[Ansteorra] Waterlord progression

[Burke McCrory]

At 11:33 PM 5/25/2003 -0700, you wrote:
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>At the risk of causing upset or invoking people's ire, I wish to pose a
>question over the list that ran through my mind repeatedly through the
>course of the day as I drained, mopped, and dried my tent.  Why is it
>that we keep holding this events at a site which we know is highly flood
>prone, not nice to look at, and has huge amounts of mundane traffic
>running through it?  Normally that last bit would not bother me, but we
>seem to have incidents regularly with the mundanes there.  I remember
>kids going through with air horns, near fights, thefts, and this year
>there were looters going through when we still had nearly a third of our
>people on site. I know there are a lot of arguments (even some very good
>arguments) for this place, but at what point is enough, enough?

Any event that we hold in Ansteorra this time of year is prone to have rain
and storms.  Just two weeks ago at Eldern Hills 25 we had tornados, hail,
lightning and rain.  It is just a fact of life.  Yes, the canton site is
rather mundane and prone to some flooding in certain areas if we get lots
of rain but the site drains very well and usually works nicely.  This
weekend we got several inches of rain in a very short time and that would
flood most sites.  Also we are really our own worst enemy when it comes to
the site.  We know what areas are prone to flooding and yet we choose to
camp there anyway, knowing what may happen.  The canton site has lots of
less flood prone camping space that we don't even use.  It is one of the
few sites that has the facilities to handle events the size of Steppes
Warlord and it is convenient to a large portion of the Kingdom.  Some of
the mundane issues can be better handled through improved planning but it
is unfortunately also a sign of our times.  Our society (both mundane and
SCA) have changed over the years and not all for the better.  Even with all
this I still like the canton site and feel that it's problems don't
outweigh its positives.

Sir Burke
(who is still drying out his things)