Arontius of Bygelswade

.....The Enhanced Drivers License arrived in the mail today. That is eleven calendar days after applying for it. That's rather quick. I shall put away the passport and use it to get across the border this weekend.

.....Although I have to say that I do not photograph well. That squinting at the camera while laughing made me like like I was not all together there. Add in the flushed face and I could have been at the local pub getting my picture taken after my seventh or eighth beer. :-) Oh, well, it'll have to do.

.....It keeps trying to snow. It's looking pretty steady at the moment actually. The latest forecasts call for a warm up slightly by the weekend, so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm aiming to take I-90 over Snoqualamie and then head north at Cle Elum and Wenatchee. We'll be in Florence, the Wonder Van. But Madrun has chains for her, so we should be all right if the worst should happen.

.....Need to finish reading through all the documentation. I'm actually going to enjoy my judging as the documentation I'm reading through is extremely thorough and very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing all of these items presented. Looks like a good year for KAS / KBC.

.....Actually, I'm more worried about travel to the Social tonight, Fight Practice tomorrow night, and then Business Meeting on Thursday night. Hope that people drive safe.

.....Wish I could skip on Thursday to finish packing. But that probably would not look very good. :-)

.....I'd take Thursday off of work if I could, but our NAVSEA sponsors are visiting us next week for a Program Review meeting. NMCI picked this week to have a systems meltdown. Access to our files and folders would turn off and on like demented Christmas Tree lights all day today. I managed to somehow finish the formal agenda. Still need to finish the Powerpoint Presentation though. Only two days left and a lot of information to gather. Sigh!

.....Have to remember to pack the Heraldry tonight. Someone wanted a consultation. Although Ian also e-mailed the list and said he'd be there. If the snow doesn't keep him home, and he does indeed show up, I think I'll push the client in his direction. Although I need to keep an eye on that so Ian doesn't overwhelm them with his ideas of what is right. He pretty much knows his stuff though.

.....Loading the car with a box of cobblers gear as well that Sir Fiach gave us over the weekend at Madrone's Arts & Sciences Championship. Looks like a show anvil and a bunch of shoe blanks in various mens and womens sizes. Pernell is a leather worker who specializes in shoes and so might be able to tell us if these will be useful to the hobbiest's around here.

.....Might want to get started with loading the car now. The falling snow is looking rather intense. I think I'll go and check the weather report again.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....That's kind of unusual for me. Maybe it really IS one of the harbingers of DOOM!!! The one that is scheduled just DAYS before my 44th birthday. :-)

.....Arrived home to a note from a disgruntled customer. They did NOT read the instructions at Ingasbo and went ahead throwing money in my direction for a circlet that was not in stock and would not be anytime soon. They were VERY put out when they received my e-mail to let them know that what they wanted they couldn't have. Demanded to know when they'd receive their refund. I made sure that happened immediately. Rude customers who don't read instructions are never fun.

.....But they tend to be balanced out by those who are actually pleasant. I had another customer, who again did not read the instructions before sending money my way. But politely asked if the circlet they wanted really was in stock and if so, how soon could they have it? A little politeness goes a long way really. It is rather amazing. I went ahead and gave them a deal on a larger circlet of the same design I had in my completed bin. They will be getting it for the same price as the smaller size. That's definitely what you get for being polite immediately following a dork. :-)

.....Responded to a handful of e-mails. Anne reminded me that I should post a note about the 'tour' TBT and I want to do next Wednesday of the June Faire site and our lay-out tweaks.

.....Am getting excited about KAS / KBC. Makes me wish I were the Autocrat again. :-) But that would take away from Oliver's fun, and I certainly don't want to do that. :-) But even with all the planning foo surrounding the event, it'll end up being smooth and fun. I like that about Dragon's Laire. :-)

.....Then there's Ian. Sigh! A good person and a hard worker. But a maniac in all ways dealing with Society. No secret either, I've told that to him in person on many occasions. :-) But I do my best to find things for him to do. The latest being a number of heraldry projects for awards that TBT and I would like to add to the Baronial awards listing. My e-mail inbox was inundated with a plethora of ideas from him today. Any other Monday I would have run screaming. But I actually took some time to answer his latest couple of e-mails tonight. He was happy, and then immediately refilled the e-mail inbox. :-)

.....But the biggest chunk of time this evening was spent on the silk banner. TBT and I stretched it on the frame yesterday. This evening I took the gouda tipped bottle of black and went over all of the outlines. I was a little wobbly at first, but the lines slowly started improving as I started to get used to the flow of the gouda from the tip. From a distance it doesn't look half bad. Don't get too close though or the wobbly lines will hypnotize you. :-)

.....TBT would have done a much better job with it, but I really want to learn how to do this right. I have visions of many more banners in our future.

