Drive-by Posting: A Note From the Cleftlands
As many of my friends head off to grand Pennsic, a SCAdian tale...
Amidst my mail, notes from medical societies, issues of scientific journals, etc., there was a palm-sized paper envelope, hand-addressed to me. The first unusual bit was a celtic-dragon device on the seal on the back. And the second was a return address from Cleveland which I did not recognize. I shuffled through my mental address book to try to remember -- did I know anyone from the AMA in Cleveland? Any old friends from medical school or college classes past? Who were M. Gallogly and T. Miller?
- And then recognition hit. M. Gallogly was Molly Gallogly, a fellow MD/PhD student at Case Western -- and the reigning sovereign Queen of all the Middle Kingdom of the SCA.
HRM Noelle in Court
(from the Midrealm web page) HRM Noelle (far let) with the
Case Western Reserve University
MSTP Entering Class of 2001
Some months ago, in Francis Collins and Alaric le Fevre, I told the story of Tim Miller, graduate student in Pharmacology, researcher in Cystic Fibrosis -- and heir by right of arms to the Dragon Throne of the Midrealm, the 3rd oldest Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the SCAdian throne to which my home and my loyalty belong. The idea that our SCAdian monarch was also a fellow biomedical researcher was, to me, pretty dang cool. :-)
I found out just a few weeks before that his Lady, Her Royal Majesty Noelle La Chauciere, the SCA Middle Kingdom's 71st Queen of Love and Beauty, is not only herself *also* a current graduate student in Pharmacology, she's a fellow of the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. She's not only a fellow grad student in the biosciences, she's an MSTP like resonance42 and mdrnprometheus and me.
I honestly hadn't expected her to ever reply when I had written her, many weeks before, written her simply to say how neat and inspiring I thought it was she juggled life as a graduate-phase MSTP with her service as our Crown. The Crowns in the SCA, far from being mere figureheads, are instead the buck-stops-here chief executives of the entire Kingdom, and the Midrealm is one of the Knowne World's largest. The Crowns pretty much, ultimately, decide *everything*, from awards and promotions to appointments and banishments. They have the ultimate authority within the bounds of the Kingdom law -- and they can change *that* on their own authority as well. With the power and the responsibility for almost everything, a veritable blizzard of correspondence and a horde of petitioners finds their way to their door. Not to mention travelling to events all across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, almost every weekend. And in the case of HRM Alaric and Noelle, the responsibilities of PhD life as well. The pile of things they are *required* to deal with -- much of it immediately, and much of it unpleasant -- must be tremendous. From my own experiences juggling a national officer's hat in other realms, I can definately sympathize, and my respect for the brave folks who voluntarily take up the mantle of a Kingdom level office -- or higher! -- abounds. Which is why I honestly never expected a reply back from Her Majesty, who surely had far more important things that had to be done. I certainly didn't expect a longish personal reply. A longish handwritten reply...
The contents of her note were lengthy, gracious and kind. The fact she took the time to write back at all was a very happy surprise, especially to someone like me who sits about sixty zillion levels below the Crown. In a Kingdom filled with Duchesses, Counts, Knights, Baronesses, Masters, members of a dozen different Orders, I'm about as ordinary a commoner as one might find in the SCA. I'm, quite simply within the great pagent of the SCA, an anonymous bloke. I sing and dance with marvelous and kind folks, I pick things up and put them down and do whatever else the very nice Cynnabar event Autocrats ask me to do -- I'm nobody special at all. So you have to imagine I was pretty darned stunned to get a reply -- a longish personal reply -- from Her Majesty herself, and a handwritten one at that. Heck, I couldn't even manage a handwritten note *to* Her Majesty in the first place, going for the far faster (and not quite period) printed page. She surely has a billion things to do -- especially running up to the march of the Midrealm Alliance at Pennsic. She runs the whole darn Kingdom -- is gearing up to lead an alliance of multiple Kingdoms -- and has a thesis to pursue, to boot. Yet she took the time to write back to me, who basically is as unimportant, big-picture speaking, as it is possible to get in the SCA. That's just really, really cool.
I certainly won't be able to take up her very kind invitation to come to the bardic events at Midrealm Royal this year, not with the final rush of thesis writing and preparing to return to wards. I certainly will not get a chance to take up sword or rapier or song in her service during her current reign; I envy those of you, setting off soon to Pennsic who will. But long after she sets down Her crown this fall in the Barony of Middle Marches, she and resonance42 and mdrnprometheus and all the rest of us, we few, we happy few, will remain comrades and colleagues in all that told in A Quarter-Century Gift. Long after the end of Her reign, all of us will march together in that world crossing labs and wards and activist floors, that world right at the tip of the spear. Long after she ceases to be Queen, she'll still be the kind of Lady who would find the time to write back to a ordinary bloke a billion levels below her. Today, she is my Queen; tomorrow, she'll be a fellow comrade in arms. And I'm humbled and honored to have the chance to march with her, today, and beyond.
- See also Queen's Counsel.