The Passage of Time.

.....TBT's planning of the Dragon's Laire Tapestry has definitely awakened a sense of history in Dragon's Laire, especially in myself. I guess that I hadn't realized just how long I've been playing around here in Dragon's Laire. Makes me feel old in some ways, and definitely nostalgic.

.....I came to something of an epiphany though in one regard when thinking about it all. When we started talking about transferring the history of Dragon's Laire onto the Tapestry, I was a little worried about reawakening some of the dark days of Dragon's Laire. Who really wants to relive the transgressions of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? But then the epiphany hit. There are several hundred (literally) players in Dragon's Laire today. Of all of those players there is only a very small handful who even took part in those dark days and experienced what happened. It is all ancient history with little to no bearing on what is happening now.

.....When it hit me there was something of a sense of relief in some ways. It meant that She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named no longer owns any part of what Dragon's Laire is today and that we really are free of her influence. Most who play now don't even know who she was, nor care.

.....But it is not all good. The flip side to the above is that a lot of the good things that happened are being forgotten as well. People who were an integral part of Dragon's Laire past are becoming small footnotes of history that are not even formally recorded in any historical archive. I think about people like Colonel Graham, who had an enormous impact on the Kingdom of An Tir. Go to a Dragon's Laire Fight Practice and ask the average attendee who Colonel Graham was and in most cases all you'll get is an inquisitive look and the question, 'Who is that?'

.....This has been difficult to reconcile in my mind. When TBT first started talking about the tapestry, I wondered in my mind how we were going to record people like this on the tapestry. Their impact was huge. Now I realize that the difficulty is not going to be because of their impact, the difficulty is going to come from the fact that many people who will be working on the tapestry will not even know who these people are and why they are so important to our history.

.....To me, this is a sad thing in some ways. But it also shows why things like the Dragon's Laire Tapestry are so important. We in Dragon's Laire have been neglectful of our history. This is an oversight that we need to learn how to overcome. Other branches around the Kingdom have wonderful editions of branch Grete Bokes, historical pieces of artwork, collectors of branch history. Dragon's Laire has very little. Our best collection of historical history, our Baronial petition, is fragmented at best.

.....This is not whining on my part. It is a reminder to myself. Over the past six months or so, I've been going through a lot of 'STUFF' that has accumulated in files and boxes. The urge has been to just dump it all as just so much trash. What I need to do instead is go through it and actually organize it. I have a lot of good stuff in there that would make a pretty good scrap book of Dragon's Laire history. Others in the Barony have good stuff as well. Wouldn't it be cool if we could actually pull it all together and create a nice scrapbook of Dragon's Laire history? Just wish I had a little more free time to take on the office of Grete Boke. I think that what I need to do is ask around and see if I can find someone with the time and inclination to actually take on this task. It is actually a worthy occupation.

.....This has become more important to me personally as I think on the past year and the people I've lost in my own life. Some very good friends of mine have passed on to the summer lands. People who were incredibly important to me and my SCA development have moved on or no longer play in the SCA. Colonel Graham taught me a lot of my early lessons on playing the game. THL Serena was an incredible person who gave me many lessons in compassion and generosity. THL Catelin, THL Inga, THL Luciana, and many others are who helped shaped the person I am today in the SCA. I think that it is important that they are remembered in some fashion. All these people, and many others, are directly and indirectly, the reasons why Dragon's Laire is what it is today. And say what you will, they bear some of the responsibility of why we are such the incredible branch we are today.

.....I'm glad that TBT is promoting the Baronial Tapestry. If we really use it to record Dragon's Laire history the way it should be recorded, this thing is going to be HUGE.

.....Also makes me want to go and track down people like Inga, Catelin, Luciana and ask them to go out for a drink with me. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.