[Artemisia] Reasons to Volunteer??? (feeble attempt at humor plus arant)

[Allen Hall]

VIVAT!  VIVAT!!  VIVAT!!

-Corisande

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Catherine Helm-Clark" <no1home at onewest.net>
To: <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 4:22 PM
Subject: [Artemisia] Reasons to Volunteer??? (feeble attempt at humor plus 
arant)


>I will warn you all now that it's a very very very Grumpy Therasia  today, 
>so while I know I should resist grumping all over the  following, since I 
>know it is sent to encourage us all to do a good  and very desirable thing, 
>of while I heartily approve, my Inner  Curmudgeon has taken over my fingers 
>and I just can't help myself...
>
>> Greetings most noble populace of Artemisia,
>> Considering Volunteering at Estrella this year? Still considering  going 
>> to Estrella this year? Here is a top ten list of why you  should go to 
>> Estella War this year and, of course do some  volunteering while you are 
>> there.
>>
>> 10. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you 
>> nothing that you have received - only what you have given.
>
> There's this hallucination I have every now and then when I think I'm 
> someone called Adj. Prof. Helm-Clark at this strange place called a 
> university - which doesn't at all resemble what I know a univeristy  to 
> be, like the one at Wien, where I visited once and heard the  learned 
> Doctors of Philosophy and Divines of the Church lecture from  the pulpit 
> of the Karlskirche about those realms of learning which  Albertus Magnus 
> from Melk calls the Ars Liberalis.
>
> But in this hallunication I have, Prof. Helm-Clark says quite 
> emphatically that the above statement numbered ten (which I think  should 
> be denoted in the more familiar Roman system as x) is most  certainly 
> refuted by the first and second laws of thermodynamics -  not to mention 
> the law of mass balance...
>
>> 9. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
>
> Actually, it depends on who is doing the accounting...
>
>> 8. With a sweet tongue and kindness, you can drag an elephant by a  hair.
>
> ???!!!?????  Oh come on!  Why the bleep should I want to even try the 
> above suggested method of moving an elephant when everyone knows the  way 
> to move an elephant such that it will willingly follow you  wherever you 
> lead is with an open jar of peanut butter???
>
>> 7. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens  can 
>> change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
>
> Now this is only one position possible out of three in answer to the 
> ongoing debate as to who is right:  B. F. Skinner (there is no true  free 
> will since all our thoughts and actions are the consequence of 
> pre-existing conditions of causality) or Nietsche (one person - the 
> "uber-mensch" - is the only agency that can change the world).  While  the 
> above statement represents the middle ground (and in my humble  opinion is 
> the closest to the correct position on this debate), this  is definitely 
> room for doubt as ongoing modern discussion has  demonstrated.
>
>> 6. Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you  just 
>> sit there.
>
> It is extremely arguable that if you get run over, that you were on  the 
> right track...
>
>> 5. It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that  no 
>> man can seriously help another without helping himself.
>
> Leaving the deeper philosophical questions of just what is implied by  the 
> above statement, what I want to know is: what about the other  half of 
> humanity left out of that statement?
>
>> 4. I am a recipient of unconditional love; I am a volunteer!
>
> According to the literature of the particular ethical monotheism of  which 
> I am most in favor of, unconditional love is not conditional  upon a 
> person's record of volunteering their time to any cause.
>
>> 3. If you don't believe one person can make a difference, you have  never 
>> been in bed with a mosquito.
>
> Ah, so I guess we're playing it both ways: here's a statement that 
> appears to support our late 19th/early 20th C. German philosopher who 
> stared into the abyss a little too long, in contradiction to  statement 7 
> above.
>
> Besides, if we take statement 3 at face value here, it only  demonstrates 
> the difference one mosquito makes, not necessarilly one  person...
>
> Let's not even think about what that person and that mosquito were  doing 
> in bed together...don't even go there!!!
>
>> 2. How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve  the 
>> world.
>
> Other than the grammatical problems of the missing predicate in the  first 
> clause, I'm having a bit of a problem here seeing how a simple  statement 
> of fact about the timing of one's volunteer efforts is  going to help me 
> here to volunteer at Estrella, three months from  now.  What this 
> statement most poignantly leads me to think is that I  really need to get 
