jducoeur

(I've just sent this to the relevant officers, but I'm also sharing it publicly: this is a serious topic, more than worth some proper public discussion, not just random conversations on Discord. Comments are welcome, but keep them civil, thoughtful and productive; I will squash or delete anything that gets too heated. I encourage you to write your own letters -- feel free to crib from here if that seems useful to you, but please make your feelings known to the powers that be.)

Unto Their Majesties and Highnesses of the East, the Kingdom Seneschal, and the Board of the Society, Justin du Coeur sends greetings and concerns.

I read yesterday's updates to the COVID policies with some dismay, which was heightened by the online discussions around it. As I had expected, the result is that a number of members are no longer comfortable attending indoor events -- which in practice means all events for about 4-5 months in these parts. Realistically, some of those people will just give up and go away. Worse, the folks who are least comfortable with the new rule are in many cases the newest and most enthusiastic members; given that retention is a long-term challenge for the Society, anything exacerbating that is, IMO, a grave mistake.

And the hell of it is, I don't think any of it is necessary. Fundamentally, the problem here is micro-management. We've swung from "All Events Everywhere Must be Fully Masked" to "No Events Anywhere are Allowed to be Fully Masked". (Yes, yes -- it is possible to get exemptions from the SocSen, but let's get real: very few local autocrats are going to even dare to send that email. The broad perception is that you've forbidden it, and that's that.)

Putting it bluntly, that sort of rigid rule only makes sense in a world where there is broad consensus about the problem -- and we don't live in that world. On the one hand, we have people claiming that the pandemic is over and everyone should just go back to normal; OTOH, we have the reality that hundreds of people a day are being killed by COVID, vastly more are being crippled by it, and lots of folks are extremely worried. I know too many SCAdians who have had their lives destroyed by Long COVID, and many of my friends are terrified by this rule change, despairing of what it says about the SCA.

A lot of people are making entirely reasonable risk-analysis decisions that, for them, the new SCA rule is irresponsible. And indeed, it is out of line with much of the rest of geekdom -- most of the other activities I participate in (ranging from dance gatherings to SF/F conventions) are nowhere near this casual about masking yet, so we look even more irresponsible.

And no, it isn't enough to say, "if you are worried, wear a mask yourself". The science is crystal-clear here: having everyone masked is far more effective at preventing the spread of COVID than just doing so yourself. The rule as it stands comes across to many people as a statement that the SCA as an organization does not care whether you live or die -- and moreover, is actively preventing you from being safe, even if the local branch wants to be.

To address this, I propose a small tweak to the rules. We need an additional codicil, saying basically:

* Specific events may require more stringent masking and/or proof of vaccination. Any event with such rules must state them clearly in all event announcements and publicity.

I'm sure that people will fiddle, catastrophize and wordsmith this to death, but really -- that's all it needs to say. By allowing events to have stronger rules, we provide for variations in local culture, as well as the different nuances of, eg, indoor vs. outdoor events.

Different areas will make very different decisions about how to handle this, based on real-world culture as much as SCA. Some places will take a purely laissez-faire attitude, along the lines of the new rules. Other areas (likely including this one) will tend to require masks for indoor activities for the time being. Some will likely split the difference, experimenting with both styles and seeing what folks prefer. That's fine: our cultures are different, and the problem here arises solely because of a bad habit that tries to squash those differences out of existence with rigid universal rules.

I urge you to seriously consider this straightforward amendment to the policy. Allow local branches some latitude to see what works for them. It isn't that hard, it would largely defuse this crisis quickly, and it would better allow the SCA to conform to the differences in real-world culture that are the reality we need to deal with.

In Service,
Justin du Coeur, OL OP
Chatelaine, Barony of Carolingia, East

verdantry gave me five questions. (Thanks!) If you'd like a set (and I know you well enough to have any clue), comment here and I'll give you some to put in your own journal. (Eventually -- coming up with questions can be hard.)

Which of the SCA activities you've dabbled in is something you'd like to get back to, one of these days?

Sooo many to choose from. Hmm...

Rapier? In principle I'd love to, especially given that the state of the art has improved so much, in so many interesting ways, since I was active in it. But realistically it probably isn't going to happen.

Sewing? I've tried and bounced off of that a couple of times, and there is no good reason why I can't learn it more properly. Maybe.

I'm halfway-tempted to say Cooking, since it's been something like a year since I did any real reconstruction. But I think that one is still active, just at a low simmer.

