Charlie sent this to me and asked me to post it to the list, so I'm doing
so.
Julia
Dear all,
So much for quietly slipping away for a while to let the place calm down...
Yes, on Saturday afternoon, I sent an unsub command to the Cornell listproc.
I certainly didn't expect Jeroen to post my departure to the List.
I posted a few days ago, offering to take myself offlist for a while, and I
found that on Friday and Saturday, I was still being rubbed the wrong way by
certain posts, so that I felt that I would be better to just not read
anything from the List at all for a while. This isn't, necessarily, a
criticism of anybody in particular (even though one or two of you do
particularly wind me up...), more a failing on my part to be able to deal
with my own feelings at a time when I'm under a fair amount of emotional and
mental turmoil anyway. A couple of long rants from John finished me off, and
that was that.
The List was always somewhere I visited to get away from such things, not to
be confronted with more of the same.
I'm just not enjoying it anymore, and while it would be easy to place the
blame with other people, the fact is I need to get away for myself.
So please, no more blaming each other, no more acrimony and recriminations,
and no more petty name-calling please, we've had enough of that for one
week.
For the record, I'd like to respond to one point that John made that was
brought to my attention, on his request:
"I never dreamed that someone who holds America in as low esteem as Charlie
does would ever dream of leaving the List for being called "Anti-American.""
I don't hold America in low esteem. There is much that America has done that
is good, and much that is regrettable. I don't think that America is any
better or any worse than any other of the countries that at least attempt to
provide their citizens with legal freedoms, voting rights and a reasonably
representative government. What I don't, and never have, agreed with is that
America is any more immune to corruption, self-interest and dubious
international meddling than any other country either. Putting any one
country on a pedestal in a dangerous move, because it blinds people to the
very real failings of governments. We're still learning, we're still
developing societies and cultures, and it's important, in my view, that we
continue to look at what is wrong so we can improve things.
If I'm anti-american, then I'm anti-british, anti-french, anti-german,
anti-indian and anti-japanese too... and I'm none of those things.
See you all when Kiln People is published.
Regards,
Charlie
