[MR] A restatement

[RIKKER]

    While I said that it was PROBABLY a bad idea,  I don't want to chase away your friend.  I said I have enjoyed a few Assassin Tourneys.  When played with stickers it can be fun.  The pie throwing was however in bad taste and any person in the SCA that had worked long and hard on garb,  just to have it pied would be pissed.
   Noowww...,  I say we need to stop looking for ways to keep people from doing things and start gently guiding them in how to do the right thing enjoyably.  As I've traveled (alot) the last few years I've noticed as we the SCA have grown older and become parents we've started to move away from the "freewheeling and open" attitudes the society started with.  I understand we don't want our children exposed to some of the "things we did".  "We're responsible adults now!".  But,  let's not try and limit the younger people we NEED to join to keep the dream alive.  Wee need a fresh influx of new people or we will wither and die.  Our main resources for new people have been college or military people.  We seem as a society to have either forgotten that, or we don't want to have these people with their "free lifestyles" around our kids.   I try to stress to newbys that we are a family organization (though we didn't start out that way), but we
 understand adults are allowed to do adult things.  Just NOT in front of the kids.  Take it to your tent or an after revel.  We need to go back to telling them all of the things they CAN do and stop slamming the door of "can't do that here" in their faces.  We reach out our hands to newbys or we wither and die.  We have so much to offer in the way we learn to treat each other.  How respect gets respect.  Courtesy can make you feel good about yourself as well as the person to whom it is shown.  Let's open our minds and hearts again to the idea of recieving those that want to join us with joy not condemnation.  We'll make alot more new friends that way.

When all is said and done,the less said and the more done the better! 

Rikker
per pale counter ermine and ermine a Lion sejant efronte bearing a sheath of arrows a bag of coin a chief Or with three thistles proper.