.....TBT will go over the lines once the gouda dries to make sure that I did indeed make all the proper connections. We might be actually painting sometime this week. That would be way cool.

.....The banner is looking very Victorian in nature. It has the Kingdom's Or and Argent Checky, then the Gules and Sable of the Barony. Then I took elements of my device and TBT penciled them on the remainder. The Python is very stylized Anglo-Saxon. But the winged cat heads look like they came from the '60's. :-) It was my practice piece and it will be a banner flying at May Crown, so I'm not going to whine. :-)

.....But in my mind though I was seeing the next banner take shape. The Python on it will be very 1350. I might put a seme of Quill Pens around it, a la The Black Prince. It looks cool in my mind, but will have to see it on paper.

.....I think that the next one will have the Team Haggis badge on it as well, between the Baronial Colours and the personal device elements. I'll have to make the Winged Sheep a lot more buff though to fit in with the device elements.

.....Am actually contemplating a tweak to my personal device. I've never been happy with the winged cat in the base. It looks cool on its own, but in conjunction with the Python it just makes the whole thing look too 'busy'. I know, think heraldically, not artistically. But still...

.....Just don't know if I want to run the heraldic gauntlet again though. They are a tough crowd. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....It wasn't much of a fight at work. Code 360 went to the Mid-Level Boss and the Project Manager and asked if I could come over for a period of six weeks. To which they were promptly told, 'No'. I was a little surprised at this myself. I just finished a big Project. The next one is healthily beyond the horizon (as in next year). Now would have been the perfect time for me to be doing this stand-in. But the answer was 'No, he is busy. Go find someone else.'

.....No one is quite sure why. There are a limited number of Planning Managers who are qualified, so Code 360 is scrambling to see if they can find, or train up, a replacement for the guy traveling to Guam later in September. They haven't quite given up on me (my desk in Code 360 is still in place and has my name card still on it). But I may have to do some interesting gymnastics to join them next year after the next, and last, big Project concludes.

.....This week has definitely been a week of 'catch up'. We finally squared away the EIF for Crown Council last week and scrambled to get some copy put together this week for inclusion in the October issue of The Crier. THL Godith is a very nice person, she saved some space and let us have a little extra time to get the copy to her. But we did manage to make it and now Talia has a little breathing room to get information from Their Majesties for inclusion in next months more comprehensive copy.

.....Read with interest some writing TBT did about her early peerage influences, good and bad. Thinking back to my early days in the SCA, I seem to recall more positive interactions than negative. My early views on the Knighthood were shaped primarily by people like Sir Richard. Someone for whom courteous interaction and poetry was as important as his fighting prowess. I always held his personality in awe and he became my example of what a chivalric person did and how they acted. I can't think of a single action he did or word he said that made me doubt him.

.....Another early influence was Her Excellency Amanda Kendal. She lived in her own plane of existence and always has. That sounds like an indictment of some type, but is not meant as such. To my observation it always seemed that no matter what was happening around her, no matter how chaotic or crazy the work revolved, she flowed through it as if it wasn't there or didn't matter. She just 'was'. She has always had an amazing ability to approach someone and create around them a bubble whereas the object of her attention was the center of her universe. Like I said it is an amazing ability. Some may question her holding the Coronet of Lion's Gate as long as she did. But anyone who had any kind of interaction with her could explain to you exactly why she is held in such awe.

.....I wouldn't presume to say that I've tried to model my own SCA existence around these two people, no matter their influence on me. But I can say that whenever I've had a difficult time or difficult decision to make in the SCA, I do my best to think 'what would Sir Richard do here' or 'what would Her Excellency Amanda say to this person there'. It hasn't always brought about a solution, but it has helped.

.....It is the people we meet in the SCA who have had the greatest impact of course. You can talk all you want about the ambiance of an encampment, the smell of bardic fires, the feel of a linen tunic on your skin. But it is the actions and the words of the people around you that you remember the most for making your heart skip a beat, or the hairs on the back of your neck rise in little goosebumps. Those are really what bring me back for more in the SCA.

.....The memories are pretty intense actually. I remember the day I witnessed TBT walk into the Combined Court at Estrella in her white Elizabethan. The hush that fell on the crowd. The dust shadows that seemed to part around her as she glided across the floor to the An Tir Throne.

.....Several Crown Tournaments roll together as the two finalists approach the eric. The heralds reading the rolls of the past kings of An Tir and the deeds of the fighter that was about to enter combat. I remember a couple of times I found myself holding my breath as the names were read.

.....Lots and lots of memories of the people in the SCA who influenced and continue to influence my thoughts even today. I can think back to those times that were harsh and those people who were unfriendly. But I can honestly say that they are less of an influence on me than those who have made an impact for the positive. I think in that regard I have been a very lucky person.

