Just wanted to let you know that I have exchanged several short e-mail messages with Matthew this weekend as he was engaged in an intense school project with an impossible deadline. My sense of it is that we may not see him around here for awhile, but you never know.

What I think was my clearest message to him tried to convey that I wish him well if he is moving on-- I think I said go go go, and go away from Mudcat if you must, but don't go away from the friends you made here, right? (Like myself.) Right? He answered affirmatively.

I still do not understand exactly what the last straw was. I've asked him if he and I have anything to clear up, and that's about all I feel responsible for. I can see there has been a last straw for a lot of you, too, over this, and I think from your own viewpooint you are more than completely justified.

And I didn't come into this thread now to speak for him. But to say to those of you who are his friends, not just fellow Cafe-denizens-- you do have his e-mail address, right? If not it is listed in Mudcat Resources, ya know. I am hoping that I did a good enough job at my end of being his freind that he will of course want to stay in touch. So I would just encourage you to look to what has been good about your own friendship with him, and start there in this new time.

We have two boys his age in the Navy who left like this but stayed in touch as much as they could once the real world kicked into their awarenesses. Now it's our daughter. Same thing. Well, it falls to the adults among his friends here to be adults, IMNSHO, as he starts acting like the really busy college kid he is.

~Susan