30-Day Blog Challenge: Day Three—A picture of you and your friends
This picture was taken quite some time ago—about four years ago, I’d say. My friends and I participate in a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA for short. Simply put, it is an international organization of people who are interested in medieval history and recreating it.
For a period of three years, I had the honor of being the elected baron of our local chapter. Now typically there are two people who hold the office—a baron and a baroness—but I decided to go it alone. The job involved much traveling to other SCA events, lugging things around (like a throne), organization of duties and tasks, mustering up an army for the annual Pennsic War, and sometimes dealing with the petty squabbles that occurred between individuals. But there were some great perks to it too—for example, running court and handing out awards to worthy individuals. The looks on people’s faces when I bestowed some sort of honor upon them was worth every moment!
However, truth be told, I couldn’t have done the job as well as I did if it hadn’t been for my friends—those other people in the picture. They made sure I was present at events, on time for court, organized the set-up and tear down of the thrown, took care to wash and pack my feast gear, and generally kept me sane the entire time! Yeah, I was crazy to do the job by myself, but these people made sure everything ran smoothly.
Anyway, the term of the office is three years, at which point the King and Queen of the kingdom divest the sitting baron and baroness and invest a new baronage to take over the job. Of course, I needed a new outfit for my divestiture, and everyone else was more than willing to follow suit—so we creating matching garb using my heraldic colors (purple and gold). This photo was taken right after I stepped down as baron. And I can tell you for a fact that those smiles on our faces were 100 percent pure relief that it was finally over.
