From: dagoura@Athena.MIT.EDU
Message-Id: <9309111736.AA15232@carbonara>
To: mitgaard@Athena.MIT.EDU
Subject: Society for Creative Anachronism
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 13:36:55 EDT


Greetings to all, both new and old, from Lady Tibicen Blackmane,
semi-official census taker of the MIT Society for Creative
Anachronism. 

If you are reading this message, it is because you are subscribed to
the mitgaard@athena email list.  Because many of you are newly
subscribed (and new to Athena), this message is to clarify some things
both technical and pertaining to the SCA.

First of all, this list is a public forum.  Any Athena user can put
himself on to this list, and any user can take himself off it.  All
subscribers to this list recieve all email addressed to "mitgaard",
and any user (subscriber or not) can send email to mitgaard.  That
means that if you write a email message and send it to "mitgaard"
(just like any other username) everyone subscribed to mitgaard
(including you!) will get a copy.  Feel free to do this if you have a
question or comment you want to share with the group.  There are about
95 people subscribed to mitgaard@athena currently, about a quarter of
whom are newly subscribed, and new to MIT, Athena *and* the SCA.  If
you are new and have a question about any of these, chances are
someone else has the question as well (or just hadn't thought of it
yet).  If you are an old-timer and hear a question you think many new
members might share, please answer it in public over the list (instead
of in private email).

Thus, when you recieve email addressed to "mitgaard", it is because
"mitgaard" includes you, too, now.  Clear?

This list belongs to the Association-for-Student-Activities-(ASA)-
Recognized-Organization, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Society for Creative Anachronism.  (ASA recognization means that we're
an official MIT group.)  This is usually abreviated "the MITSCA."
But this group exists as a Medieval entity, too: the Borough of
Mitgaard.  Usually (unless we are talking to non-SCA people) we refer
to this group as "Mitgaard" -- the Medieval name it's been given in
the SCA. 

The MITSCA exists, as stated in its constitution, to participate in
the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.'s activities.  The SCA,
Inc. (also referred to as "the Society") is a world-wide organization,
with many, many geographically based chapters.  We are within the
Boston Area chapter, known within the Society as the Barony of
Carolingia. 

The Barony of Carolingia also has an email list.  It's called
"carolingia@bloom-beacon".  It is not on Athena, so if you wish to
subscribe to it, you must send email to
"carolingia-request@bloom-beacon" asking to be subscribed.  There are
also lots of other email lists, for other geographical regions and for
many topics of interest in the SCA.  Perhaps in the future, if there's
adequate hue and cry, someone will post the details to mitgaard.

So, when you see someone refer to "Mitgaard", (e.g. "Anton's convinced
the scribes at Mitgaard to reproduce the Book of Kells") they mean the
MITSCA; when you see someone refer to "mitgaard", they mean the email
list which Mitgaard owns (e.g. "Posting the entire contents of the
Book of Kells in GIF format to mitgaard would probably piss someone
off".)  Clear?

Also, when you see someone refer to Carolingia, they are talking about
the geo-political SCA group that Mitgaard is in (e.g. "Within
Carolingia there are 7 boroughs, of which Mitgaard is one.")  Likewise
a reference to "carolingia" is a reference to the Carolingian email
list (e.g. "Do you think now would be a good time to start a
discussion about Boroughs and Equiries on carolingia?")  Clear?

If any of this is not clear, you can send me email (dagoura@athena)...

...or you can email to mitgaard.

Yours in service,

Tibicen
(real life: Vanessa Layne
dagoura@athena.mit.edu)

P.S.  If you like zephyr instances, subscribe to instance mitgaard and try
saying hi.