SC - All Members

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mark Schuldenfrei wrote in response to me:
> 
> Adamantius wrote:
>   If you are genuinely making an
>   inquiry into an issue you feel your own research may have neglected, as
>   I think, for instance, Tibor did, that is one thing. On the other hand,
>   if your immediate response is an angry, "'Taint period, McGee!", you
>   probably need to consider the fact that people usually don't
>   deliberately post the wrong information on purpose, and that if they do
>   post something that disagrees with your own [extensive] research, it's
>   either because they haven't done said [extensive] research, or they
>   don't care, neither one of which is a crime.
> 
> True.  But....
> 
> If you also are privileged to read the Madrone Culinary Guild list (as both
> Adamatius and I are), you will see a concommitant thread on the "problem"
> that if something is served at feast, at least a portion of the feast eaters
> will think it is period.
> 
> This is one of my totems: we can be as authenticist as our muse calls us to
> be, but we cannot mislead each other about what is real.

Certainly deliberate misrepresentation is a crime against the
educational ideals of the Society, and accidental misleading, while not
anywhere near as bad, might still be regarded as irresponsible,
depending on how and why it occurs. I recall doing an East Kingdom 12th
Night feast a few years ago, which was both attentive and retentive, if
you get my meaning, to period detail. I printed out 400 copies of a
pamphlet that was about 20 pages long, containing the documentation for
everything I did. I thought the meal was a pretty good piece of
reconstructed period dining, but just to show that I wasn't taking the
whole thing too seriously (it being Saturnalia and all), I decided to
garnish my fish in cumin sauce with fried onions out of a can. Some
people love them. I stated in the documentation that I wanted to liven
things up with a blatant anachronism, that I knew fried onions out of a
can were not what  le Menagier would have recommended to his bride, and
that I didn't give a hoot. I felt that the overall quality of the meal
and the reconstruction would far outweigh any complaints I might receive
on this score.

Evidently not. In spite of the feast receiving the dubious distinction
of having leftovers apparently stolen from the kitchen, I'm still
hearing about this after three years...  
 
> Likewise, if someone posts a recipe to an SCA Cooks list, it might be easy
> for someone who has not yet done much reading to presume it might be period.
> I think it is very important to be accurate in labelling.

Yeah, but then, of course, you run the [theoretical] risk of 
_appearing_  to sound (with excessive use of qualification) like the
aforementioned Lord Adamantius, who is really a nice guy when you shovel
through everything he writes because he won't just bloody well come out
and say something! (Note disarming use of self-deprecating humor.)
> 
> True story of my own, that happened in this list.  I had redacted a Lenten
> Feast, but at the time I didn't understand the Lenten rules. I posted the
> old recipe without re-reading it, and it claimed to be Lenten, and was not.
> I was *glad* to be corrected.

Well, yes. Learning is a GOOD thing. But sometimes people need to be a
little more confident in themselves and their abilities before they
appreciate being corrected in front of a "virtual" crowd. Tact and
resource, as Jeeves used to say, are the watchwords here...  

Adamantius