Callidior Quam Ursus Typicus

The peerage research data I have is a bit out of date, (not having been updated since 2001), but yes, that's about right. Average in the SCA as of 2001 was that it takes twice as long to get a Pelican than a Knighthood. Most kingdoms are either Knight-heavy or Laurel-heavy as well, very few are Pelican-heavy.

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beathog.livejournal.com

That certainly is very interesting. :-)

I remember someone telling me once that service is EXPECTED of those who play actively in the SCA, so is not often rewarded. A Dolphin is obtainable, but it often takes YEARS to get one... it took me about five years of volunteering to help at every event, autocratting and co-autocratting events, etc., before I was awarded one. I received my Harp Argent one year after my AoA. Most often, these jobs are done out of the public eye, whereas Arts and Heavies are done (or displayed) in public, visible to everyone.

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I've heard the same thing about expectation of service. But if it were true, the numbers in the AoA- and GoA-level service awards would be just as low as the peerage awards. But the lowest AoA- and GoA-level awards are all in the heavies row. This is the discrepancy that's got me confused.

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Okay, here we go again....

This particular argument has been going
on for the two decades I have been playing.

Is the SCA a fighter organization that recognizes
the arts and sciences required to support a fighting
"man" (no disrespect meant Grafyna Sir Kolfinna)

OR

Is the SCA an Educational organization that recognizes
that fighting is one of the arts and sciences of the
Middle ages?

The answer just may be a little bit of both. Arts and
Sciences get a great deal of visibility. You can tangibly
see an embroidery project or a well thrown blow. It isn't
so easy to recognize that an event running well due to
good planning and execution is also arts and sciences.

Service is interesting. IF the community isn't being served
you can bet any amount of money that the community will
register their discontent with what is or isn't happening
in the service department,and one or more persons or aspects
of the service community will receive the blame.

When things are going well it is easy to have that achievment
be transparent. We don't usually need to figure out why
a thing is going well so we don't give it anywhere NEAR
the amount of credit and kudos it deserves.

Add to this that a lot of people still don't realize or are
intimidated by the letter writing process that initiates
any of the three orders and well.....

Annecathryn signing off and going
to work on Dolphin painting.

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Speaking as a member of that Service-Related Peerage:

Caid is one of those Pelican-heavy kingdoms. In the past, our active membership is usually about twice that of the other polling orders. Of course, our particular emphasis does tend to select for people who will continue to be active, rather than take a break after the "goal" is reached; my opinon only here, no official statement should be inferred here. Just decades of observation.

A quick count of Laurels and Pelicans puts their current active numbers about equal, but of course I saw quite a few folks at Arts Pentathalon last weekend whom I don't see much of the rest of the year. Mostly Laurels. ;-) I'm not as well acquainted with the Knights, I'm afraid, so could not just scan the photo page and figure out whom I had seen lately. Maybe they should be pictured in their armour!

We have a strict standard for recommendation. From the order statutes: "A candidate shall be recommended to the Crown for elevation to the Order of the Pelican if and only if the total "Yes" votes on that candidate represent not less than 75% of the total voting opinion and 60% of the total votes cast." [http://www.sca-caid.org/users/pelicans/p_Statutes.htm] The Laurels seem to have the same proportion, while the Chivalry requires a simple 2/3, not accounting for abstensions.

All of the ruling documents of the polling peerage orders are open for public perusal via the Caid kingdom web page [http://www.sca-caid.org]; look on the left side of the page, beneath KINGDOM GROUPS.

What other questions have you? I will answer as I may.

Dame Selene Colfox
yclept by the wise as "Auntie"

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Hey Auntie Selene,

What is a good and generic idea of what constitutes a "pelican candidate" level of involvment and service in the current kingdom
viewpoint?

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That's a good question, and one that not everybody asks. Obviously, Service is less flashy and obvious than the other two legs of the SCA Tripod, Arts and Fighting. The creation of the Order of the Pelican certainly did a lot to show appreciation for the quieter doer, without whom the other two could not stand. There is no single combat without a Lists officer to provide an order of combat; there is no art exhibition without a hall to house the artwork from the elements and someone had to hire that hall.

