Would it were so simple, Mets. Would it were.

And hey, BTW, get to know me before you decide what's in my heart, OK? I am strongly opinionated, but I think very, very carefully when I say "IMHO." Most times I am quite honest about saying IMNSHO, and in those situations it is generally the case that I have professional experience backing up my opinion. I can appreciate that this does not always make my opinion welcome. But I'm gonna call 'em as I see 'em, like most Mudcatters, I would hope, do. If people choose to make the issue about me when I do that, as has happened, that ain't my thing, it's theirs.

My NSHO is that these issues are being addressed from a paradigm based upon political theory and experience, instead of from the paradigm of community building. That paradigm is made operant by things like inclusive outreach, lifting one another up, building sound relationships where there is difference and discord, and sound organizational development. I have seen it before and it is too bad it affects a group of people with such high ideals.

At its best, in areas fee of resentments, Mudcat DOES operate from those higher principles and processes. But when there are old, unhealed feelings, it goes to this who's-who, where's-the-power approach, with inflammatory writing and venting in public that is better done in private. It cascades the feelings of upset instead of healing them.

These things can be handled differently, but they aren't, because IMHO enough people have not grown weary of the urge to be RIGHT and the need to be APPRECIATED for having done SO MUCH for everyone else. If people would instead focus on giving each other their best gifts freely, without these strings of agreement attached, you would see issues like this resolved smoothly and elegantly.

I believe (IMNSHO) that time will come. But (IMHO) it ain't here yet.

I think also I am not alone in looking below the surface to try to understand what is really going on here. My sense of it is my own, and I don't mean I assume others agree with that view. But there have been a number of smart people who have asked, in the various discussions about PalTalk, whassup widdiss? What's really causing all this uproar? Something needs to be resolved, that's for sure.

~Susan