Monday, April 23, 2007

Welcome!

This blog was created to support a continuing conversation begun in email among graduates of Saint Johns College in Santa Fe, NM. The blog is open to all viewers, registration (free) is required to add comments. To become an author please email tolstoy@gmail.com (aka David Mischel). If you have any problem, suggestion or comment on this blog, please email me and I will do whatever I can.

Rules of behavior are minimally established in the blogspot.com rules. In general, flame wars and personal attacks are discouraged. I think we can all share an expectation that "seminar rules of behavior" apply and leave it at that.

Welcome!

< david

8 comments:

Phil Chandler said...

Thanks, David. Good to be here.

Not really Tolstoy said...

Welcome, Phil. I was amazed (and pleased) how quickly you were able to join. I hope this proves a good solution for our conversations.

Rick Wicks said...

Hi David!

Thanks for doing this, it looks great!

Your welcome message says "To become an author please email tolstoy@gmail.com (aka David Mischel)" -- but I checked and the system seems like it will let me post a new message (not just comment to an old one), as you mentioned in your email would be possible. Or do I need some further authority to post new messages?

At the bottom of the welcome message it also says:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

I took a chance and clicked on it (without know what or why), but my computer didn't know what program to use to open it. Do you know what it is and what it's about?

Thanks, Rick

elsa blum said...

Hello, friends - -

Well, this blogging business is a new one on me, and I make no promises - - none required, I know.

Still troubled and dismayed by Ken K.'s death. Perhaps some of you found on line and read his short essays as editor of "Fidelio", mag of the "Schiller Institute" and all that implies.

Best wishes to all of you - - Elsa

Phil Chandler said...

Dear Elsa and Friends --

At your instigation, Elsa, I did look at the website for the Schiller Institute and Fidelio. What Ken's association with them implies to me is that his great talent was -- (I use the word with care) tragically -- seduced by a maestro of manipulation. The magazine is populated with LaRouche's rants on various topics, including attacks on those dangerous mathematicians. No doubt there are articles worth reading, but all are conveyed under the Larouchian imprimatur. Thus has LaRouche discovered a very clever ploy to fish in vulnerable intellectuals. Still, it remains hardly believable that someone like Ken -- so sensible in all other ways -- could have fallen into LaRouche's orbit.

Although I did not undertake a thorough search, I was unable to find an article of Ken's that was accessible via the web. So I wonder whether he has been airbrushed out of existence, at least as much as possible.

Of course, I was moved by reading the eulogy given at Ken's funeral, as well as Molly's recollections, but I simply cannot square the circle of reconciling their views of Ken's kindness and goodness with his remaining for a quarter century a LaRouchian. Completely strange, weird, beyond reckoning...

Phil

Tom Keens said...

Thanks, David. I can use e-mail easily, but I will try this.
---Tom Keens

Rick Wicks said...

Thanks for the reference, Elsa. I've just read a few of Ken's introductory articles and made a note to print out and read LaRouche's The Power To Prosper (How Most of Today's Economists Became Illiterates) -- a point with which I agree, though I'm not sure how much else I will!
/Rick

Not really Tolstoy said...

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry a missed a few days here but I'm glad to see you all.

I'm still learning this too. I appreciate you trying it out. The idea is that the messages are all kept here, perhaps organized a bit by topic, and are not mingled in with unrelated emails (I get more than 50 emails a day and it gets cluttered for me).

Yes, Rick, it looks like once you sign up by accepting the invite you have full rights for both posts and comments. That's great to know and is what I hoped it would do.