Taigh Moran Chat
RR 2, Northside Road
Wading River, NY 11792
25 October, 1988

Unto the members of the College of Arms and any others who may read this missive, greetings from Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, Laurel Queen of Arms!

As most of you know, the insufficiency of commentary arriving in time for the 13 August meeting required that the "August" meeting be held over the Labor Day weekend. The letters considered at that time include Atenveldt (5/1), Caid (5/1), East (5/13), Meridies (5/15), West (5/16), Ansteorra (5/18), Middle (5/22), Atlantia (5/25), East (5/25), Calontir (5/30), Trimaris (5/30) and Calontir (5/31). Of a total of 369 actions, 301 were positive, 65 were negative and 3 items were pended, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 82%.

The September meeting was held on 18 September and considered the following letters: Atenveldt (6/1), Calontir (6/1), Caid (6/12), West (6/13), Ansteorra (6/14), Middle (6/14), Meridies (6/29) and Outlands (6/29).

The October meeting will be held on October 30 and will consider Atenveldt (7/1), Middle (7/4), East (7/7), Caid (7/19), Meridies (7/24), Ansteorra (7/25), Outlands (7/26), and West (7/28).

The November meeting will occur over the Thanksgiving weekend, probably on November 26. The letters scheduled for this meeting include Trimaris (7/30), Calontir (7/31), Atenveldt (8/1), Middle (8/3), East (8/6), West (8/8), Atlantia (8/12) and Meridies (8/27).

The December meeting is presently scheduled for December 18, although this may be moved back to Christmas Eve if mundane circumstances require. The letters to be considered at that meeting include Atenveldt (9/1), Middle (9/5), East (9/10), Trimaris (9/10), Caid (9/11), Ansteorra (9/22), West (9/22), Calontir (9/25) and Meridies (9/26).

The Holus Herald, Graidhne ni Ruaidh, has left the Laurel staff for higher (???) things. She may be removed from both the mailing list and the roster (at least temporarily).

Vasili iz Naitemneshoi Dollina, who has served the Laurel Office as Codex and the Middle Kingdom as Pale Herald, has assumed the position of Dragon Herald. His address remains the same. At this time, we anticipate that Vasili will still provide printing services to the Laurel Office, although Middle Kingdom Law and scholarly prudence forbid his retaining the title of Codex Herald. Fiona Averylle of Maidenhead, Dragon Emerita, should be returned on the mailing list as she will now return to commenting.

Triskele requests that you add the following Trimarian commentors to your mailing lists: the Ensign Herald, Anastasia von Anspach (Lee Ann Wagner, 7934 70^th Street North, Pinellas Park, FL 34655; telephone: 813-546-9432), and the Archive Herald, Sara Anna Tudinsdottir, whose address remains the same as it appeared on the last roster.

The Ember Herald of Meridies, Ammalynne Starchild Haraldsdottir, has asked to be removed from the mailing list since the press of mundane duties (including preparations for her wedding!) will prevent her commenting adequately for some months to come.

At the same time, the following should be removed from the mailing list for lack of commentary: Gleowine Barding of Bardingham (Couronne Rouge Pursuivant of An Tir), Thomas Longshanks (Kraken Herald of Atlantia) and Uilleam MacUilleam (Lambent Herald of Meridies).

Bids for the 1989 Heraldic Symposium are due to me and to the Principal Heralds by November 15. At this point five Kingdoms have expressed a verbal interest in making a bid. Less than half that number have actually sent out bids.

If your Kingdom is contemplating making a bid for the Symposium, please do not wait until the last moment, but try and get your formal proposal out as soon as possible to allow the time for a fair and considered judgement on the part of all concerned.

There has been a disturbing fluctuation in the quality and quantity of commentary of late. When Laurel makes a specific desperate plea for comments for a meeting (as for the recent mega-meeting in May) commentary has been reasonable. Otherwise, the commentary has tended to be thinner and, in many cases, more cursory than it was wont to be in days past. In some cases, even commentors who can usually be counted on for solid research have been contenting themselves with stylistic commentary, Society conflicts along and/or side references to sources not necessarily available to the Laurel Office and the other members of the College without citing detailed information or providing attached text with the letter.

This has inevitable negative consequences. The obvious result was the fact that the meeting for early August had to be delayed until the beginning of September and the weekend Laurel had scheduled for immuring herself with the rules files had to be devoted to submissions processing. (Sorry, folks, it could not be held on the last weekend in August: the tickets for West Kingdom Coronation were non-refundable!)

Less obvious was the consequent delay in the production of this letter of acceptance and return. As haste caused so many people to merely refer to Society and mundane conflicts by name alone, without citing a blazon, an inordinate number of potential conflicts had to be looked up. As the general quality of name documentation was so "iffy", both on some of the letters of intent considered and in some of the commentary, Laurel felt honour bound to remedy some of the research defects, rather than pass undocumented material or return an undue number of innocent submissions merely because of the lacks of the submitting heralds or the College of Arms.