> off my butt TODAY and get my act together to  volunteer at the soup 
> kitchen that the church I belong to runs every  Sunday afternoon.  Not a 
> single one of us should wait to do things  like this - so why wait for 
> Estrella???
>
>> 1. The rewards far out weigh the cost of travel, and the journey  will be 
>> fun.
>
> Past experiences clearly demonstrate that the "fun-ness" of the  journey 
> is highly debatable.  Just ask around...  As to whether the  intangible 
> rewards of volunteering at Estrella outweigh the cost,  well, it's like 
> this (warning! warning!  Rant coming on!  warning!):
>
> For the last few weeks, there's been a discussion on the Grand  Council 
> list as to whether the next edition of the known world  handbook and other 
> SCA publications should be essentially delivered  preferentially through 
> means solely or mostly online.  I'm glad to  say that the folks from 
> Artemisia that participate in the Grand  Council appear to be not in favor 
> of such an approach at this time.   What does this have to do with 
> volunteering at Estrella?  Well,  everything.
>
> Let me explain (and also to say that this issue has gotten under my  skin 
> in a really big way).  The folks who support a brave new world  of SCA 
> publications through preferentially online models are looking  at the 
> problem from a cost-benefit analysis point of view that we in  the SCA 
> need to move to more modern models of fostering the growth of  SCA 
> membership, including a implied stance that it is not good  business sense 
> to be subsidizing costly paper publication of things  like the known world 
> handbook for rural and isolated newbies in the  isolated and 
> out-of-the-modern-online-mainstream places of the world,  like, well, 
> Chicken, Alaska; Salmon, Idaho; Tyson, Vermont;  Wallabong, New South 
> Wales; Murdoe, South Dakota or Lovell, Wyoming  (where there have been and 
> in many cases, still are SCA members...).
>
> There are several problems where, but out of all of the the problems  I 
> could list, what I want to point out is what I believe to be the  "values 
> problem" that's implied here.  Such a viewpoint, arguably a  defensible 
> one if one subscribes to a particular way of thinking  about people as 
> merely consumers, discounts all the intangibles that  make the SCA the 
> SCA.  In Therasia von Tux's SCA, which I believe to  be the same as 
> Conrad's SCA, Casamira's SCA, Alan's SCA, Azir's SCA,  Cariadoc's SCA, the 
> von Markheim's SCA, Flieg's SCA and THE  Listmaker's SCA, the known world 
> was created out of nothing by  individuals who heard about this wonderful 
> little group that wanted  to reconnect to a world gone-by where the 
> important things in life  were chivalry, courtesy, politeness, puissance 
> in service of knight  errantry, kindness, and a code and mode of ethical 
> behavior: people,  like Cariadoc, who invented the Middle Kingdom out of 
> nothing but  inspiration after seeing an SCA demo at WorldCon in San 
> Francisco in  1968 or so; like Waldt von Markheim, who founded one of the 
> four  founding groups of Caid, who heard about the SCA from a mutually- 
> intrigued friend; like Grumbaer, called the founder of Calontir, who 
> heard about the SCA in 1970 or so from a stranger about the SCA one  dayon 
> a street corner in St. Louis; like Rowan, who read about the  SCA in a 
> magazine, made a landsknecht from scratch, hopped an  airplane from Sydney 
> and flew to this week-end long event called  Pennsic 12 to meet people, 
> went home and founded Lochac from out of a  known world handbook along 
> with some interested friends and a hundred  phone calls and letters sent 
> back and forth across the Pacific Ocean.
>
> This whole discussion on the Grand Council List has been eating at me  and 
> gnawing at me and leaving me in a state that that poor man who  married me 
> calls "thunk."  I've been feeling a really major rant at  the Grand 
> Council list coming on for at least a week now.  I wrote a  lot of it in 
> my head yesterday as El Hermoso Dormiendo, that poor man  who married me, 
> and I drove home yesterday from the booming  metropolis of Salmon, Idaho, 
> population 3110 and home of a couple of  SCA members, who I hope are still 
> around (because I don't think I've  seen them lately and I promised some 
> serpentinite as loom weights to  one - which I have since acquired, but 
> haven't remembered to  deliver...).  And the drive also left me thinking 
> about the gal in  Lovell, our sole member in that little town, who I hoped 
> to visit  sometime this summer to do some scribal stuff with but never 
> made it  out that way, contrary to my expectation for this last summer's 
> planned road trips (why, yes, I AM feeling guilty about this).  And  it 
> left me thinking of my friend, Baron Aldred from Dreibergen, from  the 
> group that Waldt von Markheim founded in in 1968 with three  friends, who 
