Don Firth's post was a good one. And he is one of the folks I was speaking of in my other contribution to this thread. Here (if the numbers stay put). I found Martin Gibson's posts much harder to ignore when he insulted friends of mine, when I knew his characterizations were pure assasination, based upon no understanding of these individuals, but instead, intended to harm, only to attract (negative) attention to himself. Don, in particular, is one of the smartest, sweetest, most generous of men, a hero in my childhood and continues to be one today. Don held his own with MG, but I hated to see him have to do it. I'd much rather Don be freed up to tell his great stories (are you ever going to publish that book on the Seattle folk scene?) than be distracted by a calculating sociopath. And Martin Gibson, in addition to sullying the names of two perfectly good guitar manufacturers, was/is a sociopath.

I ignored a fair amount of his abused hurled at me, but mostly just stopped participating in any thread on which he established a beachhead. Deckman lobbied hard for people to ignore him, but it IS hard to set an example when it means you're NOT participating--most others who were slugging it out never even noticed.

This thread has gone way astray from the "goodbye" that MG offered at the beginning. I don't plan to waste much more time with it--the bickering and hammering at points best dropped isn't my idea of a good thread.

Thought for the day: on an NPR program this week (in the Dallas area) a writer being interviewed said that email and posts like these are in many ways an ineffective way to communicate. Given the effectiveness of a phone conversation or an in-person conversation, we get only 7% of the intended nuanced information from the written word alone. Expressions, even the micro-variety, transmit so much more to do with intention. Pauses, vocal tones, are the same. Many of my matter-of-fact, no-frills messages here at Mudcat have been misread and responded to angrily by people who brought their own interpretations to what micro-messages I *might* have intended, were I only there to transmit them. They were wrong. One gets tired of continually typing in emoticons to soothe wounded egos or ruffled feathers. It's time for some of you to stop slugging it out and revisiting the same old stuff. Call each other on the phone. Discuss it in a way where you get a more complete message.

I'm glad he's gone, and if he's really gone, he won't be missed. I don't think Little Hawk is MG.

That's my two-cents worth.

SRS