To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from François Laurel, Zenobia Wreath, and Mari Pelican, health and good friendship.

NOTE: With early meetings, the responses-to-commentary deadlines are advanced for three months: the July deadline for responses to commentary will be Wednesday, July 24; the August deadline for responses to commentary will be Wednesday, August 28; the September deadline for responses to commentary will be Wednesday, September 25.

The following is a table showing the status of Letters of Intent, Laurel Letters of Pend and Discussion, and Letters of Intent to Protect. The header rows are the dates of the meetings that will consider them, the dates when primary commentary is due, and the dates when responses to primary commentary are due. The key follows.

Month day: the date on the Letter of Intent, Letter of Pend and Discussion, or Letter of Intent to Protect. The Trimaris March letter had no date, so the postmark date of March 30 is being used.(Month day): for administrative reasons, this LoI has not yet been scheduled.[P Month day]: postmarked on that bracketed date, so the LoI is redated or postponed."-": no LoI is scheduled for that meeting from that kingdom.?: tentative.

Aug: Pelican's main meeting will be on August 3. She plans to attend Pennsic and hold the usual "road show" meeting. Early secondary commentary deadline.

Sep: Pelican's and Wreath's meetings will both be on September 7. Early secondary commentary deadline.

Oct: Pelican's meeting is tentatively planned for October 5. Wreath's meeting is tentatively planned for October 19. Early secondary commentary deadline.

Nov: Wreath's meeting is tentatively planned for November 16.

Dec: Wreath's meeting is tentatively planned for December 28. ("Yes, my staff want it after Christmas.")

Not all Letters of Intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this cover letter. The date of mailing of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of certain Letters of Intent. Additionally, some Letters of Intent received may not have been scheduled because the administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, etc.) have not yet been met.

REMINDER: Until all administrative requirements are met, the letter may not be scheduled.

From Laurel: "Beyond all date; even to eternity..."

Several recent letters have either been dated and mailed many days apart, or have been dated one month and postmarked during the next month. The Administrative Handbook requires a letter of intent or comment to be redated if there is a period of over a week between the dating of the letter and time it is actually mailed (AH V.B.2.f). I would like to clarify how a letter with such a disparity between the letter date and the postmark date will be handled.

If there is difference of 8 or more days between the date on the LoI and the postmark, the latter of the two will be considered as the effective date of the letter. If the letter is redated to the postmark, the redating may change the month the letter is considered. For example, a letter with a July 10 internal date and a postmark of July 17 (a 7 day difference) will not be redated and will be considered with the July 10 date. But a letter dated July 10 with a postmark of July 29 (a 19 day difference) will be considered as if it were a July 29 letter.

A postmark of the first day of the month may be considered either the last mailing day of the previous month or the first day of the new month. The first day of the month is given this option because a letter mailed on the last day of month may receive the postmark for the next day, the first of the month. If the letter must be redated, then the first will be considered the new month and will list the letter in the new month. For example, a letter dated July 30, if dropped in the mail on Sunday, July 31, and postmarked August 1, will be considered as a July letter (2 day difference). But if the letter was dated July 20 and postmarked August 1 (12 day difference), then the letter will be redated and considered an August letter.

But beware: only the first day of the month has this dual identity. A letter postmarked August 2 (or later) will be considered as an August letter regardless of the number of days between the letter date and the postmark.

Laurel Clerk adds: Commenters should always refer to a letter by its stated date, even if the letter will be redated. There is already confusion (and some program error messages) due to other date mismatches, like when people typo dates or when an e-mailed letter accidentally gets a different internal date than the real printed version. I would not like extra problems due to some commenters using an original nominal date and other commenters using a redate. The one distinguishing mark that everyone can use is the internal date on the original letter. So when commenting on a letter, please use the letter's internal nominal date. For example,

Bottomrealm 17 October 2003.

My copy was postmarked 5 November 2003, so it should be redated.

or, if Laurel has already redated it, something like

Bottomrealm 11 March 2004 (considered a 9 April 2004 letter)

From Laurel: What Was That Again?

Please retain your copies of LoIs and LoCs until all items have had decisions made. If an item is pended, you will need to keep the original LoI and LoCs that addressed that item for reference. There is no excuse for asking to have information repeated when considering the pended item if it was published in the LoI.

Principal heralds and external submission heralds in particular should note that Administrative Handbook X.B.2 has not changed in years:

Submissions Correspondence - A clean copy of each piece of correspondence dealing with submissions shall be retained in the kingdom files. Such correspondence may include internal and external letters of intent, letters of commentary, letters of response, letters of notification and any other correspondence referring to submissions.

From Laurel Clerk: Czech, Please! (or, Not To Be Too Diacritical, But ...)

I think that no LoAR cover letter has officially defined Da'ud notation for the diacritic called caron, alias hacek, alias ha{cv}ek, alias há{cv}ek. I gather from the Unicode standard that the usual representation is a circumflex inverted (a chevron inverted, a v-like mark) above a letter, but that it might occasionally be depicted using a breve or a single quote. The Da'ud notation will use a second-postion 'v' as in "{sv}" and "{cv}", two of the more common uses.

While I'm on the subject of Central European characters, another commonish combination ought to be defined for the sake of completeness: "{c'}" represents 'c' with an acute accent (/-wise) above it.

Those with Web access might like to bookmark a page by Blaise de Cormeilles and Teceangl Bach at http://www.scadian.net/heraldry/daud.html. It's not an official SCA Inc. or CoA Web page, but it gives the Da'ud initial implementation list from the February 1996 LoAR Cover Letter plus various (mostly unofficial) extensions.

Send What to Whom

For all Letters of Intent, Comment, Response, Correction, et cetera, send one paper copy to each of Laurel PKoA and Wreath QoA at their mailing addresses as shown on the College of Arms Mailing List.

Send Laurel office copies of all submissions-related paper, including

• Letters of Intent, Comment, Response, Correction, et cetera (note: such copies are in addition to the personal copies for Laurel and Wreath mentioned above)
• Submission packets
• Cheques or money orders for submissions, payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms"

to Kathleen M. O'Brien, 7323 Potters Trl, Austin, TX 78729-7777.

Send Laurel office copies of all submissions-related electronic files to submissions@sca.org . This includes electronic copies of LoIs, LoCs, LoRs, et cetera.

Send roster changes and corrections to Lord Symond Bayard le Gris, Bruce R. Nevins, 2527 E. 3rd St., Tucson, AZ, 85716-4114, (520) 795-6000, (520) 795-0158 (fax), bnevins@nexiliscom.com. College of Arms members can also request a copy of the current roster from Symond.

For subscriptions to the paper copy of the LoAR, please contact Symond, above. The cost for an LoAR subscription is $25 a year. Please make all checks or money orders payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms". For subscriptions to the electronic copy of the LoAR, please contact Laurel at herald@sca.org. The electronic copy is available free of charge.

For all administrative matters, or for questions about whom to send to, please contact Laurel Principal King of Arms, whose contact information heads this letter.

Pray know that I remain

In service

François la Flamme
Laurel Principal King of Arms

Created at 2002-07-25T23:48:57