🚀 go-pugleaf

Arnwald writes about the intrinsic costs of getting awards.

My lord, I'll concede your point, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean.
If time is counted as an expense, as are materials, what could a cost-free
award possibly be rewarding? (The only thing I can think of is civility and
a charming personality (rewarded in my Kingdom with the Queen's Order of
Courtesy) and being the Royalty's best buds (rewarded with the Cypher type
awards and with Court Baroncies...but anyone who doesn't think that being
the Royal Best Friend isn't work has never seen a Royal household.))

Not only service awards have their cost primarily measured in time. Singers
and performers must spend countless hours in rehearsal, and fighters must
spend many, many Sundays at fighter practice. Awards are meant to reward the
best that the Society can generate...and that involves contribution of time,
and often money as well. Gentles who don't have the ability or inclination
to contribute such things should always be welcomed in the SCA, but the
welcome need not include awards.

So you know, I'm speakinmg from the perspective of a still-relatively-cash-
poor graduate student; that's why I don't do the expensive arts, like garb
and metalworking. I stick to the cheapies like embroidery and brewing.
However, I enjoy contributing my relatively-ample time to the SCA.

(Understand; the paragraph above is *not* meant to imply that there should
be some sort of standard amount of time/money expended for each award. 
Natural talent comes into play, as does the *effectiveness* of the time 
spent. I can think of some projects of mine that took forever and didn't
make a difference, and others that took relatively little time but were very
beneficial to a lot of people.)

Alison MacDermot

(Oh, hi, Soapy. I thought I'd gotten a bit taller all of a sudden. Here:
take these soapflakes and run along home to Tux now.)