Happy March, Altavia!

Spring is almost here and with it, new hope for a return to “normal” is on the horizon! We are so happy to see everyone’s vaccination pics and are looking forward to the day when everyone in the barony is able to receive their vaccinations. On the Caidan front, kingdom officers and the COVID committee is hard at work to figure out how we can safely play in person, hopefully as soon as the beginning of June. In the meantime, please be patient and understand that in-person SCA events, including fighter practices, cannot take place until after May 31, 2021, no matter what tier California/Los Angeles might move into before then.

Plans have begun for our online anniversary event on May 8, Commedia dell’Altavia! We have many fun, Italian Renaissance-inspired theatrical events planned for the day on Zoom and some lead-up events the week before on Altavia’s Discord channel. For all the details on the event, see the FB event page or attend an upcoming planning meeting to help us plan more fun and frivolity for the barony and kingdom. We want to thank everyone that attended the first planning meeting for the event. We also want to give shout-outs to Sybilla and Saystine for their great ideas for both lead-up and day-of events for Anniversary and to Battista for once again agreeing to run the ever popular themed scavenger hunt!

For those that are working on largess projects for the barony/shire-themed largesse derby at Coronation, a reminder that some of us are meeting every other Wednesday to work on projects together and get ideas for future projects. At our next get-together on March 17, Her Excellency would really love to come up with a project we can do together as a barony. If you are interested in being a part of this, please join us! Details will be posted on the Altavia FB group and Discord.

Another online event that is coming up soon is the Technical Symposium for the Digital SCA, an event being spearheaded by Her Excellency of Dreibergen. The purpose of this one-day event is to help Caidans and the rest of the Known World take better advantage of tools like Zoom, Facebook, Discord, Google Docs and more. If you have any special knowledge in this area and would like to share it with the SCA, please let Baroness Briana know so I can pass your information on to the organizing committee.

In the coming months, we’ll start working on plans for in-person events. Right now, we are on tap for hosting Queen’s Champion Target Arts in July and we are hoping to be able to host Agincourt Archery and Thrown Weapons and Agincourt Feast in October as well as Yule in December. We’ll be on the lookout for event stewards so let us know if you are interested. We know we sound like a broken record, but hope is coming and with it, a return to in-person events. Things will look different and we don’t know the precise date when the floodgates will open but it is so nice to see that light at the end of the tunnel get brighter and brighter. Both of us are so grateful that you are all still here with us and that we have made it through the last year as we always do, together.

Yours in Service, Always –

Baron Nikolaos Phaistos

Baroness Briana MacCabe