you know, I've got it...all these people who feel part of a community just have changed the usual order a bit.

If the various Mudcatters had all known each other, and lived near each other....then moved apart, we would simply hail this new technology as a way to keep up with old friends..(and it really DOES work that way in many cases).

The fact that many of us discovered we liked 'hanging out' together, and THEN met RT, is just a circumstance! I know lots of people who have re-discovered family members and long-lost friends this way.....so what is so strange about sharing an interest...THEN meeting? No, not everyone who posts on Mudcat feels like zapping off to mix their lives with personalities they met in a music forum...and not everyone does it in the same ways or intensities....but it HAS become a larger, more rewarding life for many. Eudcational, for durn sure!...and I'm sure mistakes have been made, and will be again...just like life.

Think about this...there was once a time when people had 'pen-pals' ...and made friends and even fell in love and planned marriages by snail-mail.

No one description fit us all, but as this internet/WWW thing keeps going, the very concept of what constitutes a 'community' is changing...maybe we are just one of the first of the new ones, hmmm?