[MR] Accidently left out

[Rosine]

To those who asked for the CampMaster handout - this was accidentally left
out. To everyone else who doesn't care about this - I'm sorry, could you
please hit your "delete" button and pretend that I didn't clog the Rose with
my boo-boo? Thank you.  Rosine

*****
    I'm sorry, I just read the newest edition of our handout (he worked on
it at the office) and it doesn't outline what we call "levels of privacy".
Probably because we usually end up putting it on the chalkboard. I'm going
to try to explain it via words. Bear with me...

    Your camp is either going to be one large household, with a single
kitchen, or a group of households and families with multiple kitchens, or a
combination of the two. I'm going to address the "small groups of"
arrangement - if you're doing arrangement #1, contact me again - boy, do I
have info for you!

    What you want to do is have a camp that is welcoming without being a
free-for-all area. In places like Pennsic, where you may not know the
configurations of your land in advance, you'll need to have guidelines
rather than firm layouts, but once you're familiar with the overall idea,
it's real easy to roll with the changes that the land agent hands you.
First, get a good idea of what physical structures are going to be in your
camp - including day shades and firepits. Following that, you'll need:

 Guesting Area - absolutely public
Entertainment Area - guardedly public
Private tenting area - guests by private invitation only, and that included
fellow campmembers.

 now - turn your browser to this web page:
http://marinus.atlantia.sca.org/pennsic/images/layout.gif (it might not be
up yet, she's revamping the section)

    Note how the tall, big walled tan pavilions line our roadspaces and
provide screening from dust and noise (along with our outer cloth walls,
which help screen the pavilion walls from the same). The scale is slightly
off, so the fire pit is a bit closer to the baronial pavilion than it shows.
The large white rectangle in the upper right corner is Clan Rowanwald's
private sunshade. Their pavilions and tents are clustered around it to
screen it from the rest of the camp and from the entrance. This is to give
the Baron and Baroness (who was the Pennsic Head Troll) a private place to
retire to and chill out... and also became the teenager's rumpus area, away
from the rest of the camp's activities.  In the lower right corner, there's
a row of tents facing a row of pavilions. This was the camping area of our
Warlord and his household, with a couple of sunscreens (not shown)
stretching between the pavilions and tents and providing shade there. We
called it "Fighter's Row" . The fighters could loll around in stinky
disarray after battle and tell stories without feeling like they were
offending the rest of the camp or the visitors. Since they also had young
children, it became the place where the kids could nap and play while their
parents could watch over them and still be a part of camp - the parents (or
fighters) could invite someone from the public area to join them.
    There were two other "private" sunshades erected along the pavilion
side, one between pavilions and along the wall, one in front of a pavilion,
slightly in the "public" firepit direction.  The absolute, unbroken "or
you're not allowed to camp with us anymore" rule is:
    Any Private Tent or Structure Is Off-Limits
    Unless You Have A Personal Invitation To Enter
    Or Address The Person(s) In It.    Period.

    It's assumed that if Lady A is chatting with Visitor Mistress C, and
they're doing it under Lady A's sunshade - then they want privacy. They'll
invite you in when they no longer want privacy, or they'll come join you in
the public area. We're really really rabid about observing this rule (in
that you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours kind of way).

   When a visitor comes to our camp, the only entrance they will have is
through the baronial pavilion, where we also hang out and have our big
barrels of water and lemonade. Some folks never make it past the pavilion.
We have a table and a clock, a pen and a notebook located in the pavilion.
Visitors can leave notes for campmembers there and can have notes left for
them.
    If a person is invited in further, we host them at the campfire area.
The tents and woodpile (which was slightly longer than shown on the map)
provide a natural break between the private areas and the public ones. Note
that access to the kitchen requires walking past a lot of tents and
pavilions. We keep the general cooking equipment and the guesting mugs in
the kitchen. Anyone in camp who wishes to offer a drink to a visitor can get
as many mugs as needed - the soft drinks are available up front, shaded by
the baronial pavilion.
   Access to the shower and the dish-washing area can be achieved by
strolling along a side wall or between pavilions and the Clan Rowanwald
sunshade - which gives all campmembers the ability to be in disarray without
being noticeable by our visitors. Any campmember can invite their personal
visitors to retire with them to the area in front of their tent for more
privacy.

