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Hello Debatable Lands! Our next Stellar Fencing Tournament will be this Sunday at practice! The format will be rotating weapons form bearpit.

At the Iris Festival, Baronessa Violeta and Praetoria Prima announced their intent to retire. Our Barony will need to select the new Baronage. The process, the requirements candidates must meet to serve as Baronage, and the requirements to be allowed to vote are outlined in Section V of the Barony Governance Policy document. Here is that document: https://debatablelands.aethelmearc.org/resources/policies-and-forms/downloads/BMDL_Governance_Policies_FINAL_Dec2023.pdf.

At the June 3rd business meeting the selection committee members were identified: The selection committee currently consists of the current Baronage, Violeta and Prima, myself, Hara, the Seneschal, the Knight Marshal, Patrokles, the Chronicler, Emilia, and the Exchequer, Forveleth. Depending on who is running for Baronage, the committee members may change. It may change if a committee member is running, is a partner or living with someone who is running, or has a teacher/student or belt relationship with someone who is running. At that June meeting, the committee voted myself, Hara Kikumatsu as Chairman of the Selection Committee.

Here are the steps for selecting our next Baronage and approximate timing:
1. Announcement of the upcoming election. It was announced at court at Iris Festival on May 24th
2. Approximately one month later, nominations – this has already been scheduled for Jul 12 at the garb swap.
3. Approximately one month later, acceptance of nominations.
3.a Ballots mailed to eligible barony citizens.
3.b Candidate town hall meetings ideally one in person and one online, for candidates to introduce themselves, and to answer questions from the populace.
4. Two month later, ballots counted. (Exact date and location will be announced once we have a better idea of whether the process in running on schedule.)

Note that nominations can be sent in writing to the Chairman of the Selection Committee. The written nomination must be received before the nomination meeting. Send a written nomination to Hara Kikumatsu: Mailing address: Sharon Booth, 1105 Shady Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. You can also send email to bmdl@aethelmearc.org. No text or social media requests please.

The requirements of the office: The Territorial Office of the Baronage, must meet the requirements stated in Corpora and Kingdom Law, be 18 years of age or order as of the date the votes are to be tallied, and must be a citizen of the Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands. The Office of the Baronage of the Debatable Lands is not subject to a term limit. 

Note: Individuals or couples may be nominated, but no individual can occur on the ballot more than once.

Eligible Voters: Any person residing the the zip codes of the Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands who is 17 years of age or older, as of the date the votes are to be tallied, and is on the corporate membership list may vote or is a Non-Resident Citizen of the Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands and has their contact information on file with the Offices of the Seneschal and Herald. Under exceptional circumstances,the Selection Comittee may consider a written request for a ballot from a person who would not otherwise receive one. Such a request must be received be the Chair of the Selection Committee by the date of the Nominating Meeting.

Send a written nomination or a request for a ballot if you would not otherwise receive one to the Chairman of the Selection Committee, Hara Kikumatsu: Mailing address: Sharon Booth, 1105 Shady Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. You can also send email to bmdl@aethelmearc.org. No text or social media requests please.

If you are not a current member, or your address is not up-to-date with Corporate, please correct that. If you are a non-resident citizen make sure your contact information is up-to-date with the Senechal and Herald. We will be requesting the list of members from corporate in early July before the nominating meeting.

After the nominating meeting, the chairman will notify the nominated candidates in writing within one week of the nominations. In order for the candidate to be considered, they must accept the nomination in writing to the Chairman of the Selection committee within one month of the nomination meeting.

Ballots will be mailed to eligible voters. There will be numbered ballots, and a record will be kept of the total number of ballots, but no record will be kept of which number was mailed to a voter. Voters are not required to put their name on the ballot. Voters can return in ballots by mail or in person to the Chair the the Selection Committee.

The ballot will contain a group status question that the voter must answer. The groups status question asks if the Barony should remain a barony. Then it will contain a list of candidates be ranked in order of preference with 1 being the favorite candidate. A voter can leave a candidate blank or unranked. A voter can also mark a candidate unacceptable, UA.

A duplicate, invalid, or missing ballot number will be considered invalid ballot and not counted. If the ballot doesn’t have unambiguous and legible ranking of candidates including UA and blank responses it will be considered invalid.

Any candidate receiving unacceptable, UA, votes from more than 33% of the valid ballots will be eliminated.

