(no subject)

[stitchwhich]

ladyhelwynn's questions
1) If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you and why?
2) What is it you love the most about the SCA?
3) If I asked your best friend to give five adjectives that best descibe you, what do you think their answer would be?
4) What is your favorite time period to research and why?
5) If you could time travel back 20 years, what advice would you give yourself?

1) If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you and why?
While answering "somewhere on the Mediterranean rim so I could visit all the great sites of ancient cultures I'm interested in" seems the obvious answer, the truth is, my heart yearns for the sight of Mt. Hood from my window, or Rainier, or the Three Sisters, or even poor, broken Mt. St. Helens. I want to breathe air crisp from the snow spiced with Douglas Fir. I want to walk through cathedral forests carpeted in rich black-brown soil of pine needles and lightened by ferns as tall as my waist... to pick blackberries until I groan from the stuffing. To eat a Red Delicious Apple that doesn't taste like someone stole its soul out of it during shipping. Home. I'd love to be home.

2) What is it you love the most about the SCA?
For all the faults one could point a finger at, the SCA is closest in my experience to creating an environment that encourages people to care about each other, to cheer each other on in their various interests, and to, well, to be honest with each other and themselves. Not that other organisations don't do that, but it is far more common and consistent in the SCA than I found in the two churches I was a member of or in the Boy Scouts... the reverence (mostly) for knowledge and skill is something rare in the normal world.

3) If I asked your best friend to give five adjectives that best descibe you, what do you think their answer would be?
Um, er... um. *cough* Fat, sharp-tongued, but loving, smart, sometimes truly dense.

4) What is your favorite time period to research and why?
Second Dynasty Egypt. No, really! The art, the culture, the religious synergy, the laws and the family/social structure - there was a lot to admire, a lot that we are only re-finding in our own culture now. And there was, looking from this vantage point, a vibrancy that I find exciting although I know that life there/then was more gritty than I let myself really imagine. (I'd rather read about it than live it!)

5) If you could time travel back 20 years, what advice would you give yourself?
There is one love-relationship I'd definitely tell myself to not fall into. Open marriage works best for me if anything outside it is "friend first, lover as a nice sometimes". Beyond that, I think I would strongly advise myself to establish an investment account for retirement future that doesn't depend on my husband's - even housewives need to feel like they have some way of 'being secure' should the worst happen.


colin_g's questions
1) What is your 30 second elevator speech answer to the following question: "What's a 21st century pagan believe and how do they express it?"
2) What's more important to you: yesterday, today, or tomorrow
3) What battle in your SCA career did you lose? Why? And would you fight it again knowing the end result?
4) Do you feel more pride that we almost broke the glass ceiling forever or that we've left our segregationist history behind?
5) What's next for you?


1) What is your 30 second elevator speech answer to the following question: "What's a 21st century pagan believe and how do they express it?"
I can't speak for "Pagans". I can say that as a 21st Century Wiccan, I believe that there is one Almighty Power which no human can describe or truly experience and in the manner of many faiths, we divide that Godhood into smaller parts that are easier to relate to; in my case a Lord and Lady, Father and Mother. We believe that respect for all faith paths is an imperative. No man (or woman) can dicate to Diety how It is to relate to another human, or to that other human what language of the heart best speaks to Diety. We hold sacred respect for the world around us - as we are a small and fleeting part of that greater whole. That the soul lives on beyond the body's demise so our integrity, compassion, and understanding are more important to preserve than our earthly envelope for who we make ourselves to be will outlast our bodies by a magnitude of time unimaginable. That there is a Cycle of Life which we all experience whether we like it or not, and so there should be no fear of Death, as there is no fear of Birth. They mirror each other and open doors for the soul.

We express our faith by worshiping on Certain holy days determined by the phases of the moon, which involve a ritual to celebrate the joining of the Lord and Lady to create all that is life, and mark the Cycle of the Solar Year with other rituals tied into the world's birth/growth/harvest/rest as the seasons move forward. Most of us are deeply involved in ecological preservation.

2) What's more important to you: yesterday, today, or tomorrow
I can't choose one. Maybe yesterday. Tomorrow is unknown. While I can treasure the potential of it, it is not "important". Today is, well, it just is. Yesterday is the only thing I can live and relive at will but yet it doesn't weigh more than either of the others.

3) What battle in your SCA career did you lose? Why? And would you fight it again knowing the end result?
It was really important to me that members of the SCA who were minors be given the same rights as adult members in terms of attendance at events and (as can be) responsibilities within the organisation. For example, that we not hold events at places where minors could not attend in their own right. But fear of litigation destroyed that and teens are more suppressed and regulated now than they were when we first joined, with utterly stupid rules arbitrarily set into place more from fear of rather than knowledge of the law. And yeah, I'd still be fighting it if I thought my voice would be heard.

4) Do you feel more pride that we almost broke the glass ceiling forever or that we've left our segregationist history behind?
I'm not sure which glass ceiling you are talking about so can't really compare. I am proud that the conditions I knew between races when I was a child are fading but am sorely disappointed that they are being replaced with attitudes that cause, I believe, even greater harm. Thank the Gods, there's a growing middle ground that may someday overswell both extremes.

5) What's next for you?
I keep asking myself that. The next four years or so are mapped out as far as Pennsic duty is concerned (staff stuff) but I find myself growing tired of the same things even as I enjoy doing them, like, as Bilbo says, "Butter scraped over too much bread". I need to turn my eyes to something in the back drawers of my mind and bring it out to the light to play with.