.....Have to go and get my heraldry all sorted out. Several people want to consult tonight and I said I would bring my books with me. Let's see how really rusty I am. :-) I think that I'll ask Caius about setting up a Heraldry Consultation Night sometime in September. I think people are hungry to get moving on some of their own heraldry again.

.....I wonder how many will show up, actually. The soggy weather may keep many at home. I'm starting to be grateful that Lobelia is coming to Crown with us this weekend. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....Hmmm, was Wednesday successful? I am not entirely sure. But it's almost done now. :-)

.....Finally finished wrapping the presents this morning first thing. They are now sitting proudly beneath the tree, after having been 'professionally' sorted and organized at least once by Rhys. :-) I'm sure that they'll be reorganized at least one more time between now and Christmas morning. How do I know this you ask? Because even *I* have noticed that the smaller presents can not be seen behind the larger ones, and you MUST have a commanding view of ALL the presents under your care! :-)

.....Started up some laundry, picked up the dishes and loaded the dishwasher and then futzed around on the computer for a while killing a little time before having to go and pick up Mom for our shopping excursion.

.....At first glance Mom's apartment was in utter chaos. The living room looked like a disaster area. I was immediately dismayed. But then Mom pointed out that she had cleaned out the kitchen and cleared the dining room wall in preparation for bookcases. Hence the piles of, mainly books, all over the living room floor. O.K., I was a little less dismayed, but still on the defensive.

.....Once the dead furniture was removed from the living room it looked a little better. I was surprised though at the crowds of people at the dump. Where do all these people live? And why were they at the dump two days BEFORE Christmas? Ponderances of life indeed!

.....Shopping at Fred Meyers. The crowds were heavy but not torturous, so still negotiable. Mom does not like heavy crowds, so she was definitely in grumble mode. But she was also determined to make this happen, so she kept moving. I followed for a while and then started wandering on my own. Found one additional present for TBT and Rhys. Which will have to be wrapped tomorrow sometime.

.....Did a little heraldry research when I returned home. Madrun had her device returned and I was looking at a couple of alternative suggestions to help get her device passed. I found one I think will work pretty good, and it passed the initial Madrun test. At least she sounded positive when she saw it later in the evening. :-)

.....It seemed to be a day heraldry in a couple of areas today as I was reminded by a couple of sources that the SCA is taking another look at their rules of heraldry with an eye at revamping the system. This is problematic and 'fraught with peril' (tm) as far as I'm concerned.

.....Consider:
* How do you deal with grandfathered heraldry? (i.e. is it fair to allow 'illegal under the current rules' heraldry?)
* How do you deal with the fact that we work to English Heraldry rules when it is a Japanese persona submitting it (and similar)?
* The evolution of heraldry spans SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS with the time period of the SCA culture. At what year do you draw the line to say 'before is good' and 'ahead is bad'?

.....and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I may dabble in SCA heraldry, but I'm glad that I'm no longer an SCA Heraldry Wonk. I'll just admire it from afar. Although, now that I'm thinking about it I'd better get off my rear and register my rampant lamb on gules moneybag badge whilst I have the opportunity. Team Haggis will need it some day...

.....Acclimatizing was a good idea for the hammered dulcimer. The strings are starting to keep in tune to each other. Huzzah!

.....More Tolkien was read. But not much else actually was done today. My third stanza did not get written. Where is the world did the day go anyway?! It's already 8PM?! Ack!

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....I was reading the comments posted in the Beloved Tamm's poling this week on heraldry and thinking of my own history with the heralds. It took me over five years to get my name and device passed. If you look at my entry in the An Tir Order of Precedence you'll see a litany of names that failed along the way. It was a very frustrating process for me. Part of it was my own doing, the basis of the name I wanted started out as the name for a roll playing character. So I had handicapped myself from the start. But having lived through all the aspects of the heraldic process, I can certainly agree that it can be a marathon game of 'Chutes and Ladders' where every two or three steps forward invariably leads to a slide backwards at some points. The history of my base name and device is on the Dragon's Laire Baronial web-site. It's a useful tool in what not to do in heraldry.

.....But I would temper that to a degree. Once I started understanding heraldry I actually began to enjoy it. Not the bureaucratic nonsense that the SCA puts into the process, but the heraldry itself. The art of heraldry can be very beautiful. I also find myself drawn to the complexity involved in the legitimate rules process. It can make the process interesting and the final product that much more sacred to the user. Because it is an expression of the person, another variation of the name, it becomes something more that simply artwork or letters on a page. The device seen on my L.J. entries is not my primary device, it is a secondary. I ended up enjoying heraldry so much that I have two registered names, a device and two badges. I was the Dragon's Laire Book Herald for about four years and actually enjoyed quite a bit of it. But those are different topics. :-)

.....I think what makes the process the most frustrating in the SCA is the part that is the most difficult to correct, the human factor.

