The annual Unicorn Hunt

My daughter is now almost old enough to wander on her own. She is 11, Pennsic rules says she can go without adult supervision at 12. But we still drill her about our names and our campsite. When we walk back from camp I have her lead the way, things like that. So she gets a feel for Pennsic. Luckily when she was 5 (her first Pennsic) she stayed close to "home". Our biggest problem was her running in camp. A lot of our camp mates were not kid friendly and just couldn't handle a 5 year old running around be a 5 year old.

Never had to do this myself, but an idea I'v heard is to make a favor with Parents SCA Name, Camp, etc whatever information you feel comfortable. Pin it to the back of the shirt (so they can't take off) something like that. You could take a piece of cloth write the information with a sharpie or a fabric pen and double up the fabric (like a book) so the information is on the inside and not visible to the world. But if the child was lost hopefully a kind soul (like another parent) would notice the favor and see the information. Or the child would have enough sense to say look at my back. Hopefully you get the idea.

Cassair

Vincent and Katherine from Court of Miracles too. Katherine is bringing some goodies for Sunday afternoon or Tuesday.

On first Saturday an article was printed in the PI describing the Noble Order of the Unicorn and the system of safe camps that had been established and the Unicorn Hunt tour of said camps. On Saturday afternoon I was taking a nap and heard a golf cart roll into my camp. When I popped out of the tent, I found that I was being summonsed by the Pennsic Mayor Larry the Lawyer. The first thing he said to me was "Don't worry, you are not in trouble." Well he explained to me that the SCA and the Coopers would have to disclaim any involvement or support of the Unicorn Project because I hadn't taken the procedural steps to make it official and make everyone fill out a back ground check and certain waivers and other such C.Y.A. requirements for legal. I think he expected me to cry or to protest. I explained that I totally understood and that he and the SCA and the coopers must cover their respective asses as needed but I was not going to dismiss nor cease my activities. I felt that I had made it clear in the article that this was organized by individual persons with good intensions and in no way official and had encouraged parents to seek out Unicorn Camps with their children and be certain for themselves if this was a system they wanted to be involved with... Well Mayor Lawyer Larry needed to be certain that the disclaimer was official and clear. Therefore, while the article itself only ran once, the disclaimer appeared in the paper every issue.

To make the Unicorn project official would make all participants and all members of participating camps volunteers. And in the SCA now volunteers working with children have to have back ground checks. I don’t really want to put everyone through that. Some people already have their back ground checks or accreditations. I generally picked participants this year from people I trusted.

I didn’t have any lost children come to my camp for help but then that is a good thing.

I think the project was a success because it was noticed.