[Artemisia] Grand Council discussions

[Dr. C. M. Helm-Clark Ph.D.]

Good Cousins,

El Hermoso Dormiendo and I have been road tripping for the last 3 weeks
and have been less connected than usual (please try to refrain from the
obvious rejoinder as to whether we have been connected at all...). As a
result, an email I would have posted two or so weeks ago has been
neglected. We are home now and back on line, at least for the short
term., and I can neglect my email no longer...

So, here's what is up. Right now, I believe that Artemisia currently
has two at-large members on the Grand Council, myself and Dame Theadora.
We do not currently have an officially appointed Grand Council member
for Artemisia. Oftimes, topics up for discussion on the Grand Council
list have been brought up here on the Aerie so that the Grand Council
members in the kingdom can get an idea of what people think on various
issues. Right now is such a time and as a GC member, I think it is
appropos to inform folks as to what's up.

The current discussion on the Grand Council list is neither calm nor
straightforward. For me personally, as someone whose SCA world view is
strongly influenced by the kingdom in which I lived for more than half
of my time in the SCA, I myself do not really have a good feel for what
Artemisians may think on the issue at hand. So I would like to throw
the current GC topic into the ring of the Aerie and see what people
think.

Might I please suggest some ground rules before anyone begins to
comment?

First, the issue is contentious - it has created a real tempest in a
teapot in several other kingdoms. With this in mind, let us please
remember to keep things calm, polite and thoughtful. After all, we are
all friends here who know how to agree to disagree.

Second, the Aerie is not the place where decisions will be made. Any
and all decisions are the purview of the Board of Directors of the SCA
Inc. The comments you make on the Aerie will not be seen by the GC or
the BoD. I will see them and Thea will see them but all we can do is
distill their gist and maybe excerpt the best of the comments for the
benefit of the discussion on the GC list. Regardless, what you think is
important and I think it is worthwhile to hear what you have to say.
But keep in mind that NOTHING at all has been decided - no one is about
to change the game under our nose and there are no done deals. The BoD
has merely and only asked for discussion and commentary. The BoD isn't
out to get us, there are no mad conspiracies and the world is not about
to end.

Third, you can "listen in" yourself to the GC list as it thrashes
through issues. All you need to do is subscribe to the grand council
list. The instructions for doing can be found at
lists.sca.org/listinfo/list. 
Non-members of the GC are not allowed to post directly to the lists but
anyone is welcome to subscribe and watch the discussions of the GC as
they happen. The volume on the GC list can be extremely high (and it is
very much so right at this moment) so you may wish to use the digest
option to prevent the flooding of your email inbox.

Fourth: the topic at hand has a deep history. A lack of knowledge on
the institutional history of the SCA is one of the great stumbling
blocks in many discussion on the the structure of the SCA Inc. It does
not have to be so. I suggest that if this topic is near and dear to you
and you wish to know more, I suggest you look at at least two different
web sites. The first is Duke Cariadoc's page on past problems with the
SCA Inc and the structure of SCA membership at
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Board_Flap.html
The second is Duck Frederick's website on a proposal that is has become
a part of the current discussion on the GC list. That site is at:
http://xray.cchem.berkeley.edu/flieg2/index.html
It has three sub-pages. I suggest you read them all.

Fifth: if you wish, you can email me directly with comments. Really
cogent ones I might post directly to the GC list. I WILL ASSUME I HAVE
YOUR PERMISSION TO DO SO unless you specifically and explicitly tell me
otherwise. This applies to email, not to posts on the Aerie. My time
right now is tight and I will not be reading posts on the Aerie with an
eye to cross post anything to the GC list. Sorry it has to be such but
I really am very very very busy at the moment. 

Sixth, if you want to email me directly, do not email me using the email
address I use for the Aerie. It is off limits for any email about the
current GC discussions. Any email you send on the current GC discussion
topic will be deleted without my even looking at it. Again, I am sorry
it has to be this way but after three weeks on the road, my inbox is
swamped and I just won't be able to sort you out from the hundreds of
emails that have arrived while I was away.

I have set up an email address specificaly for people who like to email
me their thoughts and comments directly. That email address is
gc at bigroom.org.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, here is the topic currently under discussion by the
Grand Council at the request of the BoD. I did this deliberately, you
know, saving it for last... My bad... I really wanted people to look
over my suggested ground rules before getting to the THE TOPIC (insert
scary music here). ;-) Remember, the most important ground rule is: be
nice! We're all friends here. Let's remember to agree to disagree, in
case we have people who really disagree badly. Thanks for remembering
this in advance. We're all Artemisians, after all, and having taken
your collective measure over the years, I know that we can outdo the
rest of the known world in being well-spoken and courteous, excepting
perhaps only Baroness Casamira, who may lace whatever she has to say
with so many puns that it may result in a visit to the doctor as a
result of pulled muscles from groaning too hard...

Here it is, the GC topic that caused my email inbox to explode, exactly
in the form that it was sent to the GC from the BoD:

> We have our Board assigned Topic:
> 
> The Board of Directors would like the Grand Council to consider the
topic
> of _*membership dues with respect to "pay to play", "pay to
participate",
> "pay to fight", or "pay to...?"*_
> 
> We would like the Council to study this issue, and to give us an idea
of
> the potential problems and pitfalls, the positives and what the
council
> perceives as the general feeling of the Society toward such a model.
> 
> The Directors would like the Council to consider to possibilities of a
> tiered membership format, providing potential notions of how a tiered
> format might work and how new members might be handled under such a
> system.
> 
> Please feel free to ask for any clarifications you might need!
> 
> Thank you,
> Marilee Lloyd
> Director, SCA Inc.

I know that for a lot of you, this is not a big fat 
hairy deal subject, but I think that we would be amiss 
not to let folks know about the current discussions, not
the least for the fact that it is being quite contentious
in one of the kingdoms next door to us.

And please, no cherry bombs in my inbox, por favor... ;-)

ttfn
Therasia