[Ansteorra] What has happened?

[rudin]

I think it's important not to over-romanticize the Society of
twenty-five years ago.  

I picked up cigarette butts and other trash on Monday morning at
my first Steppes Warlord, accompanied by people who told me that
the SCA always left a site cleaner than we found it.  That didn't
mean, even then, that nobody left trash out -- it meant that some
of us went around and picked up trash at the end of the event. 
The same thing happens today.  It was just *easier* to pick up
after 70 people in 1979 than after several hundred people today.

When I joined the SCA, the first kingdom newsletter I received had
a letter from somebody who was resigning all of her awards and
leaving because Chivalry had died, the Dream was dead, people were
no longer helping and supporting each other, respect was gone,
etc.  That was in the 1970s.  I have heard similar statements ever
since.

Don Quixote was about the lost knightly virtues; King Arthur was
trying to hold back the encroaching barbarism.  Renaissance
tournaments were attempts to hold onto a vanishing way of life;
the Middle Ages wished for the glories of Rome; Rome mourned for
the loss of the great Greek society, which pined for the lost
Golden Age. 

OF COURSE Chivalry is dying.  Chivalry is *always* dying.  It was
dying in the Renaissance.  It was dying in the Middle Ages.  It
will be dying one hundred years hence.

Chivalry is always and forever on the brink of death, and will
always and forever need immediate first aid.  From you.  From me.

Go pick up somebody else's trash (as well as your own).  Go carry
someone's ice chest for her.  Go believe well of someone despite
the rumor you heard.  Go apologize for last week's mistake.  Go
defend someone you don't like.

And hurry.  Chivalry is dying.

Robin of Gilwell/Jay Rudin 

________________________________________________________________
Sent via the EV1 webmail system at mail.ev1.net