General Summary of Tallying. The voters rank candidates from most favorite to least favorite. Take the ballots and make a pile for each candidate, based on just the first-place votes (ignoring all the other rankings on the ballots). Then eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes and re-distribute those ballots to the other piles, using the second-place votes. Keep eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes until one candidate is left. This is a summary only. Please refer to the governance document listed at the beginning of this post

Here is a news update about baronial things that happened recently or are happening in the coming months. First, Noble Gerschon de Gervoi l’amiot is the newest officer in the barony. Gerschon is our new Minister of the Lists. You may have seen them at the MoL table last Pennsic, at War Practice, or at barony stellar tournaments. They were also the MoL for the fencing tournament at the Japanese Iris Festival and Iron Comet Challenge event.

At the Archery Muster at the Castle this year, we had a tournament to select our Baronial representative for the Scarlet Guard Challenge. Lady Arthes MacLeod won that tournament, and Ramir was second. Then at War Practice Arthes won Kingdom archery champion tournament and was elevated to the Scarlet Guard. Thus, she was no longer eligible to participate in the Scarlet Guard Challenge. Ramir will represent the Barony at the Scarlet Guard Challenge.
We also have a new barony archery champion, The Honorable Lady Arthes MacLeod won the Barony archery tournament.

The Iris Festival was held on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We had martial tournaments in heavy, fencing, thrown weapons, and archery. We also had an Arts and Sciences competition and a display. We also had Japanese lawn games thanks to Fine and her helpers. There was an iron skillet dessert making competition organized by Arthes and her team of helpers and judges. Between Michi-san’s terrific bento boxes, the iron skillet desserts, and the vendor with coffee, tea, and cookies, everyone was quite full of food and the day was full of fun activities.

At the end of court at the Iris Festival, Baronessa Violeta and Praetoria Prima announced they plan to retire and are starting the Baronage Selection Process. The nomination meeting will be held at the end of the general business meeting at the July garb swap. I will be posting further information about the upcoming Baronage selection when we have dates and locations.

The Garb Swap is coming soon. The Garb Swap is an annual tradition that started years ago and the is coordinated by Baroness Constance Glyn Dwr. It will be help on Sunday, July 12th, at the Avalon Shelter in North Park, From 10:30 until 5pm. There will also be the baronial fencing tournament. Fencers should cone early to warm up and sign-up for the tournament at 11:30. The tournament will start promptly at noon, so it will be done in time for everyone to participate in the swap. There will also be a barony meeting starting around 2pm or so. The nominations for new Baronage candidates will be held at the end of the Barony meeting.

For directions and more information see the garb swap calendar entry on the baronial calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/event?eid=NWlxb2lpcDhtMHNzNTV2djNhc3NnbGZpNmYgaWJiNGVmajA3N3IzZ2M5a2txdmdjaWszOXNAZw.

The Baronial Tournament to select the next heavy Baronial Champion will be held on Sunday, June 21st and the outdoor martial arts practice. Heavy practice usually starts at 2pm once archery is done. Practice is held in LAPR field in Highland Park, located at the intersection of Washington Blvd and Allegheny River Blvd. The thrown weapons baronial champs tournament date is still TBD.

If you are planning to attend Pennsic this year, the Barony will be holding a reception in Aethelmearc Royal on Sunday August 2nd from noon-4pm. There will be both Baronial and Royal Count. Royal Court is currently scheduled from 1-2ish. Please note that the actual time of Royal Court may vary depending on Their Majesties schedule. THL Robert Pour Maintnon’s elevation to the Order of the Pelican is scheduled for that royal court.

My last bit of new is that there will be a social media transition to Aethelmearc managed social media in November. For discord that is nothing more than changing the owner of the discord server. The barony google email lists will also transfer, but the members of the email list can be imported into the new email group. Facebook is a different issue. There is not a member or content transfer process. If there is content or contacts that you want to save, do so. Note that if content is not yours, you cannot upload it to the new server without written permission via online form or email. Please see the social media policy document regarding this. https://www.sca.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Society-Social-Media-Policy-April-2021.pdf. The transition for our barony is scheduled for November. It was scheduled this late so that the baronial election process won’t be interrupted by the transition.

