[Hartwood] Meeting January 27th

[SUSAN HUDEMA]

   Greetings All,
   The meeting on January 27th ended, I thought, on a positive note. The general feeling seemed to be that having a new shire would not necessarily be a bad thing as long as we could make it work within Kingdom guidelines. The meeting even ended with hugs. I was reminded how much I had enjoyed our interactions in the past; Stuart's music, Halima teaching us to dance, cooks guild, Charles wonderful singing and fighters who died honourably on the field and then were pulled to their feet by the victors.
   Then I found out that at 2:07, minutes after the start of the meeting, some very negative and insulting comments began appearing on Face Book. Of course I realized that the meeting we had could generate some hard feelings that some might feel the need to express but I'm not concerned with people who vent with their girl-friend over coffee. I'm talking about considered, written, attacks. I don't think that any face to face meeting could do as much damage to Hartwood as all the ill will posted on Face Book. That the meeting was secretly recorded shows extremely poor taste but the fact is if we had been told that the Council wanted to record the meeting for accuracy we would have agreed. These actions show that the people involved came with preconceived ideas and no intentions of a give and take discussion. I expected better from people who are supposed to believe in Chivalry, Courtesy and Courage.
   For the sake of clarification I would like to point out that at no time did we intend to include Cumberland in our new shire. If we had it would have shown on our map. The conversation that was eaves-dropped on was after the meeting when Don said that he thought it would be better to have several small shires such as Campbell River, Courtenay and Cumberland. However, if you insist on calling Cumberland "Donaldland" Don would probably be okay with that! I would also like to point out that our Proposal asked for one-fifth of Hartwood's current land area and approximately one-tenth of the base population. That does not seem as egotistical to me as one Seneschal and one Council thinking they can effectively oversee the current large area.

In Service To The Dream
Sara Hawthorne
mka Susan Hudema
("No one of any real importance")*

*Note to Meredith: I seem to recall reading something about treating your inferiors as your peers and your peers as your superiors.