SCA involvement musings
I was inspired by cortejo's recent post about pondering her involvement with the SCA. http://cortejo.livejournal.com/800487.html (I've actually seen other people make similar posts or express similar things in real life, but her post seems to have captured the most comments and thus turn into the longest dialog.) I've been pondering my involvement for a few months too.
Basically I am not playing as much as I used to. Some of that is due to the fact that I have two children and just don't have the spare time that I did before I became a mom. Some of it is just bad timing. In the past couple of months, every time I've planned to go to an event, a meeting, or a practice, it has been canceled or postponed. And of course, since I'm not a childless woman who can just go on the new date or at the new time, it's meant that I haven't gone to things.
I meant it when I said that I can't remember when my peak/good old days in the SCA were. I have had some great times in the SCA, but there never was a time when everything was perfect and that I wish that I could stop the clock and just live in that moment for the rest of my SCA life. As time goes on things change both for the good and the bad: I am always learning new things, I'm always meeting new people, new people join the group and bring their energy. Yes, some good people end up leaving, but, on the other hand, some difficult people also end up dropping out of the SCA or moving onto other groups. I'm one of those people who thinks that change and newness are on the whole good things. The two issues that are going to determine how much and how little I play in the future are timing and child-centered-ness.
Timing isn't just about whether meetings are at 2:00 or 3:00 or 5:00, but also the time-space continuum and whether people with similar interests ever end up in Caldrithig in the same time frame. When I first joined the SCA, I got tired of hearing, "Oh you're interested in X. If only you'd been here when so-and-so was still playing or when activity Y was still running." They made it sound like the SCA had already peaked and I'd arrived at the party late. Over the years, I've had periods of connected-ness when I've done activities with others, like the year and a half that I went to dance practice and the 3 years I ran a bardic group. Those were great times, but it seems often that the things in which I am interested don't interest anyone else, and so I end up pursuing SCA interests on my own - which always struck me as odd since I thought the point of the SCA was to connect with people who supposedly shared your obscure interests.
One thing that struck me in the last week was the irony that when I first joined the canton there was a weekly Scriptorium. It even survived Genevieve moving to England, at least for a while. I never went because I wasn't interested in calligraphy or illumination at the time. Here is that dreaded timing issue again: now that I have decided that I need to learn to do calligraphy this summer to have a fifth entry for Pent, there is no Scriptorium and none of my SCA friends do calligraphy any more and once again, I'll be sitting at home by myself teaching myself calligraphy from a book. Timing really is everything.
The child-centred-ness is something which I've been thinking about for quite a while. I never posted about the hullabaloo that went around with the new child safety policies. Partially at the time, my biggest shock was not that they were introducing these rules, but that they weren't already mandatory. You cannot be involved with Guiding/Scouting, teach Sunday School, or volunteer at a school without a criminal record check. Anyone who finds that to be an invasion of his/her privacy clearly does not have any experience in working with children in any other formal capacity.
Beyond that, I am concerned about what the codification of the two-deep rule is going to do to our canton and barony. The two deep-rule is an excellent idea in theory. But much like the fact that I have been in violation of it a million time in my professional life, I would think that being in 100% compliance of it 100% of the time is going to be really hard in practice. My concern is that just like an autocrat can not have merchants or a marshal activity at their event if it is proving to be too big a pain, I worry that autocrats will simply decide not to have children's activities because it will be easier than having to deal with police checks and the two-deep rule.
I joined sca_parent and started feeling jealous when people started posting about how child-friendly their cantons/baronies were. It isn't that people around here actively dislike children. It's all the little decisions they make without thinking that serve as a bar to people with children playing on a more active basis. (I recently had a similar conversation with someone about whether there are any little decisions we make without realizing it that prevent people of other races, disabilities, etc from playing with us. Of course, we didn't have the answers sine we wouldn't know.) It's things like holding the first Newcomers Day we had in couple of years on Mother's Day. It annoyed me that I had to give up spending time with my daughter to go. We only got two newcomers that day. Would we have got more if we'd picked a better day? Who knows?, but it certainly wouldn't inspire someone with a family of their own to join (at least that year).