Hello, fencers! This Sunday, we will host a fencing melee muster, run by Duchess Ariella! Location and time are the same as usual for our Sunday practice: 1pm at the LARP Lot in Highland Park.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18u1FGdm5u/

There is a business meeting tomorrow, Wed. June 3rd and 8pm. It is a hybrid meeting, both online and in-person. Here is the google meet link: https://meet.google.com/zdo-czri-zqe If you want to attend in-person the location is 1105 Shady Ave, Pittsburgh, 15232.

Here is the agenda: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VwErbbJCpsz8P0a8VpOQ-FeGbOdnHr9r/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=100952935535046524485&rtpof=true&sd=true

Officers, if you cannot attend, please send your report to me or with someone who plans to attend. Also please assign your vote proxy to someone. There is an event bid that I expect we will need to vote on. I will add the link to the agenda when I get the bid.

Greetings Debatable Lands!

We have plans to do a melee practice for armored combat WITH combat archery this Sunday at the park. In order to make sure we have enough fighters for melee, I have spoken with Hartman, the Knight-Marshal for St. Swithin’s Bog, and they will be joining us for a joint practice. I have also sent the information to Borderwatch, Thescorre, and a few other places. So if you want to learn or practice melee combat for Pennsic, this is the weekend to come out and play!

We had another wonderful Iris Festival this past weekend. I want to send out my thank yous to everyone who made this a success. The weather forecast was a bit scary, but so many people decided to risk that and come out. We had very little rain during the outdoor activities. The archers got a little wet, but they didn’t let the drops stop the contest.

Baronage: Baronessa Violeta and Praetoria Prima for cheering for all the tournaments

Bento Box: Michi-san and her team of sous chefs, Owen, Kattera, Fine, Kolfinna, and Kyle. Kit for the serving bowl, and Gwen for helping fill and serve bento boxes. The boxes were full of delicious Korean food. Thank you Michi for being ready to make a few extra boxes, just in case.

Troll: Forveleth, Helena, and Eliza for checking folks in and distributing the food chits and origami horses.

MoLs: Skjoldr, Gerschon, Tristyn, Niall, and Elinor for tournament sign-in, checking authorizations, and score keeping.

Marshals: Patrokles, Cadence, Tristyn and Niall for running the tournaments

A&S: organizer Ingvar, and judges Ingvar, Ceindrech, Hilda, and Elinor

Iron skillet Organizers: Arthes and Skjoldr for brain storming, shopping, equipment hauling, and serving as sous-chefs

Iron skillet Judges: Dea, Jorindr, and Tristyn for judging the Iron Skillet competition

Lawn Game organizers: Fine her helpers Arianna, Kit, and J for a wonderful set of Japanese themed lawn games (someday we will actually have wind for the kites). Turlough for helping setup and tear down the games.

Setup: Cadence, Dorothea, Ishiyama and all the other folks for pop-up setup, table setup, and banner bling

Tear down: everyone who helped get things in cars and especially Ishiyama and Turlough for the final chair and table folding and stowing.

Equipment: Sir Koredono, Ts’vee’a, Ceindrech for the pop-ups and the ramp for the barn.

Cookie/Tea/Coffee Merchant: Master Huon and THL Cydrych Fishengard for terrific cookies and beverages

Everyone who attended and especially our contestants.

This year, Iris Festival coincided with the 15th iteration of the Iron Comet, a pentathalon-style event where participants seeking the ultimate title of Iron Comet must compete in three martial forms plus A&S and demonstrate their true skill as a fighting artisan! All competitions were open to those seeking to compete in a singular form as well, so we had truly stiff competition for the Iron Comet A&S Competition this year with twelve entrants!

Thank you to everyone who put their work on the table today, whether you were a seasoned artisan or someone attempting documentation for the very first time. Your judges (myself, Lord Ingvar Sviatoslavich, Baroness Hilderun Hügelmann, and Magister Ceindrech verch Elidir) were so impressed with everyone and the tenacity that it took to enter the day of tournaments.

Our winner of the Iron Comet A&S Tournament was Ishiyama Shonagon with his entry of a Masu rice measure from 15th century Japan! Please enjoy pictures of his entry, along with all of his competitors below! Additionally, thank you to Lord Ingvar for running his first A&S competition – one which required legwork and diverse advertising to make sure it reached all different communities of people!

YIS, THLady Elinor Walden, baronial A&S Minister

Reminder that tomorrow is Iris Festival! Fencing practice at Highland Park is cancelled, and instead, there will be fencing at Iris Festival!