[MR] In Defense of...

[adams at coastal.edu]

Greetings to all.

It just dawned on me why this discussion has felt so disjointed to me.  One 
reason is that some of us, (me, in my last post, included) are talking about 
being authentic.  This new rule actually doesn’t have anything to do with BEING 
authentic, but with APPEARING authentic.  Even if everyone took this rule 
completely to heart and strove mightily to comply, we would still only be 
LOOKING more period, not acutally BEING more period.  Seems to me that this 
isn’t going to endear us to the living history groups any more than the way we 
do it now.  (If they even do think we are a joke.  If any of us even cares what 
they think.)  

I don’t even disagree with this rule.  I like the pretty show as well as 
anybody.  I have no desire to encourage anyone to be any more inauthentic than 
they have to be, and wish that I and everyone else at every event could be 
absolutely authentic in every way, and I'll do my best to make it so.  However, 
part of who we are has seemed to me to be acting on the accepting, welcoming 
side rather than the exclusive, exclusionary side.  I would hate to see the 
organization lose that aspect, partly because I won’t be in it if they become 
Period Nazis (like some of the LH groups, if what I have read is true), and I’m 
having too much fun to quit.  But I can understand the concern of those who 
might see this rule as the first step on a slippery slope into demanding more 
from the populace than they are prepared to give, which would force some of us 
out.  That might not be a bad thing for the group, but it wouldn’t be the same 
group I joined.  Is this the start of a policy that is eventually going to 
exclued me?  That’s a concern I feel, and that’s what I seem to hear underlying 
many of the posts I have read.  I found a home in the SCA the first event I 
ever went to, and I would hate to lose that.  

If my artihmetic is correct, that makes it 4 cents from me, and that’s plenty.  

Lina St Albans



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