[Sca-cooks] OT- Input request from SCA BoD/politics

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Johnna says:

>And there are a number of people who have
>been around for years and are founding or
>original members of shires and baronies
>and are now retired or
>semi-retired... they attend maybe one event
>a year. Should they pay a full annual membership
>for the one event they attend??

Probably not, but it's (at least at the moment) their choice to do so or not.

>  It's bad enough
>that when they do attend, no one knows who they
>are or that the Barony was around back then...
>They can't figure out why that old guy or lady is
>wearing that coronet and seems to have a white
>belt, or some of the awards like a laurel...
>when gee they've never heard of them...
>Johnna Holloway Johnnae llyn Lewis

Yeah, I like that one too. On the other hand, given that a) the SCA
is no different from the rest of the world in its current "But what
have you done for us _lately_?" mentality, and b) lacking an
appropriate Shrine to Master Adamantius, de facto Order of the
Cincinnati, how are these people supposed to know who you are?

Not too long ago I worked on Saturdays for a period of about a year
and a half, and member turnover in my group is fairly high, and I
found that in that time period I had gone from being known by
virtually everyone active in my group, I was known by maybe the same
25% of the populace who had been the most active when I left, and
everybody not only wanted to know who I was, but why I was walking
around as if I owned the place, failing to do the Newbie Shuffle... .
Well, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea, I'm sure.

I've also had a rather mind-numbing conversation with a lady who was
Laurelled back when rocks were soft (most of you, it would probably
turn out, would have heard of this lady), and she felt, honestly,
that she had not received the respect that was her due from the
assorted populace when she did attend an event after several years of
absence. She also felt that her accomplishments in her field (long
since eclipsed by others in the same field, but I didn't mention that
in that way) were not being accorded the proper respect. I could only
tell her this was regrettable, but that there were a lot of newer
people who simply had not been around when she was active, and that a
lot of the people who were familiar with her work, without being
familiar with _her_, because the State of the [Various] Art[s] keeps
changing, and what was required to be a Laurel way back when probably
would get a Kingdom-level arts award now, if that. In some cases.
Certainly my own experience is that a lot more people (but not all)
are doing work in cookery as a matter of course that equals or
exceeds the best achievements of Laurels for cookery even five years
ago (jeez, I've been a Laurel for going on five years, and I was on
this list well before that).

Yes, when I was a lad, we 'ad it towf. We 'ad to use rocks to
translate de Nola... but we were 'appy...

But my point is that Laurels (and presumably other peers as well) are
enjoined by the Crown (AFAIK) to continue to pursue and expand their
activities, in short, to remain a resource for future populace as
they had been in the past. If, as in this lady's case, she did not do
this, I can understand why people might see her as a stranger after
an absence of some years. That, and the fact that, for a group
supposedly devoted to history, we seem to have a shocking ignorance
of our own past.

My own feeling is that these past accomplishments, once State of the
Art (whatever art it is), deserve some respect for breaking ground,
as well. It's all very well for us to sneer at Madeline Pellner
Cosman, but once upon a time, unless you wanted to locate and in some
cases translate primary source recipes (me, I can't even _read_ most
of those manuscripts; I'd need a transcription) before you could even
attempt to work out or adapt the recipes, "Fabulous Feasts", "The
Delectable Past", "To the King's/Queen's Taste", maybe "Dining with
William Shakespeare" were about it for most people. How easy it was
to avoid these and go straight to some version of primary sources
depended on your resources, of intelligence, free time, money, etc.
Just as we owe a great deal to the people who have recently made de
Nola, Ein Buoch Von Guter Spise, Welserin, etc., easily available to
us, we should remember that these secondary-source authors, people
like Cariadoc with his mad scheme to photocopy and distribute
non-copyrighted medieval cookbooks, and even the broken-down old
Laurels we no longer even recognize, deserve some respect.

I guess what I'm saying is that everyone deserves to be treated with
courtesy, but if you allow yourself to become a stranger in your
local group, it's probably at least partially your own fault. So
again, we're back to whether attachment or detachment to or from a
community makes you feel (or not feel) sufficient kinship with them
to warrant paying up and officially joining the group, and this is
still a matter of choice.

Adamantius, not expecting deification in his own lifetime