SC - OT - For Cooking Laurels/Pelicans

[Sharon R. Saroff]

My Laurel is Master Hal Raven.  I have been his apprentice for 4 years.  We
met over the Internet during a conversation on the Rialto about
"Apprentices to Non-peers".  Hal and I have never met and our crafts are
quite different (He is a woodworking Laurel and my crafts are beadwork and
cooking).  Hal took me as his apprentice to teach me "the fine art of being
a peer."  He and I both feel that he has done well.  I am no longer
considered to have the amount of tact as a brick through a plate glass
window.  I am less political and have accomplished more new pieces of work
in the last 2 years than in the rest of my 22 years in the SCA.  Yes Master
Hal has been in the SCA since I believe the beginning or close to it.  He
knows people in many kingdoms.  But I don't think that he has the ability
to sway anyone in any kingdom to give his apprentice a laurel.  

When I lived in the East, I was on the laurel poll.  For reasons I won't
discuss, I did not get my laurel.  I had a different attitude toward the
peerage then. Now I live in Ansteorra.  A friend of mine who is a laurel
has adopted me as her foster apprentice. She has proposed me to the
Ansteorran laurels as a candidate to join their ranks.  She and others have
reported my progress to my laurel.  I feel I have now benefited from his
teachings and the attention paid me by the laurels of Ansteorra (Who have
been quite encouraging and full of very helpful suggestions).

As I said before, I think it is a matter of personal preference.  Some
people feel that to be a really good teacher, a laurel needs to be close by
to see the progress.  Others like Master Hal and my deer friend Mistress
Katherine Goodwin feel otherwise.

Now I hope I haven't offended anyone or inserted my foot in mouth.

Sindara


At 11:20 PM 9/8/99 -0400, you wrote:
>"HICKS, MELISSA" wrote:
>> 
>> Why the geographic proximity?  Is it something to do with cross-Kingdom
>> politics or is it simply that cooking is a hands-on activity?
>> 
>> Have any of you taken on a cooking apprentice that isn't in the same
>> geographic area?
>
>I may live to regret this, but here goes anyway:
>
>I myself was apprenticed to a costume laurel, Master Geoffrey d'Ayr of
>Montalban, a.k.a. Bish, who lived about fifty miles away from me.
>However, neither of us drives or owns a car, and Bish has a wide
>interest in various other outlets for the costumer's and needleworker's
>art: sci-fi/fantasy conventions, various non-SCA living history type
>endeavors, etc. As a result he would get to perhaps three or four events
>a year, with, maybe, if we were lucky, one of those being an event we
>could both get to. We communicated by mail and phone, e-mail still being
>a bit unusual at the time. It probably made things more difficult than
>they had to be in certain aspects, but overall I have no regrets.
>
>I have pretty much decided that for the most part I won't take any
>apprentices from too far from where I live, for a few reasons. Yes,
>cooking is sometimes a hands-on art, and tasting is not something you
>really can do via long-distance, at least not without difficulty. Then
>there's the question of proper training in the English martial art of
>cuskynole. Can't do that well long-distance. Tried it and people are
>still talking about it. In addition, and equally practical, is the issue
>of teaching the apprentice to be a peer, and persuading the other peers
>and the Crown of the apprentice's kingdom to accept him/her as such. 
>
>So, as an example of what I'm talking about, when it became time to
>consider whether to accept a cook from another kingdom as an apprentice
>a while back, I had to think not only about what I thought I could teach
>him, but also what I could do to accomplish getting this person his
>peerage. It seemed to me that I'd have a much more difficult time than
>someone local, because I know maybe three laurels in the kingdom in
>question, and I seriously doubted my ability to sway a roomful of
>laurels (many kingdoms do poll their peers on candidates; in the
>"Eastern Rite" kingdoms the king's word is not _necessarily_ law) from
>not only another kingdom, but a kingdom which had recently split off
>from my own under some tension. As a result I decided the best thing to
>do was to offer to teach the gentleman as my student, until he could
>make arrangements with a more local laurel to take him on as an
>apprentice. This has since occurred, and all seems to be well.
>
>If, on the other hand, he had been my apprentice, I suspect he might
>have remained so for many, many years, and probably much less happy
>about it than under his current circumstances.
>
>I might still consider taking on an apprentice from another kingdom or
>from far away, but for the most part only as a last resort -- if the
>person simply has no other option for one reason or another.
>
>Adamantius
>-- 
>Phil & Susan Troy
>
>troy at asan.com
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