How not to conduct a peerage ceremony

(Posted to SCA-West)

Please don't stand facing the King and Queen as you describe the deeds of the person being elevated. They and the peerage members are supposed to already know this stuff: you're the ones who deliberated on the invitation, right? It's the *populace* you should be telling these things and if you've got your back to us, we cannot hear you.

Please don't mosey out of court chatting to your fellow peerage members while the herald is trying to read the proclamation. Not only are you distracting people from said proclamation, your fine example simply results in cuing the populace to chat amongst themselves as well. After all, they haven't been able to hear anything of what's going on anyway, so it must not be important.

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Seriously. I sat there, RIGHT  up front, less than 30 feet from the thrones and I could not hear a word of Bailey's Pel ceremony. I'm deaf but not that deaf.  Considering all the blather goes on about how the Peers Must Do More Outreach To The Populace, including the rest of us in the ceremony might be nice.

Then, there's that whole "surprise" thing, which I loathe. I know there are people who prefer to be surprised, but I believe a peerage is a job offer and should be treated as such. You want to surprise me, send me flowers. DON'T haul me up in front of a crowd and put me in an awkward position, thank you.

The other problem with the surprise gambit is that inevitably many of the candidate's friends will miss out on seeing their friend receive the honor.  As I did. As a number of people did, judging from entries posted in the last 24 hours.

Congratulations to Beli Bailey McIntyre and Vittoria Aurelii upon their elevations to the Orders of the Pelican and Laurel, whatever they might have been for.

Houston, we have a laptop

A partially set-up one. I can't wait until I have everything finally copied and loaded onto it that I want. THEN I can start deleting the software that came with this that I DON'T want.

And this plugging and unplugging the mouse and going back and forth is special.

Crown was pretty mellow, at least for someone who has no vested interest in the outcome.  I picked up layla_lilah early, we grabbed some hot beverages at Peets and got on the road at a good time and didn't have to deal with any bad traffic. We made it to site in time for AM court, and borrowed a bit of shade from the Wolfscairn folks. Got to have some nice visits with various folks, including acanthusleaf  who is always fun to chat with. Found a nice little place on 116 for dinner called the Henweigh Cafe. The bourbon flank steak was excellent.

Sunday my computers were talking to each other via cable so I went out to the Oakland Zoo. Got some great black and white botanical shots and there was an extremely cooperative chimpanzee who sat in a spot where I could shoot him without obstruction, however, I have not satisfactorily figured out how to tell my camera how to focus on what's behind the wire instead of the wire itself. Clearly more practice is needed.
  

I'll upload the batch to Flickr. Eventually.....