SC - Period Recipes

[david friedman]

At 5:18 PM -0500 6/4/97, maddie teller-kook wrote:

>There is a wonderful cook
>in my barony that has really knocked out wonderful 100% period feasts.
>Her feasts could be entered into Arts & Sciences (think about that one
>Clarissa!!!!).

I don't want to pick on the poster, since I think I agree with what she is
saying in the post, but I would like to comment on an attitude in the SCA
that I think may possibly be reflected in the quote above.

There seems to be a very common attitude in the SCA that authenticity is
something you do for A&S contests, rather than something you do because it
is fun, interesting, and makes the Society a better place. The first
example I remember striking me was a book on songs which contained a couple
of pages discussing which ones were from when--prefaced by the remark that
this information was intended for people who wanted to enter contests. The
implication was that nobody who wasn't entering a contest wouldn't care
whether the song he was singing was period.

The obvious next step is that if authenticity is for A&S contests, then the
reason to be authentic is to win such contests. It follows that
authenticity is a status game played by people who want to think they are
better than other people. From that one gets the reverse status game of
"I'm a good person--see, just to prove I'm not an authenticity nazi, I'll
serve corn, potatoes and pizza for the feast." For further discussions, see
some of the essays in the Miscellany, webbed at:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellany.html




David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/