'Music is music, and that is our topic,' Jon writes, and that is 1000000000% correct!! I've only been a member for a short time, and I fail to see why people who play so harmless an instrument as the lute should go on about politics, Jews or anything else. It ought to be a pleasure chatting about music, the instruments and the rest of it. There's surely enough bad blood out there in the real world for this little haven to remain what it ought to be, a haven. I can't pretend to have read 99.9% of the e-mails concerning whatever is going on. I just click them off. But this is a great pity. I personally joined up to learn about the lute, chat about music, and nothing else. Wayne seems to have provided the lute community with a fabulous service. I've downloaded vast amounts of the music he's put on the internet, play it every day, and had hoped to carry on in the spirit Wayne obviously intended for this community. It seems to me that those who want to fight battles that have nothing to do with lutes, their music and their world, should either do so privately, or go elsewhere. And it also seems grossly discourteous to Wayne, who has gone to so much trouble to promote the lute, etc., to misuse his kind services for any purpose not connected with either music or general friendly chat among musicians.
Tom Beck
