From: justin@inmet.camb.inmet.COM (Justin du Coeur MKA Mark Waks)
Subject: Medieval Arts; Barons; Sickness; Generations
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 22:04:04 GMT

Greetings unto the Rialto from a finally-finally-finally-caught-up
Justin du Coeur! A few comments on subjects discussed in the past
couple of weeks, trying to stay clear of stuff that's already been
said:


First of all: I'm *not* going to comment on the pentacle thread, or
the paganism thread -- everything useful seems to have been said.
Many times. And as for the various Board-related arguments, I'll
just say that Arval's open letter hits the issues square-on, and
that I think Tibor's analysis of the structure the Society *should*
logically have (with the corporation funded from events, instead of
"memberships") is probably dead right.


Re: "Official" date cutoff

Several people wondered when the "pre-17th century" cutoff was
established, and I believe Hal speculated that it had to be before
AS VIII. It's earlier than that -- in the original By-Laws of the
Society (1969), the phrase "pre-17th century" is bandied about
repeatedly...


Re: pre-1400 arts

Boris asks:
>From the perspective of the arts, would a strictly Medieval period be
>viable?  What would the SCA be like if all pre-1400 arts + sciences were
>banned? I suspect that we would be culturally much poorer because of it.

For dance:

>  - How much of common-practice in the SCA is pre/post 1400?

Almost all of it is post-1400.  The only dance in currency in the
Society that has any claim to being pre-1400 is the Saltarello that
Jeff Singman (whatever his current persona name is) composed, and
even that is shaky in its documentation...

>  - How much would we lose by abolishing all post-1400 arts?

Essentially all dances that we currently do.

>  - To what extent would lack of documentation handicap the arts?

Pretty badly, in this case. The lack of documentation for early dance
is severe. We know that they danced, and we have vague references to
what the dances might have looked like (see the recent article in the
Letter of Dance which digs into a medieval poem about a party, by Leah
di Estera), but any attempts at reconstruction are bound to be far more
wrong than right.

We could keep dancing, but it would be with little confidence that our
dances bore much resemblance to the real thing...

>  - What is the latest cut-off date that would preserve various arts
>    is viable activities within the SCA?

It's really a question of how much variety you want, and what styles
you like. I could personally cope with a 1500 cutoff, but most people
don't like the early Italian and Burgundian sources nearly as much as
I do. If you want easy and bouncy dances, you have to make it post-
Arbeau (effectively 1600), and if you want English Country, you have
to make it more-or-less 1650...


Re: Barons

In the discussion of how Barons should be appointed & removed (disappointed?),
Richard Fitzgilbert presents the monarchist view that Barons should be
dealt with by the will of the King. That may be fine for Atlantia, but
I really doubt it would work in the East. With such a large Kingdom,
even a well-intentioned Monarch is going to have a truly difficult
time knowing what's best for a particular Barony, because he or she
simply isn't likely to know the group well enough to know what's best
for it.

Therefore, for at least a large Kingdom, I'd strongly advocate the other
side, taking the feudalist view that the groups should inform the
Royalty of who they've picked by vote. As well as being likelier
to result in a Baron that the group actually likes and can cope with,
this provides a nice balance of power. Give the Monarch (or Kingdom
Seneschal) the power to force an election, but *not* to decide the
result. That way, an unpleasant situation can be given the shove it
needs, but an overly-political Monarch can't screw up a group that
mostly likes its situation.

Also, Richard observes that the longer a Baron sits his throne, the
likelier it is for him to become an obstacle. That might be true
statistically, but it's important not to generalize from statistics.
Plenty of Barons learn from experience, and get better at the job
as they go along. One can argue whether anyone else in Carolingia
might eventually become as good a Baron as Patri, but I honestly
don't think that anyone could do as good a job without benefit of
quite a bit of experience.

In other words: just as you pointed out that Monarchs often get
better with experience, so do Barons...


Re: Attending Events While Sick

Margaret agrees that it's generally a bad idea to attend events while
sick, and offers the following possible policy:
>Those who are sick are encouraged to not attend events.  If you have
>preregistered for an event, you may obtain a full refund of your event
>fee by contacting the autocrat by mail or by phone. Gentles with
>quarentinable diseases such as chicken pox, measles, mumps, etc may not
>attend events.

Although well intentioned, I don't think it's likely to be a good idea.
Laws are often overlooked, especially when made at the high level.
(How many people here have actually read Corpora, much less the
policies of the various officers?) More effective would be a
periodic reminder from the Chirurgeon General that it's not only
risky but rude to expose your friends to your diseases. Putting
this into TI once a year (at the beginning of the flu season) is
likely to accomplish far more. Remember: make something a requirement,
and *someone* is going to be annoyed enough to deliberately violate it.
Make it a matter of honor, though, and you can work wonders...


Re: Generations

Tadhg observes:
> I've been in the SCA sixteen years, and I've lived in three groups (each
> in a different kingdom) for four years or longer, and at the end of the
> four years the participants who were active at the end *and* at the
> beginning of that period could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
> That, to me, suggests that, however defined, a "generation" in the SCA is
> no longer than four years, and possibly shorter. Everybody I've talked to
> on the subject can cite similar experiences.

Still, it's certainly not universal. I just did a quick dig through
the Liber Carolingia (the local phone book), choosing six or seven
pages at random. From that listing, I find about as many people who
I consider my contemporaries or elders (8 years+) as I do "new" folk (less
than three years). Granted, this is a little skewed, since *very* new folk
may not be listed yet, and some older ones stay listed even after
they've moved away. Nonetheless, I feel pretty confident in saying that
at least half of Carolingia has been around for more than four years,
and probably somewhere around a fourth has been around more than ten.
That's a lot of fingers...

				-- Justin du Coeur

Random Quote du Jour:

"A woman is just a woman, but a Van de Graaf generator is a CHARGE."
		-- Dave Mack
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca