More scrolls

And still more scrolls.

Another three scrolls complete. One of these three is for an assignment, the other two will go into the Big Book of Scroll Blanks For a Rainy Day. 

I had started these right before Fall AEcademy and painted these, and others, at the event. It continually surprises me that other scribes do not work on multiple scrolls at the same time. I keep explaining that it is more efficient: Mix up the ultramarine blue and paint all of the scrolls with one layer of it; by the time you finish the last scroll, the first one will be dry and you can put on a second coat or move to another color. Apparently other scribes only work on one scroll at a time.

Now, I can fully understand concentrating on one really, really complicated scroll, but for smaller, more simple, scrolls (such as the one on the far left, above) there is no excuse not to work on two or three at a time. One for your assignment and one, or more, for a rainy day. I am occasionally asked if I could take on an assignment a week or two before the event. If I have a private stash of blanks, I can "work a miracle" and produce a scroll right away. Also, if my Kingdom calls for blanks, or if a friend needs help with one of their assignments, they can call on the Candyman. [1]

At AEcademy, someone looked me in eye and told me that I shouldn't do any scroll blanks: all scrolls should be custom made for the person and that it's disrespectful to hand out a generic scroll. 

What?

The scroll, above, on the far left can be used for anyone's AoA scroll, regardless if I know anything about the recipient. It's nice to receive a scroll with art custom made for me. but I do not see any disrespect if I am given a scroll with a random image. It's the scroll text that should be custom written for the recipient. If it is an award. A tourney scroll will most likely never be custom made for the winner.... Well, you could hedge your bets and make one for Duke Maynard for the annual Summer's End Duke-Maynard-is-the-winner-for-the-umpteenth-year-in-a-row tourney. But, someone will be really disappointed if  his Grace doesn't compete that year.

Scroll blanks are a great way of building one's skills in illumination. I've done a few hundred and I attribute my current level of skill to all of the practice I got while making a buttload of scroll blanks. [2] If I only made scrolls if I had an assignment, I would not be half the scribe I am today. There are more illuminators than calligraphers. Logic tells us that the bottleneck will be finding a calligrapher with free time. If the shire, baronial and Kingdom signets have a stack of scroll blanks, they can be handed to calligraphers to complete when needed and we can eliminate the illumination bottleneck for tourneys and entry-level awards. 

Now, there are scribes who need to take weeks and months to make one scroll. But, if every scroll took months to paint, we wouldn't have enough scribes to produce the volume required. It's 1 week before Pennsic, five top tier scribes are busy trying to finish peerage scrolls. Everyone else is busy packing and doing their own assignments. Their Majesties discover that Lord Babar the Elephant will be at Pennsic: his first event in 3 years. Their Majesties want to induct him into the Noble Order of the Sycamore for his mad A&S skills [3] and no one knows when the next event he will attend. So, here are our options. 1) Induct him and tell him that the scroll is a work in progress. 2) Find an illuminator, wordsmith and a calligrapher to knock something at the last minute. 3) The Kingdom Signet reaches into the Big Book of Scroll Blanks For a Rainy Day, pulls out a nice blank and tracks down a wordsmith and a calligrapher. One third of the work is done.

Scroll blanks are good for every Kingdom, every Principality, every Barony and every Shire. They are good for every illuminator, every calligrapher and every signet. 

[1] First scroll blank is free.
[2] A buttload is a measure of volume equaling two hogsheads, or 108 imperial gallons (490 l) for ale or 126 imperial gallons (570 l) for wine.
[3] His skills do indeed pay the bills.

Rest in peace, my friend

A Eulogy

Today, we held the funeral service of Maestro Augusto Giuseppe da San Donato. I was asked to give a eulogy for my friend and I would like to share it with as many people as possible. I honestly did not know what to say until I stepped up to the podium, and I just started speaking. This is my best recollection of what I had said:

I met Joe 17 years ago (Monte's phone went off at that point with what sounded like Linus and Lucy.) Joe always wanted his own theme music. I met Joe almost 17 years ago. I was running a large and complicated event called Ice Dragon and Joe showed up to make sure that Colleen had not joined a cult. Once he saw that we weren't a cult, he wasn't satisfied with standing around watching. Joe and Colleen showed up the night before and helped move tables and chairs. Hang banners. Joe even went out and hung street signs. Joe and Colleen worked until well after midnight. The following morning, Joe was there with a snow shovel and a bucket of salt and he cleared away the snow so that no one would slip. From that day, Joe made the SCA his second home. Learning how our organization operated, becoming an officer and eventually the president of the Niagara County chapter. (I used that phrase for Joe's family, who were outnumbered 7 to 70 SCAdians) He made banner poles, pavilion poles. Found canvas for a new pavilion. Gates, trailers, fire rings. He fell in love with the SCA and made it his mission to make it better for everyone.  

That was Joe. 

Not only did he bring his skill and enthusiasm, he brought his network. We always said, "Joe knows a guy." Need someone who can fix an Edwardian stained glass windows because your Mom dropped a vacuum cleaner on it? Joe knew a guy. Need 200 pounds of rebar for a project? Joe knew a guy. Looking for a 30 year old bottle of scotch for that perfect birthday present that won't break the bank? Joe knew a guy.  

And we all knew Joe. He was our "guy". Dropped your keys down a storm drain? We knew a guy who would show up with a heavy fishing line and a magnet. Broken water pipe in the middle of the night? We knew a guy who would show up with tools to fix it, then help you with the clean up. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire and a 5 hour backlog at AAA? We knew a guy who would show up with a floor jack and an impact wrench. Need help tracking down a strange smell in your kitchen? We knew a guy who would sniff down that smell.  

And Joe knew us. We became part of his network. Someone looking for a musician who can play at a wedding at the last minute? Joe knew one of us. Someone looking for help with silk screening? Joe knew one of us. Need a roofer right away? Joe knew one of us. And Joe used his network to introduce his friends to new friends. That was Joe.

Joe could never let something stand as "good enough". It was never "good enough" for Joe. Over the years, that was a source of disagreement between us. If something broke, and we were on a deadline, I had no problem with using baling wire and duct tape to get it "fixed" enough so that last until a proper repair could be made. Joe hated that. He always said that if you don't do it right the first time, you will never go back and fix it properly later. That was Joe. 

 Joe could never leave something alone without trying to improve it. He was that way with his welding, woodworking and metal working. He was also that way with his friends. He tried to have a kind word of encouragement for almost everyone he met. Or, at least, a snarky comment to light a fire in the belly. He tried to see the best in almost everyone and tried to make people see it in themselves. 

I will grieve for the passing of my friend, but I will not let it diminish me. I know that I am a better person because I was a friend of Joe.

===============================

Dani said in her eulogy that when he was depressed, Joe would pine that if he died no one would care or show up. Over a hundred people showed up to the viewings and the service to say goodbye. I have been told that the news of his passing spread through that Facebook thing like a wildfire. SCAdians, absent for too many years, showed up to say goodbye. We will be holding a proper wake in a week and we are expecting a packed hall.

We have cried an ocean of tears for the unexpected, meaningless and unfair taking of our friend. But we will not let each other drown in our grief. We are united in the fact that we all knew a guy.

https://aethelmearcgazette.com/2017/10/31/in-memoriam-maestro-augusto-giuseppe-da-san-donato/

A look at all of the scrolls that Joe was blessed with.

How to Help the Heralds

We Need to Avoid Making Their Jobs More Difficult.

If you are a scribe, I highly recommend that you do this simple thing to help the heralds and signets. Print out your wording in an easy to read font. I use 18 point so that it can be read easily. And, at the top, list what the award is for and who is it for. Think of large courts, such as at Pennisc, War Practice, or Ice Dragon. If the signet needs to find one scroll out of 50, how long do you think it will take if there is nothing on the back of the scroll? However, if each scroll was marked in the same way, the signet can quickly search through and find the one scroll out of dozens that is needed. The scrolls can also be sorted quickly, if the Crown wishes to award all of the Keystones at once; then the Sycamores, etc. Also, if Their Majesties want to bring one person up out of sequence, the herald will be able to quickly find the corresponding scroll.

It takes a couple of extra seconds, and I am going to do this on all of the scrolls I do wording for.

How to Autocrat an Event

19146 Steps to Running a Decent Event.

On the 16th, last month, I autocrated my second Summer's End. We were up against AEthelmearc's Coronation which was being held at the other end of the Kingdom. The event went well, and even though many of the out-of-towners, who would normally never miss Summer's End, went to support our out-going and in-coming Royalty, we still managed not to lose any money.

As I am stuck on a conference call, and have nothing better to do, I thought that I would jot down a few points on how to autocrat an event.

Now, there are plenty of resources on the individual points of running an event: just do a Google search for "autocrat handbook". I wish to use this post to cover the finer points that these handbooks tend to gloss over.


1) Have a plan. If you've autocrated before, you should know everything that is required. If you've never done it before, have an experienced co-autocrat to mentor you. Have a plan for each item. Write down every item, when it will take place and who will be responsible for it or who will help you with it. Get a spiral notebook and start making notes. One page per event thing.

2) Have a backup plan. Things go wrong; make sure that you are ready to switch to plan 2. Not plan B: plan B implies that you will only have 26 plans. It's a week out from the event and the site's ovens are no longer working; what is plan 2? Your TW marshal just went in for back surgery; what is plan 3? You rented the site on the preferred date of Coronation; what is plan 4? It's started to rain and there isn't enough space for fighting and fencing to take place inside at the same time; what is plan 5? There are certain disasters that might kill your event, but make sure that the little things won't. Put your backup plans in your notebook on the same pages as the event thing. This will make it easier for you to find the backup plans if things go south. The day before the event, I was helping Master Charles of Alden mark out the thrown weapons range when the firefighters, of the hall we were renting, kicked off of our range because Mercyflight was coming in for a landing. We then found out that we couldn't be within 100m of the helipad. Plan 6 was to move everything to the other side of the back yard and set up well away from the helipad, just in case.

3) Get the best people to handle the individual events at your event. And by "best people" I mean people who you can work with and who can work with you. An event can only be a success if everyone is working together. If you have a theme, everyone needs to be on board with that theme. If you have to make last minute changes, you need people who can adjust their plans. If you are constantly butting heads with your feastocrat over little details, you picked the wrong feastocrat. I asked my feastocrat for a menu with one dish with bacon in it, and a veggie/gluten free option for both the sideboard and for feast. Patrick said, "no problem" and I left everything in his hands. If he raised an unreasonable stink about making allowances for people with dietary restrictions, I would have found someone else to cook.

4) DO NOT MICROMANAGE. Pick a staff and tell them what you want and let them take care of it. Make sure that you are kept in the loop but it is not your job to do their job if you have the right people. I told Patrick what I wanted for the feast and let him take care of all of the details. He picked a team to take care of the sideboard and all I needed to know was a general idea of what the menu was. My marshals let me know what they had planned and what they needed and I left them alone. I told the marshals and MoL that I wanted tourneys to start at 11 and end at 4 and I left them alone. I suggested to our Baron and Baroness that I would like court to start a 5 and they agreed and I let them organize the details. No one likes being micromanaged. Stay in the loop and leave your staff to do their jobs.

5) Be prepared to walk. Even with a small site, you will need to do a fair bit of walking. At Summer's End, I walked 19146 steps. If you physically cannot walk around that much, get yourself a deputy who can. You, as the autocrat, need to know what is going on. If something isn't working, or running late, by walking around, checking out all of the things, you can nudge things back into gear. If you see something wrong, or missing, you can fix it before it becomes a major problem. 


=================

As an addendum: the next event I autocrat; no feast or sideboard. I'm calling in some food trucks.  

Not trying to start a scribal war.

Far be it for me to cause trouble.

I started working on some more scroll blanks, today. Yes, more blanks FOR AETHELMEARC! I went through my folder of past designs and I picked out a few that I haven't done in a while, including this one, that I had done quite recently. Now, if y'all have been reading my blog, y'all may recognize this my award winning blog post which can be read here.

Shirin is Susa took my blank, colored it in and did the calligraphy on it for Baron Cormacc. As I had previously posted, I had intended on leaving the image un-colored, but Shirin colored it in and, let me be absolutely clear, did a fantastic job. So, Caleb, y'all might be saying, why are you doing this design again? Are you jealous of Shirin's work? Are you subtlety saying that *you* can to a better job? Are you trying to start scribal smack with this person you've never met before. Is this a passive-aggressive method of saying "how dare someone alter my work"?

First of all, I am not jealous: I am envious. There is a difference. Her calligraphy is awesome and I love the colors she used on my blank. 

Secondly, I think that I can do as good a job as she did, but I have different colors in my head and I want to see how my colors will look. 

I didn't paint in the scroll blank because I I had made a mistake when I inked it and thought that it wouldn't turn out if I had painted it. But she did a great job. So, I re-did the same design, only without the boo-boo and, if all goes well, I should have it painted this week. 

I am interested it seeing how it turns out.

Lastly, am I starting scribal smack? No. No, I am not. Shirin has inspired me to re-visit this blank. I'll post the finished version when I finish it and, with hope, I will receive a high-rez. copy of Baron Cormacc's scroll.

Weird things you find in medieval manuscripts.

Avast Ye Killer Egg!

This image is from L'estoire de Merlin, France ca. 1316; BL, Add 10292, fol. 213r. It shows a mounted knight doing something, jousting, poking, prodding, or whatever, an egg shaped... Horse? Yet another example of "I don't know what the artist was thinking". 

It could just be poor artistry skills. A lake of perspective drawing ability. Or, perhaps, the artist was trying to convey something more sinister.

And I helped!

Not what I intended, but it looks awesome.

Wow, this looks good. 

When I made the scroll, I left it just as a line drawing. Like the original. 

But, Shirin went the extra mile and painted it in and made it extra awesome. I love how the blue and white stripe sections look in the 'P'. In the language of my fellow Buffaloians: I got an assist when Wayne Gretzky shot it into the net.

That's all the hockey that I know. 

I'm glad that I had a part in making Baron Cormacc's day. This scroll is a perfect example of how scribes can work together to make something beautiful.