Dear Magdalen
I am sorry if I misspelled your name. I second your rant. I really 
hate in table decoration contest. If someone has rules and 
requirements they should special consideration to individuals that 
follow the requirements. That stated we  as individual have very 
little impute on the matter. When I had trouble with a local group I 
was told that was the bard, officers, baron/ess decisions and I needed 
to go to the local meetings and express my concerns. Since I was not 
of the group and the event was over it was not a workable idea. Now 
the Bardic College is not in the competition business, but when it was 
up and running bards and autocrats would contact us and ask for 
suggestions and guild lines. I believe if we had a public face again 
people would come to us again and we could create a suggestion page 
that expressed the current peeves of the bards. It doesn't guarantee 
they will listen but I can guarantee if we never say again they won't 
hear us. We can't make people do things, but we can make them aware 
that things bother us. We might also give recongiation to groups that 
do a good job. I was thinking of the Golden Rose the Pope gives out. 
Years ago we thought about given a golden violet to groups that did a 
good job for their bards/performer. We thought about a golden violet 
because it was a prize at a famous competition in period. The flower 
of the Queen's Bards was the forget-me-not.
willow 


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