Let's say Archery: I'm quite fond of it, and it's probably the single art where I am most proudly Adequate. I occupy a surprisingly unusual niche in it -- when you look at the scores at Pennsic, I am better than most of the populace, while still being comically amateur compared to the people who actually work at it.

I've been fond of it for most of my life (I picked the sport up as a kid, and have done it now and then throughout my SCA career), but got sidelined a couple of years ago by tendonitis. Now that my shoulder isn't bothering me routinely, it would be interesting to see whether I can get back into the swing of it, once circumstances are easier.

What's the most thoughtful gift someone has given you?

In terms of impact on me, it would probably have to be Inae pointing Kate in my direction ten years ago. But I think that was more for Kate's benefit than mine (to encourage her to have more social life), so "thoughtful" may not be quite right.

Really, I have no idea about most, and would probably come up with a different answer tomorrow. But let's choose a tiny one that affected me profoundly.

It was the SCA 25th Year Celebration down in Texas. I was very much an up-and-comer -- I think I had recently started The Letter of Dance, and was starting to get well-known, but I was still pretty low on the totem pole. I wound up spending most of the event hanging out with what I came to describe as The Dance Cabal, and it was a fairly momentous event for the SCA dance community, because while there were only maybe a dozen of us, we represented a wide swathe of the Society. It was the first time such a diverse bunch of dancemasters had worked together, and we had a blast.

Anyway, part of TFYC was a Laurels' Prize Tournament -- I believe the first one I'd ever encountered. I believe that I didn't enter (I've never been particularly into A&S competitions). But afterwards, Mistress Lizbeth Ravensholm (one of the Society's more serious dance scholars) came up to me and gave me a prize anyway, because she'd been impressed with my dance teaching during the week. It was just a little pewter spoon, but it blew me away, knowing that a leading Laurel from across the country had noticed me like that.

The moral of the story is that the little things can sometimes really matter to someone.

What type of stories tend to really hook you?

I don't think it's entirely consistent, but looking at what I like, there seem to be four common elements:

• Interesting world-building. That doesn't necessarily mean in the sense of creating a science-fictional or fantasy environment, but I always like to have the sense of depth that comes from someone having thought through the details.
• Good writing, and specifically richly-drawn characters with motivations that I can understand. (Whether or not I can relate to them.)
• Thematic depth: a story that means something, on some level.
• The sense that I am reading a story, dammit, not just a serialized adventure. That means having a beginning, middle and end, and preferably a good chunk of foreshadowing.

I'm amused to note that this list is in order of importance, from least to most -- and also in the order in which they came to matter to me. That gradual shift in priorities goes a long ways to explain why my taste in comics has changed dramatically over the years.

(I've just restarted the epic Inventory The Comics Project. This has been in process for, no shit, 25 years now, but I'm gradually making progress on it, having restarted two days ago after about a two-year hiatus. It's already probably the largest single Querki Space, and has a long ways to go -- I'm currently in "F". I'm sorting all the comics up through around 2007, and breaking them down into "Discard", "Keep Permanently", and "Think About It Again Later". And it's fascinating how many of the comics I adored in college now go straight into the Discard pile, because while they are nerdishly fun, they aren't all that well-written, and they aren't actually stories.)

Tell us your favorite "No shit, there I was" story.

Surprisingly, this is the tricky one. Most of my usual "no shit" stories didn't actually happen to me. (I'm quite fond of telling The Vis Cycle.) And the ones I do tell most often about myself aren't appropriate to post online. (Sometime when this is all over, and we can actually sit down together, and we have half an hour and appropriate beverages, remind me to tell you The Saga of the Trip to Quebec, aka How I Spent My 19th Birthday, aka How I Just Barely Didn't Get Arrested.)

But okay -- let's go way back to the beginning...

No shit, there I was -- at my first Pennsic. I was an innocent in nearly every sense of the word, not yet a year into the Society, and had been invited to camp with The Barony-in-Exile of Branswatch, otherwise affectionately known as The Filthy Greenshirts.

(Yes, we had green shirts, and yes, they were often filthy. Branswatch's claim to fame was the Pennsic Woods Battle. We were led by the late and much-lamented Earl Sir Aelfwine Dunedaine. At the beginning of each Woods Battle, he would cry "Follow me!", and vanish into the woods, with the rest of us trying desperately to keep up behind him. Traditionally, the Midrealm would march down the causeway, mighty warriors that they were -- and we would descend upon them from all around. Filthy Greenshirts made great camo.)

Anyway, back to "there we were"...

