September 17, 1983 A.S. XVIII
TO: The Members of the College of Arms
FROM: Master Wilhelm von Schiüssel, Laurel King of Arms
Greetings:
Enclosed is the September LOA&R, with 1l4 acceptances and 45 returns,
for a total of 159 actions. By October 1, 1983, I want to have all LoCs on
the following 7 Lois (which I will process at my October 9 meeting): East
(7/9), East (7/10), Atiantia (7/14), An Tir (7/19), West (7/20), Middle (7/22),
and Caid (7/26), totalling 125 submissions.
By October 29, 1983, 1 will want to have all LoCs on the following 4 Lois
(which I will process at my November 6 meeting): Meridies (8/11), West (8/16),
Caid (8/30), and Middle (8/26),.totalling 84 submissions. By December 10,
1983, I will want all LoCs dealing with Lois dated in September, which I will
process at my December 18 meeting. The workload is reduced for October and
considerably reduced for November. I urge all commentors to take advantage
of this opportunity and catch up. The post-Pennsic flood should hit at my
December meeting (i.e., come out in September Lois) and continue into my January
meeting. If you catch up now, you will be ready for it. You will also give
the other Principal Heralds a chance to finally reply to LoCs before my meeting.
I have become concerned over the extreme lateness of both LoCs and Lois.
While most come in on a timely basis, there are some that arrive a month late.
When the letter is an LoC, this does not affect others (except perhaps the
Principal Herald), but it does mean that I do not have the use of those comments
when I process those submissions. Since that is the primary reason for the
existence of the LoCs in the first place, an LoC that arrives after my meeting
is almost a waste of time (it does get read by other heralds and so is of
some worth). Please try to make sure that all LoCs at least get to me on
time. Ideally, all LoCs should go out within 30 days of the receipt of the
Lois they comment on. That way, the Principal Heralds have a chance to reply
to comments on their Lois. if you can keep up with a 3-month steady backlog,
then you can keep up with a 30-day steady backlog, once you manage to catch
up that first time- Please take advantage of the slack period during the
next two months to catch up.
A worse problem occurs when the Lois are late. Then the commentors are given
less time to comment on the Lois. My Lady excerpts the Celtic names from the
Lois we receive and sends these to Mistress Eriod of Eire for her to comment
on. If the LoI gets to us late, then these names get to Eriod late. I sometimes
find errors or omissions on the forms, and if these arrive late then there
may not be time for me to notify the Principal Herald and for the Principal
Herald to fix the problem before my meeting. Making folders for the forms
takes time, and if I get the forms less than a week before they are supposed
to be processed, I am very cramped for time. Often there is information on
the forms that is not in the Lol that my Lady needs to include in the letter
to Eriod. This month, I discovered too late to make changes that the Atenveldt
(5/30) and Ansteorra (6/6) letters both went out to the College over a month
after their cover dates. The Middle 8/26 LoI was not received by the College
until September 13th. I still have not received the forms for the West 8/16
LoI. This has GOT to be corrected. I have taken steps to ensure that I know
when an LoI was mailed and received by the other members of the College,
as well as when it was mailed to and received by my office. While we will
continue to refer to a letter by the date typed on it, beginning with my
December meeting (i.e., with September Lois), I will process the Lois according
to the mont they are postmarked to either my office or the other members
of the College, whichever is later.
Principal Heralds still have the option of sending me just a copy of the
Lol when they mail out the Lols to the rest of the College, and then sending
me the forms later, after they are copied. However, the forms cannot be held
too long. If the packet of forms is held more than two weeks, then I may delay
consideration of that LoI for another month. The commentors must be given
a chance to comment on LoIs before I process them. (Of course, the commentors
must then get their comments to me in time for them to be used.) The College
can only function in a timely manner if each member of the College functions
in a timely manner.
A number of commentors seem to have taken the summer off. I have not received
an LoC for three months from Dragon or Black Lion, or for two months from
Star, Aten, Crystal, Triton, Dolphin, Polaris, or Ensign. Please try to get
your LoCs in to me before my next meeting. Your comments are valuable.
There seems to be some confusion over the size of the College of Arms. The
CoA mailing list consists of those members of the College who comment on LoIs,
plus me. This list of about 32 people is only a subset of the full CoA, which
has about 55 members. As stated on the first page of the Administrative Guidelines
(you have read those, haven't you?), the CoA consists of the two Kings of
Arms, the 9 Principal Heralds, 9 Principality Heralds, 7 Regional Heralds,
the 4 titled Heralds on my staff, the Laurel Secretary, the other commentors,
and the junior members of my staff. I have also added the College Ombudsman
to the Board of Directors, currently Duke Siegfried von Höflichkeit.
(If anyone does not have a copy of the Administrative Guidelines and its Supplement,
let me know.) All members of the CoA receive free copies of my letters, whether
or not they are commentors, so long as they remain members. (Taking a Principal
Herald off the mailing list does not remove that Principal Herald from the
College.)
The recent vote on next year's symposium was based on the full membership
of the College, not just the commentars on the mailing list. Lest there be
any complaints that the non-commentors didn't receive the second Middle flyer,
let me add that I waited a month after the published deadline before I sent
out the questionnaire. The second flyer was sent out in the month after that,
by which time I had already gotten a dozen questionnaires back, many of those
from com-mentors, who therefore did not have the flyer when they cast their
votes.