.....There is a certain amount of arbitrariness to what names and devices pass in one month as opposed to the next. The rules of heraldry are complex, on purpose. If you do any reading on the history of heraldry you quickly find out that heralds in period protected their profession because it was their livelihood, it was how they put food on their table. If any Lord Henry or Lady Anne could understand the rules behind what could and could not go into the creation of a device, why would anyone hire them? Over time that bred a certain amount of arrogance amongst those for whom heraldry was a profession.

.....If you look at the SCA heraldic community, it is a rather close knit one. They are geeks. And I say that with a smile as I count myself among them. In my world, that title is a compliment. But because of the geekiness involved, there is a certain amount of isolation that happens over time. They speak their own language, understandable only (for the most part) by those amongst their heraldic family. I think that this isolation makes it difficult at times for those on the outside to communicate well with them. Hence at least one factor in the frustration level in those for whom heraldry is not their hobby.

.....That isolation also helps foster at least a little bit of the arrogance that I mentioned earlier. In some cases it becomes a 'you could never understand the rules as well as I because you haven't studied them for as long as I'. I see this kind of arrogance at work a lot amongst the engineers who are degreed at the Shipyard. If you don't have that diploma, how can you be as smart as they? :-) This brand of arrogance is seen sometimes amongst the heraldic community. It also makes communication difficult.

.....I remember attending a meeting once of the An Tir heralds. It was a monthly meeting where all the submissions collected over the past month or so were reviewed. They either passed the review and put into a pile for submission to Society, or comments on why they shouldn't be passed on to Society were collected for the rejection letter. What struck me at the meeting was the arrogance. There were many occasions where individual items were ridiculed for bad form, bad artwork, bad use of rules. I really don't think that they realized what they were doing, or even how they sounded. They were a group of geeks that were geeking out on heraldry. But that one meeting really soured my taste for the process. It really reminded me of the Constabulary, whose arrogance and attitude brought it down in the end.

.....Of course I'm generalizing here, I know many, many incredibly nice and hard working heralds who would be horrified if they realized that there was a level of snarkiness involved in SCA heraldry. So take this all with a little caution. :-)

.....I'm not sure that there really is an easy fix to SCA heraldry. Like I mentioned earlier, heraldry is complicated on purpose. The Society itself makes it more so by allowing so many different cultures and such a wide span of time to inject itself into that process. I would hate to see the process 'dumbed down' any. I think in the end it would cheapen the results. The College of Heralds IS working on at least streamlining itself. I'm rather excited to see the online process come up to speed. Some day it could be just a few months of processing to have a registered name and device instead of many months.

.....I suppose another factor in this is the 'Victorian Era' aspect of the SCA. We continually talk about striving to make and do things from a 'period point-of-view', but in reality the things that really draw a large number of us to the SCA, i.e. the chivalry, honour, noblesse oblige, fealty, etc., really have very little to do with things 'in period', They are very Victorian views of the Middle Ages. I think that this applies to heraldry as well. Period heraldry is rather simple in nature. People in the SCA want their devices to really be aspects of themselves as well as tell a story. It is a deeply personal representation of who they are. This also creates a conflict. As a hobby herald without the years of training associated with the heralds of England, how do you negotiate the rules to help your client create something that both lives to a 'period' set of rules, but also appeals to the desires of the client? Very difficult at best.

.....I'm not sure that there is any real solution to relieving the frustration associated with heraldic submissions. Hope I didn't frustrate anyone with my meandering thoughts on a Saturday morning. :-)

.....Have a good day all. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....Back in the '90's when heraldry was new to me and I was excited as hell to get my heraldry all passed, I worked on a badge. The original concept was a silver quill pen on a red flame. There was a conflict though with some other similar badge and so, after consulting with THL Maryn Grey, I put the silver quill pen on a blue flame and it passed quickly through the College of Heralds.

.....At the time I was totally unaware of what the Bluefeather Clan was. Later when I WAS introduced to a number of their group, I didn't think much of it. Don't get me wrong, I have a number of friends who are members of the Bluefeather Clan. But I never counted myself as a member of their clan. And I never made any connections between my badge and their clan.

.....Well, earlier this year I start getting teased mercilessly by THE Royal Peer (Hwolf) and Master Ljotr about the 'Blue Feather Badge' that I seem to be proudly displaying in Lobelia. I laughed at them at first and STILL didn't think that it was a big deal. THEN, several others came up to me (mostly in private) and expressed their own thoughts on the matter. That being that when several of them saw the badge for the first time they thought themselves that I might be claiming space in the Bluefeather Clan.

.....This caught me totally by surprize. I have a difficult enough time relating to women without them having to even consider this line of thought. :-) So, after much consideration, this badge is about to be retired. All copies are about to hit the shredder. But it is not all bad news. It means more space in my heraldic allotment to pass something new! :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.