   What this does is give everyone the freedom to wake up, take naps, or
disassociate for a few minutes without hiding in their (hot) tents. It makes
it obvious when a stranger is in the wrong area, because there's no possible
reason for them to be back there unless they're accompanied by their host -
and the few teenagers who headed for the Clan Rowanwald area without an
escort quickly learned where the notebook was!

   So what you do is treat your greeting/public area as one "block", with
your hosting area as another block which can be aligned with it or encompass
it. We have switched the fire pit area and the Baronial Pavilion around  so
that the firepit was the public area and the pavilion was the hosting area.
Use your pavilions and tents as "lego blocks" to create visual screening for
non-public areas, and clump households and kitchen-sharers together so they
can make the most use of their mutual space. We try to put families with
small kids who play together near each other, so the parents can sit and
chat while their kids play in safety, and they can co-ordinate on whichever
large toys they want to bring (you bring the inflatable wading pool, I'll
bring the playschool castle).
     The fighter's row and Clan Rowanwald areas were set up on land-grab
day, as were the perimeter pavilions. As folks trickled in, tents were added
to the open "around the firepit" area. That way, we had as much free space
as possible for as long as possible, with the advantage that some tents went
away early (they could only be there the first week) and we could fill in
the empty spot with someone else's tent when they arrived later. That's why
it's so important to know sizes and arrival dates.

    One thing we didn't show was the beer station. It was an arming tent in
fighter's row. The fighters and a few interested others joined their funds
and kept a cold keg in there. Since we knew who chipped in for the brew, it
was simple (if we hadn't chipped in) to ask any fighter if we could draw a
mug for a visitor. If someone abused the privilege, then we made sure they
were asked for funds the next time a beer run was made... low key, no fuss.

   Oh, and one other solid rule (and now you'll know the only two we have):
If anyone gets into a fight that begins to disturb the camp, any other
campmember can ask them to take it to the market place. They can, at that
point, either stop fighting, take it private and make darn sure we can't
hear it, or leave and settle it elsewhere. This was put into place because a
few of us knew enough of human psychology to know that our members would
rather be dead than caught screaming/making a spectacle of themselves in
public. In eight years of joint-barony camping, we've evoked the rule
_twice_.

 There ya go, I hope that helps. If you have comments, queries, posers (or
suggestions), pretty please write back! Anything you bring up will
ultimately end up getting incorporated into the class outline and will help
some other camper down the line..

    Oh - I didn't check to see if he put this in the outline... Have your
campmembers set up their tents before whichever event it is that you're
planning for (like at a weekend event before Pennsic or something. Don't
rush, with planning, you've got a year or so, right?  *grin*).  ALWAYS have
in _your_ stuff a roll of mailing or kite string, a roll of masking tape,
and a permanent marker and a few zip-lock plastic bags. Once their tent or
pavilion is set up, run the string around the outside of their tent stakes
(stakes, not the poles) and tie it off. You now have a circle of string the
same diameter as their "footprint". Tape the string where the front corners
of the footprint is - left and right sides. If you're really anal, do the
same for the back corners (or if the tent is not rectangular or square). Now
do the same thing at the front where the door opens.  If you take that bit
of string, put it and some craft sticks (Popsicle sticks) in a zip-lock bag
marked with the name of the person, you have all that you need to lay out
their land needs in your camp. And they can't argue with you - they helped
get those measurements! (It also helps you plan the overlapping of stake
lines in crowded conditions.)

Rosine

--
So what if the universe is a pointless mass of hydrogen refuse powered by
entropy.  I'm spreading ketchup on a rubber duck, and after that I'm going
to brush its teeth.  So there. -- Rob Landley  nothingbutadame at inthe.sca.org