when the
Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant.  Five gold mice and five
gold emerods.)

-- 
Daniel de Lincoln
Tim McDaniel.   Reply to tmcd at crl.com
tmcd at austin.tx.us is not a valid address.