[Ansteorra] What has happened?

[David Whitford]

Thank you Robin. As near as I can tell every group
(culture, nationality, clubs, etc) has bemoaned the
failings of the current times and wished for a return
to the "good ole days", and if we were to look a
little closer at those times they really weren't all
that good. The best we can do IMO is to try and be as
good as we can and try to make those in our sphere of
influence be the best they can.
Robert


--- rudin <rudin at mail.ev1.net> wrote:

> 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 
> 
>
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>  
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