.....I'm rather sleepy today for some reason. I was last evening as well. The weekend demands do not look incredibly intense, so maybe I can catch up on my sleeping a little bit.

.....Last night we were visited by the three ghosts of....hmm, wrong story. :-) We were, however, visited by three people who wanted to either drop off stuff, talk or otherwise catch up on things. Actually, something of a rare occurrence.

.....Gwen stopped by first. We chewed on her copy for the Baronial Picnic this summer. It already looked good, but as I like lots of details in what I read, I added stuff for her. She can always edit it away if she so chooses. We talked about the largesse bags for a while and whether or not the Barony would do the next set or not. I am encouraging not as this summer is going to be supremely hectic for all of us, considering that we have the expanded picnic, the Huntsman's Challenge, and then September Crown to work towards.

.....We also talked about the one entry Arts & Sciences / Bardic / Scholar Championship concept the Barony started implementing this year. The more we work on it, the more exciting it actually becomes. I still want to sit down with Madrun and TBT and wade through the Bardic portion. I'm very much a proponent of adding a section emphasizing the basics: i.e. for a musical piece the Challenger would have to run through a series of standard drills or equivalent to prove their basic musical acumen (scales, musical notation, basic musical theory, etc.). This might take the place of the progression portion of the 'object' entry. But that is a very preliminary thought. More to follow.

.....I'm starting to get excited about a Bardic entry. I was pulling out books this week on Morris dancing with the thought of performing one. A Morris Dance would require quite a bit of research, more so than say a recorder performance. But I'd also been thinking that it is about time a Recorder Consort come back to play in the Barony. If the Single Entry is a spring board for some music, maybe we can continue the music for dedicated performances at Yule or something. A dedicated goal always helps regular practices stay regular. :-)

.....Sometime during Gwen's visit Conchobar stopped by with the second largesse bag completed by Eilidh. It was nicely done. I thought all the bags turned out rather nice, and were very much reflections of the person working on them. No two of them looked alike and I thought that to be a good thing as some of them really 'popped' from the individuality put into them. Elen's bags are especially intricate and look really good. Although I'm partial to the bag that TBT is working. Yeah, I'm biased. :-)

.....Madrun is, when she has the time, going to put together a bag for me to work on without a due date. I actually had fun working the small one I received from TBT some four or so years ago. It's a great way to keep the hands busy during meetings, gatherings and such.

.....Our Inga of Dragon's Laire showed up a short time later, just as Gwen was leaving. She had more Inkle Weaving done by Adena to put into the largesse pile. She also wanted to get some feedback from TBT on the largesse bag she was working. Hers looked great as well. Some elaborate outlining in many colors with definite plans for the interior of the beast. I think we almost have her convinced to sign up to Live Journal as well. :-)

.....Tonight is the new Fight Practice day and time. From 6PM to 8PM at the OSSC for the next handful of weeks, before we move Fight Practice back to the VFW Hall. It'll be interesting to see if a new day or time helps with the numbers at all. I'm mulling over whether I want to go or not. I suppose I'd better decide in a hurry.

.....The June Faire Board meeting of Tuesday night was interesting in another regard. I was more of a spectator than someone on the ground floor, and it was an interesting viewpoint from the perspective of someone who has been actively participating in June Faire for over twenty years now. On several occasions I really found myself just on the verge of saying, 'We tried that at this June Faire and it didn't work very well because of X.' Yes, there it was, Old Timers Disease. I do have to say though that I managed to not let my mouth betray me for the most part. What I did do was whenever the thought came out I would write it down so that I could think about it for a while. If it was worthy of mentioning, I'll make a note and mention it to Madrun or Magdalena. If it really isn't applicable, I'll just forget it. As it was, I did trip over myself at least once. The road signs. The road signs were a big deal the last couple of years we were at Frank Raab Park, then they sort of faded away. I mentioned that we'd done signs in the past and to check and see if we had any left in storage (they might have all been tossed long ago). It is always better for the group to at least talk it through. What might not have worked ten or twenty years ago might work very well now. Like I said, interesting perspective. And really, I can do without the eye roll that invariably comes from the listeners when an old timer actually does say, 'We used to do that and....'. :-)

.....I wish more people would come back to Live Journal. Although I do understand the appeal of Facebook. I am not in love with its fast pace and crowded atmosphere though. It could be the Friends List I have though. I have a handful of highly political people on it. Some of whom have no hesitation in putting out some of the most outrageous stuff. Usually I just ignore it, but some of the time it just catches me for some reason. I don't know why. Although I learned my lesson in trying to correct a highly rabid person. He mis-quoted President Washington (a mis-quote that is all over the internet) and I sent him a note with the correct quote. He took it as an attack on his political position and I received a two page reply of vitriol. I just deleted it and took him off my list. Several others are nearing that same point.

