From the Seneschal
If you are an officer with a standard message in the Runes, please check it every so often to make sure that dates etc are still correct! Speaking of officers, believe it or not my time has nearly come to an end here as seneschal… so in January we will need a new Grand Pooh-Bah. If you would like to be Seneschal… ok, if you will agree to be Seneschal, please let me know so we can work on one of the very easy reports before it is time to turn everything over. For those who did not know, we will not be selling food at Geneseo this year, however, we will be concentrating more on games. So if you have any ideas (any at all) for games that we could run (for kids or adults), please let me know.

From the Board of Directors
The following message is a recent decision from the Board of Directors. The topic covered is the severe lack of fund that the Society has been encountering. For the past several years, official membership has stayed the same, while overall attendace at event has increased (meaning more people are playing, just not becoming members). Also, the publications have become more and more expensive and are costing much more then the "allowance" that the kingdoms are given for them. If you do not agree with the decision below, please write the listed address and express your feelings: Subject: BOD Decision on Membership Fee Increase br> Andrew Smith wrote:
Greetings unto the membership of the SCA.
At the Third Quarter 2002 meeting of the SCA Board of Directors, held July 20, 2002 in Herndon, VA, the Board acted on the membership unbundling/fee increase proposal that has been out for comment. A total of 525 comments were received (a very high response rate in comparison to other items for which comment has been requested). No one option got a majority, but the most popular ideas were:
1) removing either Tournaments Illuminated (TI) or both TI and the member's Kingdom newsletter from the basic membership package (33%)
2) simply raising fees across the board (31%)
3) reinstating the Non-member Surcharge (22%).
It is noteworthy that, despite the Board's definitive statement that "pay-to-play" was not being considered, 11% of the respondents specifically said they favored that option.
The Board decided that:
1. TI will become an optional publication. The price of a sustaining membership will remain US$35 per year, but will no longer include TI-those subscriptions will be sold separately. The price of a TI subscription will be decided upon after consultation with the editor and the Corporate office to determine actual costs--the idea is that it will become self-supporting. Existing memberships will remain unchanged (that is, will continue to receive TI) until their expiration date.
2. The subscription price for additional publications will increase, as will the first-class option price for all newsletters (whether included in a membership or as an additional publication)
3. The kingdoms will get US$2 more per label per year in stipends. This is in response to the increased costs of producing and mailing the newsletters (for example, postage just went up again). 4. A nonmember surcharge of US$3 per event per non-member attendee will be instituted. These fees will go directly to the Corporation. The Society Seneschal and the corporate office will work with the kingdom officers on details of implementation.
All of the above items are to go into effect January 1, 2003. Some corresponding change to International memberships will be made in the future (hopefully in time to be implemented as of 1 January) but has not yet been decided upon by the Board of Directors.
Respectfully,
Andrew Smith
Andrew of Riga
Secretary, SCA Inc.
Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to:

SCA Inc.
Box 360789
Milpitas, CA 95036


From the person who was the autocrat
It's been over two weeks now since our event and I've almost had enough time to get my head reattatched. There are a few people who still need to be reimbursed and a lot of people who need to be thanked for everything they did to contribute to making the event such a success. So there's that word -success. I do feel that in the end it was a sucessful event. We had 70 people come play, which is fewer than I hoped for, but not too bad considering the two events we were up against in Northshield and Calontir. I know the people who were at our event had a wonderful time and went home and told all their friends what a good event they missed. This year's event was always supposed to do just that-lay the groundwork for a early event that people will know is worth their time to travel to.
The bad news is that we lost money. We were able to cover the cost of the site, and we came within $50 of covering our other expenses (lunch, tokens, prizes, etc). Unfortunately we had planned on feeding 75 people at feast, and we sold approximately half that many feast seats. Jim planned a fabulous feast, and this in no way reflects his performance, but more reflects the overall poor attendence of the event itself. Total everything up and we lost about $500.
I hope that we can use this as a way to prepare for next year. Now we know how much it costs to have this great event, and (I hope) we know we want to do it again. The whole reason we do all the demos during the year is to save up to throw a great party for all of the other SCA people who throw the parties for us the rest of the year.You don't have to be a shire officer to talk to people about setting up demos, help plan a demo, or volunteer to help at a demo. My semi-offocial event report was handed out at the August business meeting. If you didn't get a chance to see it and would like a copy, please let me know.
Thank you again to everyone who gave everything they could to make this event happen.
Lady Norelle/donna weks