We like to see a record of consistant service over a number of years, preferably in more than one field or discipline. Just as a Laurel can't be a one-art major with no asthetic sense in any field outside his own, just as a Knight needs to be conversant with multiple weapons forms. In my own case, my "major" fields were Heraldry and Cookery, the latter in the sense of keeping the masses fed reliably and on time. I have also held diverse baronial offices and participated in my major fields on the kingdom level.

It all gets complicated when the candidate is a peer of another order. Certain experiences may be counted on more than one Leg of the SCA Tripod. Is a Knight's service in the King's army as an organizer to be counted separately, or is it "supporting his belt"? This gets complicated sometimes and the nature of one's service gets discussed in minute detail.

A grant-level award is a good indicator of progress but is not strictly required for peerage consideration. I do not have a Crescents award, in fact. But I did have 20+ years with a Dolphin, local awards and many interesting and invaluable experiences which apparently they took into consideration.

I was an "early adoptor" of service to a Pelican as a Protegee, as opposed as taking service with a Laurel as Apprentice or to a Knight as Squire. This is still not as common as the other two but I must recommend the practice. Truly, I served Mistress Catriona [on whom be peace] with back rubs and computer installation. But what I was really learning was how to be ready to serve in any way needed, when needed; and how to be a Lady and still be Assertive. She was a mighty example in that last regard, as anyone who knew her will attest.

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Truly, I served Mistress Catriona [on whom be peace] with back rubs and computer installation.

Glad to know I'm following in your doorsteps on both, boss. :-)

Seriously though it does take, (and I really DO have to start updating my peerage research project soon), a longer time from AoA-level to Pelican than it does with AoA-level to Knight or AoA-level to Laurel. And part of it *is* that these two are more visible than service is.

The worry I've had on that is the fear it may eventually lead to burnout, as people who are serving see other people with as much or less experience get awards that the people who do the service don't. And I've personally encountered the assumption that one must have x, y, or z award when they don't. (I've been publically chewed out for not wearing awards that I *don't* have, but have been assumed to have. And I don't even wear my harp pendants to SCA events for fear of it getting confused with a harp argent!)

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If you want to go far enough back in chronicler time
I had to ask for a correction because i was listed as
"Mistress Annecathryn of Wicken Bonhunt"

So I understand this one.

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the-celestia.livejournal.com

"(I've been publically chewed out for not wearing awards that I *don't* have, but have been assumed to have."

I'm not aware of any Kingdom Law that requires the wearing or display of award medallions. I believe there is a 'tradition' that Pelicans and Laurels wear tokens of these Peerages in situations where someone might be expected to be seeking knowledgeable assistance and/or guidance, but still not a requirement.

I sure hope the individual who chewed you out is just socially challenged and was trying to find out if you had such awards already, or to encourage others in hearing range to write recommendations for you for them.

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I suspect it was that there were wearing all their danglies and was offended that someone else wasn't wearing danglies they *assumed* the other had.

At least that was the impression I got

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Hi Auntie Selene,

Some questions: By "Pelican-heavy," do you mean that Caid has more active Pelicans, or awards more Pelicans than other kingdoms? Is the desire by the Order of the Pelican to have active peers (a very good thing to desire, I think) one of the reasons so few are given relative to ther corresponding kingdom-level awards?

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When I joined the order, we had about 70 active Pelicans as opposed to around 35 each other the others. Seems like a lot to me. See my answer to Ms Ryal for more here.

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"I'm not as well acquainted with the Knights, I'm afraid, so could not just scan the photo page and figure out whom I had seen lately. Maybe they should be pictured in their armour!"

They are pictured in their armour, you just have to go into the individual pages!

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Heh, I guess I asked for that. Could you do us all the favor of estimating a count of active Chivalry instead? I get about 80 Laurels and 82 Pelicans, for comparison.

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Not counting Western Seas Knights....

Active enough to fight in crown (5 events in 6 months):
25-30

Active in general (teaching, training, being around, practices, supporting the Kingdom in War):
40-50

My best guess.