.....Someone posted a seriously inflammatory image on Raphaella's Facebook page yesterday and I had to think seriously about whether or not it was time to clean house on my Facebook account to make sure I don't have 'friends' on there who would do that sort of thing. In the end though I stuck to my timeline. But from now on people only get one chance with me. I don't mind viewpoints I find unpleasant. But when used to bludgeon me I call foul and clean up begins.

.....Tomorrow the Mid Level Boss goes away on leave for a week and a half. I was put in charge for the time he was away. Usually he puts one of the Execution Managers in that spot. But it does mean I can't call in sick tomorrow and make it a three day weekend like I was kind of thinking of doing. :-) But all of us in the office are on leave next Thursday and Friday. There is a large scale security drill happening over the next week and it's been advised to take leave if possible. No one needed to ask me twice. :-)

.....If I want to go to Fight Practice, I suppose I'd better start pulling myself together.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....Last night Her Excellency Brighid made an impassioned plea for Largesse for both Barony and Kingdom. I am personally a little gunshy these days on that particular subject, especially when I started thinking about sticking my toe in that proverbial pond again.

.....Sometime around 2000, lasting for about four reigns or so, I would give a set of dragon circlets. Usually this consisted of four narrow circlets and four extra wide circlets, all in a dragon pattern (for Dragon's Laire of course). There was a plea for largesse from the Crown at the time and when I asked, Master Ralg also thought it would be a good idea.

.....So, as I said, for four reigns, a new set of circlets would be made and submitted. I don't think that they ever went to the Crown direct, usually they went to a largesse coordinator or other member of the Crown's personal staff. I never received a 'thank you' from the Crown. But I also never expected one either. I just thought of it as a contribution to help them out.

.....Fast forward a few years to a time when Mastress Gwenllyn started with her massive pottery largesse campaign. Her gifts of largesse were greatly appreciated and I noticed that she received a lot of praise and public thank-yous for her work. That was when I started suspecting something was amiss. But I still didn't say much until Gwen started pushing at others around her to start producing largesse for the Kingdom. I mentioned to her at that time that I DID my part at largesse production, but wasn't sure if the Crown even knew.

.....Well, you all know Mistress Gwen, she was off on a mission at that point and started asking people what was up. Were my gifts of largesse being recieved? Were they appreciated? And that is when we learned the answer. Apparently, when Crowns received the circlets, they were put with the rest of the largesse, but mainly they were made to disappear. This was due to the fact that when they were given as gifts, many people took them as a symbol that they were being given Court Baronies, even if they were just being given as generic gifts.

.....So, even though a few were given out, most generally disappeared. I was quite embarrassed. This is a good lesson on why bad things can happen when everyone is doing their best to be 'polite'. Sometimes the best policy really is to be honest. If someone had told me that these were not wanted, and the reason why, I would have been good with that. Or more importantly I wouldn't have wasted so much time, energy and expense.

.....And just thinking of the waste. Averaging to four narrow circlets (which sell at $32 each) and four extra wide (which sell at $46 each), that is $312 worth of merchandise for each reign for a total of $1,248. Each circlet takes approximately an hour to complete from start to finish for a total of 32 production hours.

.....I guess the take away lesson here is to take time to get honest information up front before starting any kind of largesse making mission. Talk to the right people. Making largesse to help out the kingdom is a good thing, so not expecting reward or thanks is a good thing. But make sure you are not getting recognition because the Crown is overwhelmed with largesse and not because they are figuring a discrete way to get rid of what you've given.

.....Largesse made by An Tir is pretty cool stuff. For July Coronation a couple of years ago, I received a nice pile of pretty cool stuff. Most of which was distributed amongst my autocrat team. And it was greatly appreciated. So the Crown definitely needs and desires a great deal of it.

.....Don't let this entry deter your largesse making mission. Just a musing on my part. I was thinking last night that I could make some of my etched bracelets for largesse. But you can bet I'm going to find out if they will actually be wanted BEFORE I turn them over to the Kingdom. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.