Adelheid in the SCA

To be of use   By Marge Piercy  The people I love the best  jump into work head first  without dallying in the shallows  and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.  They seem to become natives of that element,  the black sleek heads of seals  bouncing like half-submerged balls.  I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,  who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,  who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,  who do what has to be done, again and again.  I want to be with people who submerge  in the task, who go into the fields to harvest  and work in a row and pass the bags along,  who are not parlor generals and field deserters  but move in a common rhythm  when the food must come in or the fire be put out.  The work of the world is common as mud.  Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.  But the thing worth doing well done...

I officially became a student of Mu'allima Halima al-Rakkasa last weekend at an event hosted by the Shire of Hartwood. This marks the end of a long process, and the start of a new journey. In the SCA, a "student" is someone engaged in a structured learning relationship with a teacher, who may or may not be a Laurel, for mentorship. It allows for teaching with expectation of feedback to promote the growth of the student. When I joined the SCA, I wanted to learn the art of språng. I found someone selling pre-warp språng frames at an event, although the person who created the frames wasn't at the booth. It wasn't until a later event that I meant that person, Halima, who took time to walk me through pretty much every item on her table as I asked question after question about the nalbound and språng items she had created. She was the person who challenged me to create anything, didn't matter what it was, but create it and sent her a picture by December ...