From: justin@inmet.camb.inmet.COM (Justin du Coeur MKA Mark Waks)
Subject: SCA Authors; Off-Board Ideas; Persona & Classes; Etc.
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 19:08:59 GMT

Re: Authors involved with SCA

Another, less known, case: Greer Gilman, who had her first book published
a little while back, is an inactive SCAdian (Lady Eugenie de Bruges).

And *lots* of authors have had some contact with the Society. Master
John ap Griffin (I think it was) tells the story of an early SCA demo
at a large SF convention, which invited the guests to try their hand
in a rattan tourney. One of those who tried was Harlan Ellison, who
proved to be something of a natural. However, when he discovered
that the "prize" for winning a bout was getting to fight another, he
decided that this wasn't his cup of tea...


Re: Off Board Hell

Tibor brings up the point that off-board seating is often pretty wretched,
and that the ideal would be for the off-board to be allowed to sit with
the on-board.

One idea I haven't seen mentioned yet: have some slack figured into your
tables.  Instead of filling each on-board table to capacity, have six people
at an eight-person table, or eight at a ten-person table. The available
space can then be used for off-boarders if they want it, or the on-board
folk can have a little more elbow room if not.

That only works if you can afford some inefficiencies in the layout of
people at tables. Another, similar scheme works for the common
"long-bench" style of seating, where you have rectangular tables laid
end-to-end, forming "super-tables" of say, forty or fifty people. In
this case, it works even better, because you can leave room for ten
people interspersed throughout. In this case, you usually are serving
five or six of each dish to the super-table; if you just let the
table boundaries be a little fuzzy (to account for the "clumpiness"
of the off-board folk amongst the on-board), this works pretty well.

I've seen both of these used, and both can work with a little advance
thought...


Re: Persona and Classes

I was a bit struck by one comment from Tadhg:
> The cleavage point here seems to be the question: Which is more important,
> education or playing persona? I happen to feel that "education" is more
> important than "playing persona". I realize that many responders are of
> opinion that the "playing persona" was, in this case, supposedly
> "educational", but I have seen no evidence (nor does it appear to me to be
> inherently plausible) that the tactic adopted here was successful (or
> could have been successful) in its intended purpose.

I think that you're missing a very important aspect of education:
"dramatic" education is generally *far* more effective than "intellectual"
education. One failing of most teachers today is that they simply spew
facts, and expect the students to absorb them. From a cognitive
viewpoint, this *really* sucks. If you can make a point in a way that
is *not* expected, that is out of the conventional worldview, it tends
to stay with the student a lot better. This is why I'm so particularly
impressed with the particular "persona game" at hand -- the lady made
the point that there was gender separation of art forms in a much more
immediate way than simply *saying* so to the students. Obviously I'm
in no position to know for sure, but I'd expect the point to have
stayed with the students far better for it.

I confess that I'm having a lot of trouble taking this argument
seriously. Tadhg and Eirik are arguing that these sorts of "persona
games" are ineffective and frustrating. Yet personal empirical evidence
says that they are 100% wrong. I've taken a *lot* of classes in both
the in-persona and out-of-persona models, taught by a wide range of
teachers. As a fairly reliable rule of thumb, the in-persona classes
have been more focussed, more informative, more retentive, and simply
more *interesting* than the out-of-persona ones. You can argue theory
all you want, but my *experience* says that in-persona classes work,
and generally work better than the conventional ones...


Re: The Great Membership Flap

Omar writes a fairly impassioned complaint about the idea of required
memberships. I'd just like to remind him (and everyone else) to write
to the Board. They really do want people's input. Messages to the
Rialto really accomplish little, but even a postcard to the BoD can
have a real effect...


Re: Famous SCAdians

Christian says:
>                But one point I'd like to address from this is
>        fame and the SCA.  While some people, like Cariadoc, become
>        famous within the SCA, there are some people who are members
>        and happen to be famous in the real world.

Ah -- you mean like David Friedman, the famous economist?

(Sorry -- couldn't resist...)

				-- Justin du Coeur

Random Quote du Jour:

"Times are bad.  Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
 writing a book."
"Or a paper on cold fusion."
		-- Bill Johnson (and Cicero)