Re: OT: judging
- Subject: Re: OT: judging
- From: P* D*
- Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 22:42:36 -0600
From: "Perry Dyer" <pdyer@flash.net>
Actually, I'm with you, Gerry. Comments splattered throughout the text.
Perry Dyer
-----Original Message-----
From: Gerry Snyder <gcsnyd@loop.com>
To: iris-talk@onelist.com <iris-talk@onelist.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 7:51 PM
Subject: [iris-talk] Re: OT: judging
>From: Gerry Snyder <gcsnyd@loop.com>
>
>Perry Dyer wrote:
>>
>>
>> When that person becomes an RVP, it is CRITICAL that he/she selects a
Judges
>> Training Chairman that.... [many good ideas snipped]
>
>Sounds great in theory, and I have no problem at all with the goals, but in
R 15
>the assistant RVP is automatically judges training chair, and until a year
ago
>didn't even have to be a judge.
>
Ugh! A scary thought. Judges are the backbone of a society (along with a
good pipeline, aka publication). Bad judges. Weak society. Voting for
pretty faces and ignoring the gardenability of the flower. It's hard to get
folks suckered into RVP-ship -- and Assistant RVP-ship -- but it's important
to have a strong judges training program. Like, uh, at LEAST lead the
horses to the water trough. If they won't/don't drink, oh well.
>Also, I am skeptical about using JTs as a criterion for judging ability. My
own
>club has at least two non-judge members who would do better at judging than
MANY
>judges I know, and among the judges the correlation between number of
recent JTs
>and judging skill is not large.
I agree, but you gotta start somewhere. I really wish we (AIS) would do
some of these judges training schools IN THE GARDEN, DURING bloom season.
But everybody's always so busy running around to conventions, entering and
judging shows, hybridizing, etc. (I'm guilty of all the above) that it is
difficult. Some of the best schools I've been to were in the garden. I
conducted a school at Lynda Miller's garden in Ossian, IN (before they moved
to Noblesville) and had a blast. Did the same thing, quite
extemporaneously, IN the Premio Firenze Competition garden in Florence,
Italy when I went there to judge one year -- and continued the school with
the same group of Italian trainees in Cooley's garden the next year at
convention!
And we too have some folks who could judge circles around most of us. They
grow them well, they have a critical eye for selection, and they exhibit
well. But I also noticed they ENJOY what they're doing, they ADORE their
irises. They simply don't want to have to get caught up in some of the
bull>> we judges sometimes have to endure (or inflict upon ourselves). It's
too bad, because AIS could sure use them, especially in voting the awards
ballot. And then we have the judges, as I'm sure every region does, who go
to all the judges training schools, dozens/hundreds of hours of schooling.
But at the show bench, they simply don't have a lick of common sense -- or
artistry (which is a big part of judging). I guess that's kind of
judgemental on my part, but that's how I see it.
>
>Don't get me wrong, JTs certainly improve us all, and having them on a
breadth
>of topics is very important--but there is no substitute for growing iris
and
>seeing them regularly in other gardens.
>
>Gerry
>--
>g*@loop.com AIS Region 15
>Warm, winterless Los Angeles
>President of San Fernando Valley Iris Society
>My work? Helping generate data for http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo
>
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