It was the middle of Pennsic, and the Midrealm King put out a call for guards for The Mighty Midrealm Camp Gates. Thing was, though, he never said that the guards had to be Middies -- or even vaguely loyal to the Mid. This seemed like a fine opportunity.

So we spent the next day drilling. Our commander in this scheme, James the Fair, drilled us in "Left Face!". And "Right March!". And all sorts of terribly impressive-looking, utterly irrelevant military crap, such that by the end we were clearly the best-drilled, well-trained candidates to "guard" the Midrealm, who were obviously so disciplined that we would never do something like filch the Midrealm's Crown. No, never.

We would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling kidknight. As we were performing our audition as The Best Guards Ever, one of the Midrealm Chiv happened to wander out, look at us, and pull the watch commander aside. Thing is, Aelfwine wasn't going to let the rest of us have all the fun without him, and he was a wee tad recognizable. So it was back to the lab, to await another night to take over the world.

(Really, that was one heck of a War. It was also, IIRC, the year that we built sturdy sedan chairs, to ferry Aelfwine and Arastorm into Pennsic Great Court, forcing Berowne of Arden to spend a good minute using his Mighty Heraldic Baritone to intone, "Siiit dooown, siiit dooown -- they're not royalty...")

What are you hoping to see come out of the aftermath of the pandemic?

Honestly, what I most want to see is for more of the country to wake up to the fact that cronyism and incompetence at the top is dangerous and deadly, and is what we have right now. Governments regularly get brought down by the death toll from wars; this is going to see a lot more deaths, and most of them could have been avoided by a competent administration.

More positively, though: I'd like to see folks seeing the lesson on the ground here, which is that we're better when we work together. There are so many cynical forces setting us against one another, but when push comes to shove, most people do work together and try to do the right thing, especially when they are given good information. For all the dysfunction at the top, many states (although, sadly, not quite all) are working hard to keep their people safe, and the ones that do so are being recognized for it -- many governors are way more popular than their parties are.

The moral of the story to me is that people still like sane, competent leadership, regardless of party affiliation. I'd dearly love to see that trend continue...

(As things quiet down very slightly for the summer, let's see if I can get back into the habit of posting.)

Last weekend was the Known World Dance and Music Symposium, a bi-annual event that's been running for a good long time now. It moves around the world (Carolingia hosted it something like 20 years ago); this year was in College Station, outside Houston. I wound up traveling with Thyra and Jesse -- they'd already been planning on attending, and I decided to tag along at nearly the last minute. I'm glad I did.

General summary: very good event, remarkably good given that they threw it together relatively quickly. I gather that the Anstreorrans had been planning on bidding for it next time around, but when the bid for this year fell apart due to logistical difficulties, they decided to assemble it with less than a year's notice. That's not a minor deal -- this is more con than event, and requires lining up a hotel, a deep staff, a Guest of Honor, and a rich class schedule. It was a great time, and the team deserve some serious kudos for it.

The GoH turned out to be a highlight of the event (and that may be the first time I've ever said that). Emily Winerock is not primarily a dance reconstructor; instead, her focus is on the role of dance in Renaissance theater and court spectacle. As a result, I learned a lot more from her than I usually do: this is a subfield that the SCA knows precious little about AFAIK, and we could stand to learn more.

Her current hobby-horse is a recently-discovered dancemaster's manual that, rather than being all about choreography in our usual sense, is about what I think of as small-scale marching band maneuvers: arrangements of dancers on the floor that spell out letters and figures and things like that. (I believe this is Footprints of the Dance in her bibliography.) Emily rarely has access to large numbers of experienced Renaissance dancers, so she had lots of fun asking us to try these figures out experimentally, seeing how we could dance from figure to figure.

I think she particularly enjoyed being able to put galliard music on, and having everybody just start galliarding through the figures. We even wound up with one place where we found ourselves with two spare measures, so (IIRC) Peter decided to spin in place, and I picked it up, and by the next run-through the entire set of twelve dancers were spontaneously spinning in more-or-less decent sync. It was delightful fun, and something that SCA theatrical productions definitely need to add as a tool for shows.

We sort of wound up adopting Emily for the duration of the event: we invited her along to dinner a couple of times, and drove her back to the airport at the end. She's lovely folks, and lives outside Pittsburgh, so I'm hoping the SCA dance community winds up hanging out with her more.

The event this year didn't wind up printing a Proceedings; instead, they opened up a Google Drive where participants could upload their papers. There's a ton of great stuff there: I recommend digging through it.