I was saddened to hear that Dame Sarra is moving. Aside from the fact that she is really nice and that she is somewhat of an inspiration for me (I was always amazed that she could juggle 3 kids and a full time job at two churches when I was struggling with 1 kid and a part-time position), Dame Sarra was one of the few people who used to volunteer to run children's activities, especially at Practicum. Children's activities always seem perennially disorganized. I have tried several times to volunteer. I am not one of those people who thinks that other people should entertain my children while I do nothing, so I've always been willing to take my turn. However, usually when I contact the coordinator and try to ask when I could volunteer and what I should do or bring, I am told that it is not organized yet. All too frequently it is not even organized the day of an event. I pointed out to a friend that we spend far more time and energy on the bar at events (how much will we stock, who will cover which shift, are they qualified?) than we do on children's activities. A friend pointed out that our events would fall apart if we ran marshal events like children's activities. Yes, there might be fighting today. Is anyone here a marshal? Okay - you are. Yes, well why don't you take the fighters outside and maybe find some list ropes and there you go.
I'm curious to see what happens to our events with the new rules. Twelfth Night 2006 was a watershed moment for the canton/barony in terms of children's activities. Caldrithig hosted and it was held in a church hall that was one room. I thought it was really child-friendly. There were no organized activities, but cascahawk brought a ton of toys and the children just played. It was in some ways exactly what people who say "Why do we even need children's activities? Can't parents just amuse their own children?" claim that they want. Except that afterward there was much complaining, by some people, about how annoying all the children were. It created the first division that I'd seen between people with children and people who believed that children should be seen but not heard. To compensate, since then we have seemed to have put the children's activities as far away from the adults as possible. If we are in the church, we put the children in the basement. If we are in a community centre, we put the children in a hall or around a corner. For a while, it seemed to keep the peace. But now we are supposed to have children's activities in places where there are good sight lines. Not to mention that since we now need two adults at all times, it is going to be much easier to get that second adult if you aren't downstairs or around a corner from all the action. I'm curious to see whether the children's table now gets put in an easily viewable position or whether it is just done away with (which might lead to another 12th Night 2006 moment.)
Am I insane? When I read the horrible article about the pedophile who was running children's A&S days at his farm, my second thought - after of course being disgusted that people like that prey on children and parents - was "Children's A&S days? What a cool idea" I wish our canton had enough people who would be interested in making a child-centered A&S afternoon happen maybe once every two months. It would be nice to teach kids some SCA skills so that they could find an interest or two of their own and as a friend of mine says "eventually take some ownership in the SCA themselves instead of it being a parent's hobby to which they are dragged."
Beyond that, I don't actually know what I want out of the SCA right now or what I wish existed.
Basically I am not playing as much as I used to. Some of that is due to the fact that I have two children and just don't have the spare time that I did before I became a mom. Some of it is just bad timing. In the past couple of months, every time I've planned to go to an event, a meeting, or a practice, it has been canceled or postponed. And of course, since I'm not a childless woman who can just go on the new date or at the new time, it's meant that I haven't gone to things.
I meant it when I said that I can't remember when my peak/good old days in the SCA were. I have had some great times in the SCA, but there never was a time when everything was perfect and that I wish that I could stop the clock and just live in that moment for the rest of my SCA life. As time goes on things change both for the good and the bad: I am always learning new things, I'm always meeting new people, new people join the group and bring their energy. Yes, some good people end up leaving, but, on the other hand, some difficult people also end up dropping out of the SCA or moving onto other groups. I'm one of those people who thinks that change and newness are on the whole good things. The two issues that are going to determine how much and how little I play in the future are timing and child-centered-ness.
Timing isn't just about whether meetings are at 2:00 or 3:00 or 5:00, but also the time-space continuum and whether people with similar interests ever end up in Caldrithig in the same time frame. When I first joined the SCA, I got tired of hearing, "Oh you're interested in X. If only you'd been here when so-and-so was still playing or when activity Y was still running." They made it sound like the SCA had already peaked and I'd arrived at the party late. Over the years, I've had periods of connected-ness when I've done activities with others, like the year and a half that I went to dance practice and the 3 years I ran a bardic group. Those were great times, but it seems often that the things in which I am interested don't interest anyone else, and so I end up pursuing SCA interests on my own - which always struck me as odd since I thought the point of the SCA was to connect with people who supposedly shared your obscure interests.
One thing that struck me in the last week was the irony that when I first joined the canton there was a weekly Scriptorium. It even survived Genevieve moving to England, at least for a while. I never went because I wasn't interested in calligraphy or illumination at the time. Here is that dreaded timing issue again: now that I have decided that I need to learn to do calligraphy this summer to have a fifth entry for Pent, there is no Scriptorium and none of my SCA friends do calligraphy any more and once again, I'll be sitting at home by myself teaching myself calligraphy from a book. Timing really is everything.