Blacksmith's Guild
The last meeting was held on July 20th. Many new faces showed up at the meeting this month. We started by a trip to the junkyard where we did a tour of the yard and then hit the bar stock shed. Plenty of stock was acquired for upcoming projects. Do to the large number of new aspiring smiths we had decided to skip the advanced projects and had an introductory class on the basics of blacksmithing. We worked on S-hooks, an all-purpose camp tool. By the end of the day everyone was grasping the basics of blacksmithing. We also had time to experiment with silver smelting. The results looked promising.
This month, the meeting will tentatively be on Saturday August 31th at 11:00. Depending on the turnout we will either be finishing last months class on S-hooks, or we will be working on the following. The event at Geneseo is getting closer, so we will be designing plans for a period style forge and bellows. We will be working on torch holders, both free standing, and hanging. We also hope to have a ceramic crucible by then, so we will continue with our ongoing silver smelting experiment. This will be followed by our traditional grilled meat and beverages of choice, (byom bring your own meat).
We have started an email group at Yahoo, if anyone is interested in being included on the list please email me. Also, we will soon have a guild web page containing all kinds of useful info. If anyone is interested in learning the skills of blacksmithing, then perhaps you should think about being a part of the guild. We are always looking for new members and ideas. The guild will meet at least once a month. Actual meeting dates will be decided upon at the first meeting of the current month. For more information or for directions please contact me at 309-736-0385 or rjfiii@revealed.net
Yours in service,
Gunther Todmacher

From the Chronicler
The Shire of Dark River also has a Yahoo Groups list on the Internet at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shireofdarkriver. Anyone interested can sign up and get announcements and reminders. We will be utilizing this list more in the future rather than the mailing list, which is unwieldy to maintain. You can be in charge of keeping your own account information correct so you will always be assured of receiving any important shire related information.
If anyone has anything they would like included or corrected in the future copies of this newsletter please let me know. Any suggestions are welcome. If any officers would like a "standing" message (such as this one) to run please send it to me via email and I will include it in future copies.
From the Fighter Marshal
Fighter practice has been moved from Tuesday nights to Wednesday nights at 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. The location is still the same: Bethel Wesley United Methodist Church 1201 13th Street Moline, IL 61265. For more information see Daffyd or Gunther.

From the Herald
Those in need of Names or Devices please see me. Get the forms and instruction sheets before working on your Name or Device, then follow the forms and instructions in drafting something. Get this draft to me for a two or three-week review and I'll get back to you with suggestions for a final submission to me, which I will complete and copy for sending up the line. Stay somewhat flexible on your Name and Device until you finalize it for submission. This will give you the best chance for approval on the first try.
Also, please drop me a note regarding the particulars whenever you receive an Award. I need to maintain records on all awards. Information should include the following: Type of Award, Recipients Name (as listed on scroll), Reason for Award (as listed on scroll) and Date of Presentation (as listed on scroll).

Arts & Sciences
To all the gentles in Shire of Dark River -
please consider entering your Arts & Sciences accomplishments for judging at any upcoming A&S faires. You would be competing against set criteria as opposed to against other individuals. I know there are those of you that are stitching, brewing, cooking, armoring, etc. There are all manners of categories to choose from. We have very talented artisans in our shire and I would like to see you be recognized for your various talents. Imagine returning home with a first place award! What a confidence builder.
Many members of our shire are frequently working on Arts and Sciences projects at home, that I am unaware of. It is my duty to send a quarterly report to the Regional MOAS about what our shire and all of it's members have been doing. In order for this report to accurately reflect all your talents you have to share information with me about what you are doing. I routinely pass a notebook around at monthly business meetings for people to record their current projects, but members can not always attend. You can email me (wmal@mchsi.com) or phone me (787-6653), or even send by your personal messenger (preferably on horseback in period garb - my neighbors would be so impressed) details of your accomplishments. Lets show the rest of the kingdom our A&S talents!
In service
Ceridwen verch Gruffyd, (mka Sarah Malaise)

MOAS