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Might as well stick with "active in general" for a more even comparison. There is no official higher level of "active" for the other peers.

Why omit the Western Seas knights? I certainly didn't omit their counterparts in the other orders. We see them at Wars at least once a year... and Master Davin came visiting Estrella as well. It was great to see him too!

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Until very recently I didn't know any of the Western Seas Knights. I just don't know enough about them to count their activity level. I didn't want that to skew/unskew my numbers.

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People write letters for Dolphins/Crescents. Most of our recommendations were for service awards, so we tended to give a lot more of them. (Side note: I don't think people realize that award rec letters actually mean so much to the deciding process.) That makes the pool so much larger and harder to track.

No one writes letters for Crescent Swords/Gauntlets. All the Crescent Swords/Gauntlets we gave, were because that person stood out to us on the field. If they stood out to us, they were standing out to the knights too.

And on top of that, it is two different bodies deciding about the awards. The Crown picks who gets AOA/GOA awards. The Peers pick if you get into their group. Two waaaaaaaayyyy different criteria.

Just some background info.

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Well people jolly well SHOULD write in for the fighting awards. To fail would only reinforce the meme that Fiters Cant Rite. ;-)

"And on top of that, it is two different bodies deciding about the awards. The Crown picks who gets AOA/GOA awards. The Peers pick if you get into their group. Two waaaaaaaayyyy different criteria." Wordy word! It's nice when everyone agrees, but how often does that happen? :-/

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What happens to the letters that don't get acted upon in a "reign?"

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They remain on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

NONONO ONLY KIDDING! I believe there is a file for those, and not a circular one either.

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They get passed to the next crown. But with that much paperwork and letters if you wrote for an award and it doesn't get acted on for a year or two, I'd send a new copy in.

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Thanks for the background info! So no one writes Crescent Sword/Gauntlet letters? How about Argent Arrow/Chiron and Duellist/White Scarf recommendations; are they similarly absent, or do the close-knit archery and fencing communities place their own up for recognition relatively often?

*fascinated*

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I would say we got 5+ service recommendations a week, every week for 5 months. So minimum of 100 during our reign alone (and probably closer to 150). We did not get more than 10 fighting recommendations (heavies) for the ENTIRE reign. And most of those were verbal, probably only 4 of them were in proper letter format.

Same dearth of recommendations for Archery, Rapier and Equestrian (harp argent/lux's for horsemanship). The notable exception being the White Scarves, but then during our reign we chose to poll them as an order, so a recommendation came from the group.

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hagerson.livejournal.com

And for that we thank you, Your Excellency.

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lady_songsmith

Just theorizing, but -- Does this dearth of fighting recommendations perhaps stem from the population as a whole feeling somewhat unqualified to judge a fighter's prowess? It's fairly easy for anyone to look at someone and say, "Wow, so-and-so is doing a heckuva lotta work behind the scenes!" or "Such-and-such is making gorgeous stuff and has research on it out to here!" But watching fighters, I would think, it's a little harder to judge whether someone is good unless you know something about that form of combat yourself. "They win a lot" doesn't a good recommendation make. :-)

So Arts and Service can draw from a much broader pool of potential writers than Combat, maybe?

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I'll maintain my arguement that good service is often transparent
and usually reccomendation letters don't get written for the bad stuff.

Different mindsets - I think on unqualified versus how much exposure.

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lady_songsmith

The numbers, though - both those in the chart and those kindly provided by

kottr - suggest that people are writing for service at the AoA and GoA levels; it's only the peerage level where the numbers shift. Good service is only invisible to the people who don't have their eyes open to it. Anyone who has themself run an event is aware when attending an excellent event that a heck of a lot of work went on behind the scenes. Anyone who pitches in to help with something, in whatever small fashion, gets a peek 'behind the scenes' and can see how much work is being done. And since a lot of people do pitch in, if only in small ways, the barrier between stage and backstage is a lot more transparent than you would expect.

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"And on top of that, it is two different bodies deciding about the awards. The Crown picks who gets AOA/GOA awards. The Peers pick if you get into their group. Two waaaaaaaayyyy different criteria."