Some other highlights:

The first class I took, and arguably the most fun, was Jamie's "Contrapasso Da Farsi in Tutti I Modi" -- all six versions of Contrapasso crammed into one intense hour. It only worked if you knew at least one of them, but Contrapasso in Due is common enough at this point that everybody did. It was a wonderful illustration of how dance evolves, and provided lots of neat little variations to change things up. I'm planning on bringing this one to dance practice this fall, albeit spread over ten weeks instead of in one session. (His "Barriera Da Farsi in Molti Modi" -- all four Caroso Barriera variations -- was also a good deal of fun, although less well-suited to dance practice.)

Thyra ran a "Reconstruction Workshop" -- basically, a public version of an Accademia della Danza reconstruction session. She was worried about whether anybody would show up to a 9am Sunday class, but in fact we got about a dozen people, which is about the maximum the format can handle. The first hour was spent on Il Papa, the second on Gresley; as expected, we didn't generate any complete reconstructions in that time, but I think folks got a sense of how we do it. Hopefully some people will take the idea home.

All the King's Men: Emily had decided that, if she was in Texas, she should get barbeque; we all thought that was a lovely idea, and promised to stop on the way to dropping her at the airport. The place she had intended wasn't open on Sunday, so we wound up here instead. It was probably the most distinctively good meal I had down there: well-made meat, interesting sauces (the Savoury Espresso sauce was excellent), and fine sides. Worth a stop if you happen to be in the neighborhood.

I'm starting to get my stuff together for EK 50th Year this coming weekend, and just discovered that my modern nylon cabin tent, which I was planning on using, isn't where I expected it to be. I may have simply misplaced it (I'll check my storage unit tomorrow), but it raises the distinct possibility that I loaned it to somebody and forgot about it, some time in the past two years.

So -- if I've lent you my tent, could you please drop me a line? I have no idea who "you" might be in this case, but I've loaned my tents often enough that it would be in-character for me. Thanks...

I'll take it as read that you've heard about how bad things are down in Texas. That's the SCA Kingdom of Ansteorra -- we have a lot of folks down there. An unofficial relief fund has been set up -- details can be found in the EK Gazette.

Those of you who know Niki know that her great passion is for historical medicine -- whether it's teaching SCA folks about bizarre period cures for the plague or her novella about life in the medical tents of the Revolutionary War, she's all about the topic, and has lots to say about it.

She's just begin a weekly blog, focused on Renaissance Medicine, Saltatio Medica. I've just set up a feed here on Dreamwidth for it, saltatiomedica_feed -- that should populate later today. Check it out!

I just came across this marvelous essay on the SCA fun/authenticity false dichotomy, and a different way of looking at it. It was written some years ago, but is still worthwhile reading for any SCAdian. (It's from Tibicen, who some of you might remember from days of yore.)

I totally agree with the philosophy here: while I'm pretty indisciplined about it, I'd say that "atmospherist" nicely describes where I think the Society is at its best, and I think we still hamstring ourselves by under-emphasizing it. Indeed, while I've often thought of myself as a "funnist", I've always been clear that the distinctive fun of the SCA -- what makes this club particularly fun -- is the atmosphere...

(As usual for when I've attended something long, I'll be posting some random reminiscences.)

Being held at a 4-H Fairground, SCA 50th Year was just about the most animal-friendly event I've ever attended. It was interesting noting my own reactions: several times during the first couple of days, I found myself going something like, "Oh, come *on* -- you're not seriously telling me that's a service *goat*" before realizing that it wasn't relevant. (The "lap goat" was, in fact, quite popular.) There were animals all over the place -- indeed, Zeus the Cat (from Camelot) held court in the EK History Booth for much of a day, drumming up attendance as people walking past would have whiplash of, "Ooooh -- kitty!"

But the biggest difference was the horses. I suspect this was the biggest Equestrian event in SCA history: the site has a large Equestrian Arena and a *huge* barn, and there were dozens of horses in attendance. Opening Ceremonies were punctuated by several passes of real, no-shit *jousting*. (With breakaway lances to keep anybody from getting killed, but it was still spectacular.) I'll need to remember to update my usual SCA-demo spiel to reflect the fact that yes, there now *is* jousting at least occasionally. (Although it's still not exactly common around here.)

The most magical moment came one of the evenings, though, and drove home one of the big differences from Pennsic. At the War, you learn to tune out the constant but annoying sound of golf carts, from Security riding around. At this event, there was none of that. Instead, one evening just after dusk, Security came riding up *on horseback*. Countess Meggie was practically beside herself with squee at the sheer rightness of it...

[Mostly musing to myself as a bit of journal-therapy, although conversation on the topic(s) is welcomed.]