This has been an increasing problem as of late. Fewer and fewer meetings end with all of the submissions firmly decided, not because Laurel's decisiveness has waned (some would think it has become firmer, some too firm!), but because the data on which the decision can be made is lacking. When there are upwards of three hundred submissions elements to consider in a few hours, one cannot afford to spend ten or fifteen minutes documenting each one so that an increasing proportion of the submissions end up with Post-It notes that say "Look up in X" or "Pull files on X". Life being what it is, once the meeting is over, most of this gets done by Laurel herself. This is not to sob in a martyred manner, but rather to point out that, if Laurel is doing research on submissions that should have been done by members of the College, then she cannot be writing the letters that the College would so like to see arrive promptly. (And, if letters arrive in the two weeks before the meeting, it is often physically impossible to do the looking up or file pulling prior to the meeting!)

I realise that this has been a particularly bad season for many of us in terms of mundane work and personal demands. There is also some "burn out" going on as older members of the College look back on several years of commenting and feel they need to slack off and take a rest (not everyone feels this consciously, but it is a definite dynamic!). Changes in staff, other commitments, activities and upheavals within your Kingdoms, all have a detrimental effect on your commentary and I do not mean to pillory or wheedle any individual in particular when I plead for more and better comments on a regular basis.

However, the processing of submissions in a timely and equitable manner is not something that can be done by the Laurel Queen of Arms or her staff alone. There is in some sense a compact between Laurel and the College and, in recent months, both sides have broken it somewhat.

When Master Wilhelm was Laurel, in a period when the flow of submissions was similar to that which has prevailed over the last year, the body of substantial comment available for each meeting was considerably greater, virtually all final decisions could be made promptly at the meeting and the letters of acceptance and return regularly appeared a week to ten days after the meeting.

In contrast, so scant were the comments which had reached Laurel at the time when the August meeting was originally scheduled that it had to be postponed. If the commentary had been available by that scheduled meeting and such that 98% of the decisions could have been final by the time the meeting ended, this letter could have been complete and out to you before Laurel's mundane work crisis sent her wandering around the country for three of the last six weeks.

This is not to say that Laurel is without blame. Far from it! Many of you will remember that it was the current Laurel, then Brigantia, who often "drew the short straw" and got to represent criticism of Master Baldwin when he fell behind on paperwork. If you think that the anger and distress are any less now than they were then, you err. Probably no member of the College is more angered by Alisoun's failure to perform up to the standards she demanded of her predecessor than Alisoun (the perils of being a Virgo!). Alisoun, the irate commentor and bureaucrat, has demanded of Alisoun, Laurel, the same standards and restrictions that she decreed for Baldwin: indeed, has often quoted to herself the same mandate that she offered to Baldwin: "first, get up to date on the paperwork, then you get to do the fun stuff and play with the rules".

It was extremely pleasant to be able to meet so many of the members of the College at Meridian Coronation, at Caidan Crown Tourney and at Mid-Realm Coronation. It was particularly pleasant to be able to participate in the installation of Vasili as Dragon. That I could do so at my company's expense added to the pleasure! However, the pleasure was seriously diminished by guilt that I could not be at home, working on letters of acceptance and return, rules and other delicacies with which to delight the membership of the College and the Society at large.

I wish I could say that never again will we get behind. Those who know me will know I will never swear to that which I may not be able to perform (that is one reason why I will not swear fealty). What I can say is that, if the commenting members of the College of Arms will do their part in providing my staff and myself with the fodder for speedy and equitable decisions and expeditious letters of acceptance and return, I will do my best to fulfill my part of the bargain.

Several commentors have publicly or privately commented on the recent increase in the level of heated comment, snideness, tension and general "bitchiness" in commentary over the last few months.

This was not something, alas, that needed much pointing out. Whatever the cause (and numerous causes have been suggested), even gentles who are normally the most courteous of souls have been showing serious stress fractures in the area of their "bump of consideration" of late, both in their public and private communications.

Please remember that we are all colleagues. You may have strong opposition to the opinions of a colleague, including the quality of submissions he or she is sending to the College, the sanity or folly of a particular position he or she has espoused with regard to general issues or individual submissions, his or her actions on or off the field at the last War, Coronation, etc. However, we are colleagues, not gladiators and any opposition should be expressed as calmly and courteously as possible.

This means no snide comments, no matter how humourous. This means keeping the personal component of a harangue to a minimum or, better, dropping the haranguing tone totally. This means remembering that each submissions processor is representing the submittors of his or her kingdom as well as possible and making negative comments with neither marked outrage nor exaggerated patience. This means avoiding attacks on the submissions of a particular herald or kingdom merely because of past errors (guilt by association does not belong in the College of Arms!). This means not being carried away by rhetoric or passion and forgetting the goal of service to the submittor (we have already commented on this with regard to the overuse of reduction ad absurdam tactics). This means not commenting on submissions with a view to making points or stating principles that have more to do with other matters (rules discussions, appeals pending two months down the road, the submission from your Kingdom returned last month). This means not responding immediately to negative comment as if it were meant to be personal (even if you think it was...)

None of this is easy and we all falter. (One of the hardest parts of being Laurel for the present incumbent is to edit out the "irreverent comments": her first career choice was to be a theatre critic à la George Bernard Shaw.) However, the work of the College and the work of the Laurel Office will go a lot more smoothly if we can all try to work together instead of separately or even in opposition. Remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging separately?

Your servant,

[Alisoun]