May 2010 Northwatch Missive

The snows of winter might be behind us (though I rarely hold my breath about such things) and we look now towards the spring and summer to come,

Primus. There has been a minor change in the Chronicler’s policies. After discussion with the Royal Family and their Stallari Council about number of months and the sizes of ads allotted to all kingdom events, I have added the line “Exceptions to this policy are at the discretion of the Chronicler after consulting with the Crown and the Stallari Council.” This makes our policy a bit more elastic when it might be needed.

Secundus. While the Northwatch finances are in good shape, a holdover from when we did some serious fundraising to close the gap between the stipend we receive from the Society and our true production and distribution costs, we are still losing between $60 and $100 a month. We are definitely not alone in this. The Society Chronicler has recently been made aware of just how far off the stipend is with reality and has been doing some fact-finding to have enough information to go to the Board to ask for an increase in the stipend. Since we have the funds on one hand and we have content regularly being submitted for publication on the other, I will continue to publish as I have been doing despite the regular loss. I feel strongly that as long as we are required to publish a newsletter according to Society policies, I want to give the populace something worth reading. If anyone has problems with this, please let me know.

Tertius. The theme for this issue is “Springtime fun” and although we did not have a lot of submissions just on that theme, we did get many nice submissions. Please keep up the good work. The compliments that I have been receiving on the content gladden my heart. Thanks to Kudrun Pilegrim for her suggeston for a theme for June. As she pointed out, “June (more properly summer) is the time for WORK in the middle ages. Sheep-shearing, hive-watching (swarming time for bees), haymaking, weeding, salt harvest, replanting. Northshield has lots of people who engage in medieval agricultural pursuits during the summer. (My sorrel and chives are coming up, but the dandelions are slow. I’m ready for a sallat!) How about a WORK issue.” And so the theme for June will be “Work: What are you doing around your estate or cottage?”

Quod denique. My travels for May and June will most likely include Pie Snit, Crown, Quest for Camelot, Mermaid Attacks, and Border Skirmish.

I remain, in service to the Northshield, our Society, and most of all, to the
populace~~
justShava®

Other missives from the Kingdom Chronicler

Posted by: Elashava bas Riva Kingdom Chronicler on 5/1/2010