> spent two years, TWO YEARS!!!, driving three hours one  way every other 
> weekend from San Bernadino to China Lake in the  middle of absolutely 
> nowhere in the Mojave Desert in the mid-1980s to  help a couple of 
> interested newbies found an SCA group in a small  town in the middle of 
> nowhere.  So I ask you, in what business model,  in what cost-benefit 
> analysis, in what way do doing business for the  SCA do we consign these 
> people where there is no SCA nearby to the  bin of "too-costly to bother 
> with or make paper publications  available"?  It's the same business model 
> that makes everything that  Cariadoc and Waldt and Rowan and Aldred and 
> the folks who started the  groups in Montana that didn't exist when I 
> joined the SCA and the  hundreds of others who started groups or helped 
> others to do such  things so stupid and foolish and wasteful and not at 
> all business- minded. <sarcasm on> Why obviously, the SCA and they all 
> would have  been better off if they had been using a more 
> consumer-oriented  business model... <sarcasm off>
>
> Excuse me, last time I checked, the SCA was not someone's business  model 
> where some nameless newbie in the rural wastes of North Dakota  or Pyrope 
> Station, South Australia or Cape Town, South Africa  was an  expense we 
> would be better off not incurring.  Just ask Rowan who  traveled across 
> half the world in order to begin that which became  the kingdom that 
> proves the world must be flat - because if the world  were a globe, all 
> those people in Lochac would have fallen off by now...
>
> So finally, in conclusion (you hope...;-) that is why, when we get  down 
> to the bare bones of things, volunteering at Estrella OR ANY  OTHER SCA 
> VENUE outweighs the costs it took to get there, wherever  there may be. 
> And that is also why you all had to put up with my  running on at the 
> mouth again, this time about why 10 sugary-drivel- like backwards-listed 
> quotes from so-called famous people annoy the #@ $&*! out of my Inner 
> Curnudgeon.  Yes!  Give me drivel or give me  mental-floss!!!  (No offense 
> meant, dear Robert - intent means a lot  in the SCA, at least in my 
> version of the SCA, and I know your  intentions are not only good but 
> sterling.)
>
> Yeah, give me a few more days and it's going to be a known-world- class 
> rant on the Grand Council list because I'm steamed... What  you've just 
> seen here is the pressure cooking off from my Inner  Curmudgeon.  What 
> will land on the Grand Council list in a few days,  assuming that that 
> halluncination called Dr. Helm-Clark - who spent a  fair bit of time in 
> the last year thinking and reading up on business  models and business 
> plans for non-profits - has any spare time left  to spare for writing it 
> up.  After all, when you're me or my  hallucinations, it's not wise to 
> miss sleep just to write a rant or  two - some of us, especially my Inner 
> Curmudgeon, need our less-than- ugly sleep...
> .
>> Quotes from various famous people.
>
> So the aforementioned ten (well, ok, nine and half) reasons to  volunteer 
> at Estrella demonstrate quite clearly, I think, that being  famous does 
> not imply the ability to think and/or speak clearly.
>
>> Please, join us at Estrella this year, volunteer for the fun of  others 
>> and for yourself.
>> Robert Bedlam, Kingdom Volunteer Coordinator
>
> If I can get there, Robert, I certainly will volunteer - as should we 
> all.  But it's not about fun, though fun it certainly can be.  Sometimes 
> it's not fun, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's  thankless, 
> occasionally it's misunderstood, discounted and ridiculed,  often it goes 
> unnoticed and sometimes it's plain horrific.  No, it's  not about fun. 
> It's really about things that are worth trying and  worth doing.  It's 
> really about something quite intangible and yet  very very real.  It's why 
> the SCA can still be important when  measured on the scale of doing things 
> like helping in a soup kitchen  or flying to New Orleans to work in a Red 
> Cross Shelter on one's own  nickel (as one SCA member I know did for 
> several weeks last year).  It's all about what I like to call the founding 
> thoughts of the SCA,  something that I was fortunate enough to be told 
> about one day over a  cup of coffee in the kitchen of the founder of the 
> SCA: it's the  belief that knight errantry should be and can be real, that 
> at the  heart of this game what we're doing here is to rediscover that 
> which  is "worthy of all honor" in an increasingly selfish and secular 
> world  where cost-benefit analyses are more important than courtesy and 
> generosity.
>
> Okay, the Inner Curmudgeon is going to stop now so the Hallucination  of 
> Research Scientist can get some work done...
>
> ttfn,
> Therasia von ExtremelyGrumpyToday
>
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