[ANSTHRLD] Who to Protect? A 1.0 and ABPS version

[Bob Wade]

Discussions periodically arise on lists such as this concerning a number of hot button issues.  Lately [ANSTHRLD] has seen a resurgence of one of them ... should we continue to protect heraldic registrations of people who are no longer active in the SCA?
 
IMO we have not reached a need for The Next Modest Proposal.  As others have pointed out, there's still plenty of good armory available waiting for the right person to discover that one of them illustrates how they perceive themselves.  Nonetheless, a discussion of what may need to be done in the future can be a good thing.
 
The original Modest Proposal had the various Kingdoms submit lists of what non-Society armory each felt was important to protect.  I expect The Next Modest Proposal to do the same.  If so, what standards should be used to see if someone who is deceased, inactive, or a non-member is "important enough to protect?"
 
A 1.0 answer: IMO anyone who is on an OP deserves the privelege of the Society's full protection.
 
ABPS Version ...
 
A couple of decades ago I was visiting a Kingdom I used to live in.  At the Event a Laurel came up to thank me for convincing him that period bardic pieces could be entertaining.  But the real credit belonged to someone else.
 
Last year people were posting lists of the 3 people who most influenced how they participate in the SCA.  One of mine was a person from the Branch I lived in when I joined the Society.  He replaced one of the three reasons I joined (Wine, women, and a forum to prove my D&D characters could physically do the things I said they were doing) with a desire for research.  Bill was a librarian who had a vision of compiling a union bibliography of all the books on the Middle Ages in the two public library systems and three major universities there.  He became Chronicler so he had a forum to publish it.  In an era when newsletters were done on mimeograph machines, his ran 50 pages a month.  By the end of his tenure he had printed only the general surveys written in English (Plus a Swahili tanslation of Machiavelli's The Prince he snuck in).  He went inactive a few years later with boxes of handwritten index cards left unpublished.  That was 30 years
 ago.  Because his job kept him from travelling to Events, I'm probably one of only a handful who remember him.  Through that one bard alone, however, he enriched the Society lives of hundreds.
 
I'd heard the words before in Court, but they first became meaningful to me when I saw Guillermo receive his AoA.  "... through diverse efforts to enrich Our Realm ... we grant the Right and Dignity of Arms..."
 
I don't know what most of them are, but every entry in an OP indicates a story about someone who influenced others.  Alive or not, active or not, members or not, we are all enriched by each entry through their recipient's effect on others.  They are all important.  IMO they have all earned the privelege of the Society's full protection of their Armory and Names.
 
Tostig