This month's stupid is unusually epic: the Board has "clarified" that the NMS applies to *all SCA activities that collect a site fee*. Including practices -- if you collect $3 from people to pay for your fencing site, you are now required to add a $5 NMS fee for all non-members.

I'm ripshit angry about the sheer cowardice of calling this a "clarification". I'm sure that, when the NMS happened, we asked whether it applied to practices and were told no -- that was one of the things that calmed us down from the rage that swept the Barony at the time. But it's been pointed out that, in the modern bureaucratic SCA, where "if it's not written down, it doesn't exist" is essentially a religion, the Board will probably just ignore the point unless I can find written documentation. (If anybody *has* a clear statement about this, I'd love to have it. I suspect something exists, and there's a good chance it's somewhere in my files, but finding it in time to be relevant isn't terribly likely. However many files you think I have, double it, and probably double it again.)

ETA: Tibor found a clear and at least moderately official statement on the subject from the time -- see his first link, below.

That entirely aside, though, I'm just jaw-dropped at the sheer idiocy of the move. I can think of few ways to more grossly harm retention in the club. Yes, we might get a tiny number of people who will buy memberships as a result, and yes, Corporate might get a tiny inflow of revenue from it. But both effects will be dwarfed by the number of people who will simply be driven away from the SCA because it's too expensive to even come to practices any more. Even more, by the number of practices that will shut down because this effectively makes their sites unaffordable.

(No, this doesn't currently affect Carolingia, thank heavens -- we have no current practices that require a site fee. But we certainly have done so in the past, for several different activities, and being unable to do so is going to limit our options.)

If this was a rare occurrence, that would be one thing -- but at this point, almost every time I come into contact with the Society officialdom, it's because *some* level of the bureaucracy has done something so remarkably stupid and destructive that it sends me into a rage. I think it's at least quarterly; sometimes, it feels like it's monthly.

That kind of anger isn't healthy; indeed, it isn't even productive. It's not as if I'm going to win all those arguments; at this point, winning *any* of them is pretty rare. (The Order of Valiance is one of the few cases where I think there's a chance that sanity might prevail -- but even there, it's merely the third-best option we had for dealing with the situation.)

All of which means I've got to disconnect -- the only question is how much. At this point, I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship: I care so deeply about the SCA, and I am constantly feeling *hurt* by it. I don't especially want a "divorce": too many of my friends are in the club, and I still enjoy many of the activities, so I don't want to drop out entirely.

But I need to figure out how to stop caring about its long-term survival. Because at this point, I really think the club is doomed in the long run, unless something major changes at the top. When you have a Board of Directors sneaking in idiotically destructive moves, so quietly under the cover of night that even those of us who *read* the notes of the Board meetings didn't realize it was happening (indeed, the only reason it came out was that it was announced to the *exchequers* list in the EK), you're pretty much screwed.

So I need to learn how to just play, as a participant, as one of a number of activities, rather than having it occupy the central role in my life it's had for the past 30+ years. Have the SCA just be another fun game, like LARP or fandom, that I do but I'm not utterly invested in. That's surprisingly hard.

Really, I think I'm in the middle of the stages of grief here (definitely feels goddamn familiar), and trying to figure out how to move on to acceptance. I sometimes say that the only mercy in Jane's death was that neither she nor I suffered terribly long -- she was only actively dying for about two (unbelievably horrible) months. With the Society, it's more like watching a loved one with a terribly lingering and protracted terminal illness, with no closure...

ETA2: Corporate has now issued a secondary "clarification" that goes back to more or less the status quo ante, fixing the stupid.  So the immediate crisis is resolved, pretty much as I suspected it would be -- in the wake of a great deal of noise, they've quietly backed off.  Which just leaves us with the general problem that we shouldn't have these firestorm-inducing idiocies that *require* an outcry to fix.  And me with the specific problem, as stated above, of how to stop associating the SCA with these high-blood-pressure-inducing incidents...

Signal boost: a number of folks here might be interested in the first edition of the Known World Bardcast, a fun and well-done podcast of the SCA bardic arts. The first half is various songs (and one story); the second, a roundtable discussion about the bardic arts among a pretty diverse group of serious bards aroud the Known World. (Originally posted last month, but I just noticed it now.) This link takes you to a SoundCloud player that plays it in-browser, at least on the desktop.

Note that this is SCA bardic in the classic sense -- more focused on our own songs than period music. But it's good stuff, and recommended to anybody who enjoys sitting around a Pennsic campfire...