The child-centred-ness is something which I've been thinking about for quite a while. I never posted about the hullabaloo that went around with the new child safety policies. Partially at the time, my biggest shock was not that they were introducing these rules, but that they weren't already mandatory. You cannot be involved with Guiding/Scouting, teach Sunday School, or volunteer at a school without a criminal record check. Anyone who finds that to be an invasion of his/her privacy clearly does not have any experience in working with children in any other formal capacity.
Beyond that, I am concerned about what the codification of the two-deep rule is going to do to our canton and barony. The two deep-rule is an excellent idea in theory. But much like the fact that I have been in violation of it a million time in my professional life, I would think that being in 100% compliance of it 100% of the time is going to be really hard in practice. My concern is that just like an autocrat can not have merchants or a marshal activity at their event if it is proving to be too big a pain, I worry that autocrats will simply decide not to have children's activities because it will be easier than having to deal with police checks and the two-deep rule.
I joined sca_parent and started feeling jealous when people started posting about how child-friendly their cantons/baronies were. It isn't that people around here actively dislike children. It's all the little decisions they make without thinking that serve as a bar to people with children playing on a more active basis. (I recently had a similar conversation with someone about whether there are any little decisions we make without realizing it that prevent people of other races, disabilities, etc from playing with us. Of course, we didn't have the answers sine we wouldn't know.) It's things like holding the first Newcomers Day we had in couple of years on Mother's Day. It annoyed me that I had to give up spending time with my daughter to go. We only got two newcomers that day. Would we have got more if we'd picked a better day? Who knows?, but it certainly wouldn't inspire someone with a family of their own to join (at least that year).
I was saddened to hear that Dame Sarra is moving. Aside from the fact that she is really nice and that she is somewhat of an inspiration for me (I was always amazed that she could juggle 3 kids and a full time job at two churches when I was struggling with 1 kid and a part-time position), Dame Sarra was one of the few people who used to volunteer to run children's activities, especially at Practicum. Children's activities always seem perennially disorganized. I have tried several times to volunteer. I am not one of those people who thinks that other people should entertain my children while I do nothing, so I've always been willing to take my turn. However, usually when I contact the coordinator and try to ask when I could volunteer and what I should do or bring, I am told that it is not organized yet. All too frequently it is not even organized the day of an event. I pointed out to a friend that we spend far more time and energy on the bar at events (how much will we stock, who will cover which shift, are they qualified?) than we do on children's activities. A friend pointed out that our events would fall apart if we ran marshal events like children's activities. Yes, there might be fighting today. Is anyone here a marshal? Okay - you are. Yes, well why don't you take the fighters outside and maybe find some list ropes and there you go.
I'm curious to see what happens to our events with the new rules. Twelfth Night 2006 was a watershed moment for the canton/barony in terms of children's activities. Caldrithig hosted and it was held in a church hall that was one room. I thought it was really child-friendly. There were no organized activities, but cascahawk brought a ton of toys and the children just played. It was in some ways exactly what people who say "Why do we even need children's activities? Can't parents just amuse their own children?" claim that they want. Except that afterward there was much complaining, by some people, about how annoying all the children were. It created the first division that I'd seen between people with children and people who believed that children should be seen but not heard. To compensate, since then we have seemed to have put the children's activities as far away from the adults as possible. If we are in the church, we put the children in the basement. If we are in a community centre, we put the children in a hall or around a corner. For a while, it seemed to keep the peace. But now we are supposed to have children's activities in places where there are good sight lines. Not to mention that since we now need two adults at all times, it is going to be much easier to get that second adult if you aren't downstairs or around a corner from all the action. I'm curious to see whether the children's table now gets put in an easily viewable position or whether it is just done away with (which might lead to another 12th Night 2006 moment.)
Am I insane? When I read the horrible article about the pedophile who was running children's A&S days at his farm, my second thought - after of course being disgusted that people like that prey on children and parents - was "Children's A&S days? What a cool idea" I wish our canton had enough people who would be interested in making a child-centered A&S afternoon happen maybe once every two months. It would be nice to teach kids some SCA skills so that they could find an interest or two of their own and as a friend of mine says "eventually take some ownership in the SCA themselves instead of it being a parent's hobby to which they are dragged."
Beyond that, I don't actually know what I want out of the SCA right now or what I wish existed.