Children (grown, and segregated)

http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2008/03/marty-as-bardolf-at-crown.html
Our second son was in his first Crown Tournament.

http://aelflaedofduckford.blogspot.com/2008/02/segregation-and-other-wrongs.html
Some commentary on "children's activities"

People I Miss

http://aelflaedofduckford.blogspot.com/2008/01/people-i-miss.html

There are other posts I have in the works. For many years I have withheld many personal opinions, except in conversations with friends and students. I might as well get some of them out there. (Yeah, you thought I couldn't possibly be withholding ideas, right? )

I had to make a new blog to make a new profile

And here it is: http://aelflaedofduckford.blogspot.com/2008/01/to-have-another-profile-i-needed-new.html"

I wish I had thought of this a year or two ago, but I didn't. I'm glad I thought of it today instead of a year or two from now.

The Outlands History blog has a new feature—a list of recent additions/updates. I can't be methodical about it. For on thing, I'm just not so methodical. For another, though, I don't want to bore the old timers OR the more recent folk with just the 70's, or just last year, so I want to do some and some, and eventually just fill it all in.

My helpers so far are Masters Balthazar and Gunwaldt, who are more back up and advisory at this point, as they have much less time and many fewer newsletters.

Formality of Address (new etiquette bit)

Formality of Address

This is about understanding the principle behind formal address, instead of trying to go by a rule. When Artan VI was king, I was steward of the household and his squire Dermod asked me by e-mail to clarify something. Here's our exchange from October, 2006. Dermod came up with a great phrase, as you'll see...

There are links there to other etiquette pages, too.

A repository for any little bits of Outlands history

For those outside the Outlands (those in the Inlands!?):
If you know of a history site for your kingdom that should be shared, please let me know by e-mail or in a comment below.

Outlanders, or former Outlanders, or visitors with vivid memories or diaries or something:

I'm setting up a blog for the collection of historical bits by month. At the moment it goes from 1970 to 1986.
There will be more tomorrow, and I hope to finish by the end of the weekend.

As people add their recollections, it should jog others' memories.

The only three months with entries at the moment are

http://outlandshistory.blogspot.com/2008/01/december-1970.html
http://outlandshistory.blogspot.com/2008/01/january-1971.html
http://outlandshistory.blogspot.com/2008/01/june-1986.html

Comments can be left on any of them, even if the main entry has no details yet. You can add links to comments (notes are here for those unfamiliar with this little code; it's not hard) http://sandradodd.com/hotlink
Photos can't be inserted in comments, but the other two options there will work.

If you want to send a photo, send me a link or an e-mail image if you want me to put it in the main body for that month.

Links to other history sites are there and I'm willing to add as many more as people know of.

Eventually each month should have details on who the king and queen were (and prince and princess, in the day), events, investitures, some awards, details on tournaments and wars. Feel free to add those to comments links any time, starting now (up to 1986 or wherever it is when you go there).

If you have any particular memory of the event—weather, injuries, feast dishes, interesting phenomena, weddings—those kinds of details should jog other people's memories. If you want to tell who autocratted or cooked or heralded or organized the parking lot for an event, go ahead. If you have an old newsletter scanned for that month, put the link (and if it's not online, send it to me and I'll put it where it can be linked).

This can have tons of links to (and maybe from) other resources, and it won't conflict with the wiki because that's by subject/group/person and this is by date.

We can rush to fill it in or we can meander through the years adding photos and chronicles written in those times as we come across them. I would love to have heralds' reports (or links to them, maybe) and tourney reports and lists of honors from the day. Just add them as comments or e-mail them to me (there's a link on that page).


AElflaed

Kingdom differences

Traditions of what to wear, chains on squires who move to kingdoms where it's not the practice to wear them... Ideas surrounding that are being discussed at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ThinkWellTNG/

Article in T.I., and interview

For the first time in thirty years, I didn't get a T.I.
The explanation involves separate memberships, two T.I.s coming, then one T.I. coming, and me thinking it was Gunwaldt's and him not even thinking about it at all.

So I did get a copy and a Tournaments Illuminated t-shirt for being a contributor (gold on black! My barony's colors, and my household's colors!)

The editor wanted to use something I wrote long ago in Bright Ideas, "Concrete Suggestions for Helping Newer Members."

A new title was negotiated, and it became "Help Newcomers Directly."

Beacuse it's not very long, the editor wanted to fill up the space with an interview. I think the desired response was "Newcomers are the most important part of the SCA," but that's not the response I gave. Still, the topic of the interview was to have been about newcomers.

Because I'm an oldtimer I wish every member still got Tournaments Illuminated. Not so many do anymore. Not even me, I discovered to my sorrow the other day.

thirty years ago, almost...

Two months from now, thirty years ago, I sent an application/resume/introduction/biography to the seneschal of Atenveldt, because I had been appointed (not so legally, I found out later, when the Aten Seneschal pointed it out...) It wasn't really an application, because I was already "in office" (though I could've been taken out).

sandradodd.com/duckford/1977resume

When I joined, it was generally believed and held in Atenveldt (maybe more broadly; I forget) that the feminine form of "seneschal" needed an "e" at the end. If they were going off formations like Michelle from Michel, they should've doubled the "l" but no matter. The whole deal was dropped before long.

This was done on a typewriter, naturally; everything was then. I have carbon copies of many letters. (Yuck, carbon copies—may you never see or touch one if you haven't already.)

Within just a few years, I had a Kaypro computer with a daisy-wheel printer, then a Mac IIsi with a laser printer, and before I knew it, here I am looking back 30 years.

I think the benefits and disadvantages of one time and place or another are six of one, half a dozen of the other. It evens out. We had more newness and opportunity but less information and example. Nowadays one can learn more just clicking around the internet than we could've learned in a year of dusty library stacks where we were lucky to find black and white line drawings (or occasionally color plates, but nothing like we have now in books and on the internet).

Blogs and webpages are way better, even though less medieval, than typewriters and carbon paper.

Enjoy your SCA life. Enjoy your mundane life, and if you have other side-lives, find the joy in them too.

Humility

Humility's hard to keep up with. I forget, I get grumpy, I work through my tools and tricks again.
I know, too, that it's been the hardest thing for some people to understand when we've discussed it here, and hard for people to transfer from the SCA to regular life. I'm glad to have found some recent and "mundane" things (if something so useful in the SCA and to one's immediate peace can be considered that).

Humility: A modern explanation and example, and link to another site.
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/virtue/modesty

I added a link to the bottom of the lists of virtues.
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/virtue/lists

easy contact page, and camping

http://sandradodd.com/anchoress

Streamlined, direct contact, easy to remember. (Well, easier than sandradodd.com/sca/aeanchoress)


I've moved camping links to a central location and will add more. Recommendations (or writings, or checklists, or photos of your camp or of medieval camps, or links to camping pages already out there) are welcome.
http://sandradodd.com/sca/camping