SC - Anti meat sympathies

[grizly@mindspring.com]

>No, all persons are not expected to participate in every SCA
>activity, however, they certainly should have the option of
>doing so.  

I'm sorry, there goes one of -my- buttons.  

While I more than agree with the principles on site accessibility in the 
rest of your response to Ras' comment, do you really mean that, in actual 
practice, the heavy fighters should be required to include the 
wheelchair-mobile in the lists? 

<RANT ON>
In my Kingdom, boffers have been turned into a highly regulated and 
regimented operation, complete with Kingdom level officers and all the 
attendant bureaucracy, I believe because one person with a delicate child 
wanted him to be able to play.  

Instead of getting her child a helmet, the PCers took off, and now 
"playing" with boffers is no longer allowed.  It's all competition level, 
"training to be fighters", helmets, ADULT marshals, etc.  No more just 
playing among 6-yr olds with lengths of plumbing-pipe-insulation foam or 
swimming-pool float foam, which is about the weight and degree of 
stiffness of the old fashioned boffers I recall.

Now when my 8 yr old goes to events, he doesn't even know about boffing, 
because it never happens... little kids have to have all the equipment, 
round up grown-ups to marshal (and I don't think just anyone can, it may 
have to be official boffer marshals).  (Well, it's possible that the kids 
don't have to have personal equipment, but rather the kingdom officers 
have to have been asked to bring the official loaner gear???)  One event 
when he was 6 he even had strange adults yelling at him for just running 
around with his brand new (but non-regulation) boffer sword & shield, 
looking for kids to play with -- no other kids were even involved at the 
point he got yelled at!
<RANT OFF>

It's no longer the Society I "grew up" in, and sometimes that's good, and 
sometimes it's a pain in the fundament!

Chimene the Antique Grump
(Fast closing in on the 25th anniversary of my intro to the Society, 8-)