With due respect, Your Excellency, the Peerage orders only recommend candidates, the Crown makes the final decision.

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There is no doubt that the Crown makes the final decision, my earlier statement was an oversimplification of the situation. I was just trying express how AOA/GOA's are decided by 2 people, and Peerages are decided by 30+ people.

I'm sorry I wasn't clearer on my language. Cheers!

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I think I like the word influenced. :)

And cheers to you as well! :)

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I'm not sure it can be summed up easily as a math problem.

There are a lot of different paths to a Pelican. In my early SCA days it seemed that the typical path was someone who worked at local offices and then graduated to work at Kingdom levels which is still valid today. Or someone who autocrats local events and then moves on to autocrat Kingdom level events. Or someone who is the mainstay of the local group and works hard at every single local event.

It does take many many years to get a Pelican (and rightly so I think). I firmly believe that everyone ought to be working to make the SCA run at least to some extent, so it does take extraordinary effort for me to support a candidate. In addition, the Pelican looks at peer-like qualities (most of which are in Corpora).

Lastly, the Pelican circle doesn't get all that many recommendation letters. I think we had 4-5 candidates that were discussed at the last meeting.

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Auntie Selene was kind enough to share her ideas on a good and generic idea of what constitutes a "pelican candidate" level of involvement and service in the current kingdom; do you have anything you would like to add or feel needs more specific detail?

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Ooo...the Tough Question. :)

I guess I want to see something in between good solid long term service and crazy over-the-top utter long-term dedication. :) It's not enough (in my opinion) to hold one local office for a couple of years and autocrat a couple of local events. The Order of the Pelican should be for extraordinary service. It's hard to give real specifics because most of the Pelicans I know have different resumes from each other and it might be misleading to talk about one career path to a Pelican.

But I would like to add a couple of points. To me the Pelican is not the good guy award or the longevity award. Just because someone is really nice or has been in for a very long time does not make them a good candidate if their level of service is average.

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As of 1 Jan. 2001, the average time in Caid from inital AoA-level award to a Pelican was 7.83 years. Conpare to Knight (3.41 years) and Laurel (4,86 years)

SCA wide, as of 1 Jan. 2001, the average time from inital AoA-level award to a Pelican was 7.83 years. Conpare to Knight (4.03 years) and Laurel (6.03 years)

In Caid, Pelicans also averaged 9.17 awards per person, Knights 8.28, and Laurels 7.5 awards

SCA-Wide, Pelicans also averaged 9.72 awards per person, Knights 8.10, and Laurels 7.78 awards

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And your point is?

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Simply providing data on the length of time it takes between initial award and peerage level award

It is also interesting to note the length of time per decade. In Caid in the 70's, average time for a Pelican was 3.69 years, in the 80's 5.47 years, and in the 90's 10.30 years. I don't have data past 2001, (I really need to crack the raw data and rebuild that information), but I wouldn't be surprised if the length has increased.

SCA-wide, the 70's were 2.27 years, the 80's were 5.81 years, and the 90's were 9.28 years.

The progression on averages seems to be it takes almost twice as long to get a Laurel than a Knighthood, and twice that to get a Pelican.

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It doesn't surprise me that the length of time is longer now. (And I'm not unaware of the time....I remember crunching the numbers a few times a while back myself.)

I think the bar should be higher now and I don't think that it's out of line for what should be required for a Pelican. It takes a long time to reach the level of service I think is necessary.

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jillaw.livejournal.com

What Kolfinna said.

Also, I want to point out that the Laurels and Pelicans *only* discuss candidates for whom they have received a letter, and *only* in the meeting for which they have received it. The Chivalry, on the other hand, has no requirement for a letter in order to discuss whom they feel is a worthy candidate. So basically, if the Chivalry doesn't recommend someone one meeting, they might the next one, whereas the Pelicans might not receommend someone, and then they have to wait until another letter is written for that candidate before they discuss them again.