Actually, the information included with the questionnaire provided a fairly
good summary of both bids, which I felt were excellent ones. I was pleased
to get two bids of such quality. I understand that the Middle heralds will
be hosting a First Annual Heralds' Picnic on the first weekend of Pennsic
at which they will hold a mini-symposium. I think that's fine. Those heralds
attending Pennsic who won't be able to make the Symposium can at least attend
the Heralds' Picnic.
Those who won't be going to Pennsic can attend the Symposium. (Those true
die-hards can attend both!) Speaking of symposia, anyone ordering copies
of the Meridies Proceedings are asked to make their checks out to the Barony
of South Downs. (The Proceedings are available for $5 from Mistress Rebecca
of Twywn, c/o Rebecca Leoock, 1820 Hickory Road, Chamblee, GA 30341.)
Mistress Alison von Markheim, Corona Herald, has volunteered to draft and
process the SCA Demographics Survey that we have needed for years. She has
contacted the Board to clear it with them. The Editor of T.I. has agreed to
include it as a center pullout in the Spring issue, which will be out on
March 1, 1984. Mistress Alison is currently finishing a bachelors degree in
demographics and plans to continue on to a Ph.D. She will be using this poll
as a senior project, so she will have the advice and criticism of her professor
as well. The questions the College wants answered (Elvish, temporal and
geographic scope of the SCA, importance of authenticity, etc.) will be
included. She will also be contacting the Board and the other corporate officers
to see if they have any questions to be included. There will be a complete
demographics section (age, sex, location, income, level of education, etc.).
She plans to have a first draft ready for a trial run to be mailed out to
the College on November 1, with responses due December 20. The final draft
will be sent to T.I. in time for the January 15, 1984 deadline for the Spring
T.I. The responses from the T.I. quiz will be due by May 15, 1984, and they
will be processed and the results available in the summer of 1984. Current
plans are for four typeset pages of questions and explanations of the questions,
plus two double-sided pullout answer sheets ready to be folded, stapled,
stamped and mailed. That way each copy of T.I. provides two answer sheets.
The responses will be anonymous. With a mailing list of over 10,000, there
should be from 2000-4000 responses. (All of the above is subject to change
as the poll is actually drafted.) On behalf of the College I would like to
thank Mistress Alison for taking on this enormous but much-needed task. If
any of you have any suggestions for questions that should be included in
the survey, please write them down and mail them to Mistress Alison, with
a copy to me. She and I will be cooperating on the wording-and structure of
the survey.
Solar has made some suggestions that merit discussion. She suggests, first,
that there be a one-year limit on a person's right to a free resubmission
after a submission is returned. After the year is up, any resubmission would
have to pay the usual fee. This is intended to act as an incentive for people
to resubmit promptly and to prevent a possible financial burden on kingdoms
due to a large number of resubmissions from people whose submissions were
turned down years ago at kingdom level when the rates were lower. It would
also mean that, by encouraging resubmissions on a timely basis, the resubmission
could occur when the reasons for the return of the previous submission were
still fresh in the commentors' minds. This proposal has a lot of merit. What
do you think about it?
Solar also suggests that we consider charging non-SCA members a higher fee
for submissions, both as an incentive for people to become members and as
a means of raising additional money. Presumably, I would charge an additional
$1 per action at my level and each kingdom could add whatever charge it deemed
proper to that. Since each Principal Herald receives quarterly printouts
from the Registrar with the names and addresses of all SCA members in their
kingdom, checking to see if a person was a member would be relatively simple
(or members could just show you their mailing label). This proposal also
has merit. What do you think about it?
Another topic for discussion is the subject of encouraging medieval-style,
fieldless badges. The current system actually encourages non-medieval style
badges with fields which therefore look (and are used) like arms. In order
to register an alternate persona or a household name, a person must register
it in conjunction with a badge, as the College is not interested in the registration
of these names alone. Too often the badges are actually secondary arms, which
is not period practice for badges and which provides for confusion as to whether
a banner is displaying somebody's arms or badge. We require less difference
between a badge and other submissions than between arms and another submission,
on the theory that badges are used differently and thus there will be less
chance of confusion. This is not the case for badges with fields that look
like and are displayed like arms. Looking far down the road (i.e., I have
no plans for actions in the immediate future), do you think we should do
anything about this situation?
One possible action would be to separate badges into two categories. The
first category would still be called "badges" and would consist of fieldless
badges (i.e., the medieval badge). The second category would be called "ensigns,
and would consist of the badges with fields, i.e., those that will look like
and probably be displayed like arms. Badges would stay under the current rules.
Ensigns would follow the same rules as devices and arms, and as such would
require two full points of difference from devices instead of the current
one major and one minor. What problems do you see with this? Is this a good
idea? What other suggestions do you have for this problem? Is there a problem
at all? If you do have suggestions for changes how and when would you suggest
that they be implemented? Would these changes create any new problems? Feel
free to comment on each other's ideas.. Part of the reason for the existence
of the College is to discuss questions like this. I await your comments.
Pray believe, my Lords and my Ladies, that I remain
Your servant,
Master Wilhelm von Schlüssel
Laurel King of Arms
WvS:CFCvS
Created 122701T14:37:32