So, the moral of the story, on ALL levels? WRITE YOUR LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION! :)

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Thank you for the extra information, Your Majesty. I wasn't sure about the process of choosing what candidates were and weren't discussed, but it never occurred to me that the Pelicans and Laurels had so restricted themselves. I'm sure there's a story behind that, though; such restrictions tend to have stories, and names, behind them.

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czina.livejournal.com

Well, part of the problem is trying to compare 3 legs of a stool (the peerages) as if they are all apples. They are all equal in the eyes of the Society (And we won't go into 'some peerages are more equal than others', please!), but they are 3 goals that are reached in 3 different ways.

The Chivalry is probably the easiest to judge, in a way. It's relatively easy to tell when a fighter has reached the level of other members of the Chivalry. And let's face it - fighters are fighting the clock, in terms of how long they can continue to practice. If a fighter wants to work towards being in the Chivalry, they need to do a LOT of fighting, without getting hurt, while they're still in the shape to do it.

The members of the order of the Laurel have to focus and practice for a great deal of time, in order to perfect their art. And since new information is being found and published all the time, the bar for 'authenticity' is constantly raising. So if a person wants to be a blackwork expert in Caid, they have to pass muster from a woman who is writing a book on blackwork. And if they want to be a calligraphy/illumination expert, they have to pass muster from several excellent artists. But the point is that you have to be working at 'expert' level of work, with time in the field, and proof to show for it. And Caid only has one major arts event every 2 years - Pentathlon. So if you want to show well, better not miss the deadline! And don't have 'Real Life' interfere with entries. Unlike a fighter, who can fight every weekend - an artist doesn't have as many venues, and doesn't have as many qualified judges of their work. And the requirement that an artist have an auxiliary field of study only adds to the problem. But once you're the best, the word gets out, and people will notice. And there are other places to display and show off your work - and there are plenty of places for publication, as well.

And then there's the Pelicans. An award for extended and dedicated service to the SCA. Well, you can't win that in one weekend, now can you? For a Pelican, what can you do? You can be the person running the lists for the fighters. You can be the Herald who doesn't butcher the names of the fighters. You can be the water-bearers keeping them hydrated and the chirugeons who keep them from hurting themselves. So you are the support staff for the fighters. You can run the arts table for the Barony. You can run Pentathlon. You can help staff the Arts Booth. You can help run Collegium. You can be the support staff for the Laurels. And you can run events, and run local groups, and be officers at the local and Kingdom level. But all of these take time - you can't shine beyond all shadow of a doubt in one weekend like a fighter can (winning the tourney and becoming King, for example). And you can't put in the work on 5 items and shine beyond all the other artisans (at Pentathlon). There are times to shine, but it can't usually be as 'flashy' as the other two, and therefore the recognition has to come from the idea that 'Ask Selene, she'll do it, and it'll be done right' - and 'What a wonderful event - of course, Selene ran it.' (using Selene as the Pelican example, since she's reading this thread) When someone has that reputation, and is known for their dedication, hard work, and excellence - that is when they are Pelicans, and should be recognized as such. But that takes time, and can't necessarily be accomplished as fast as becoming a good fighter, or an arts expert.

This is borne out by the numbers, and isn't too surprising. It's unfortunate that there aren't more recommendations being sent in, though - because if there are qualified people doing the work and putting in the time, they should be recognized for it!

Note - these opinions are my own, and not those of anyone I may be affiliated with - don't blame them. Also - if I have the information wrong, I apologize, and meant no disrespect for any of the Peerages - forgive my ignorance, and please do not assign any malice.

Czina Angielczyka
Order of the Harp Argent, Order of the Dolphin, AoA
Apprentice to Viscount Gaius M. L. Auklandus, OL, KSCA, OP

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ermine-rat.livejournal.com

Funny, I was doing a statisical breakdown of the peerages in the West. I may post some of my findings here (I thread just started on my home thread), but it is a lot of data. I was curious how diverse the numbers had gotten and it set me to wondering how sheer numbers could make the peerages unequal by simply creating so many of one flavor over another. The data speaks for itself, but the conclusions are up for grabs.

oh and since most of you don't know me:
Viscount Richard of Alder Tree, KSCA, OP yadda yadda, West Kingdom

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