Time to go - Wordsmith.org

Wordsmith.org

Over two years ago my dad sent me an email about a fun thing he had found on the web. Thus began my addiction to Anu's AWAD, and I lost little time in dipping my toes in the shark-filled waters of the discussion board after having been looking over participants' shoulders for a while. That was more than 20 months ago.

In the time that followed a remarkable thing happened - coming here in a pursuit of the joys of language, I found I had interactions with folks from around the world in a manner I had never before experienced, never indeed dreamed possible. And I made some good friends, and watched in complete fascination as before my eyes a virtual community grew up and developed its own modus operandi and its own lex and its own shibboleths and its own distinctive brand of anarchic tolerance.

I loved it.

And I grew to love a lot of you guys too. My time here has been one of frequent joy and continuous discovery - where else could I hear about recipes from around the world, cosmic theorizing about time and matter, subtle erudition and gentle debunkery, quizzical Foolery, bawdy banter, quick rapier flicks of wit and slow depth charges of punnery - and often all in the same conversation, stretched over several world time zones and involving such a wonderfully disparate group of people!?

I have cherished the experience and the views and the camaraderie encountered here, and I thank each and every one of you from my heart for what you have shared with me in this community, drawn from your own life and personal experience. What I have come to particularly cherish is the practical demonstration of strength through the embrace of diversity, when resting on core values of tolerance and good humo(u)r.

If any of my posts have been offensive to you at some time, I beg your forgiveness. If my tongue has ever wagged unduly vitriolic or bumptious, I ask your pardon - I tend to speak from the heart when perhaps my head should be more involved ;) If anything I have ever said has made you smile or chuckle, I am glad to have also shared a brighter moment with you. If any of my words have ever moved you, thank you for letting me into your heart too.

For personal reasons I have to be away from here now. I wish you all the best for the future of this board.

A

D.M., it is my fervent hope that this will not be permanent. If at any time you should change your mind, know that you will be welcomed with open arms.

Hear, Hear!!

If anything I have ever said has made you smile or chuckle, I am glad to have also shared a brighter moment with you. If any of my words have ever moved you, thank you for letting me into your heart too.

You've done both, my friend, and both will be sadly missed.

Please take care of yourself. I'll remember you with a

hoping that you'll come back to us.

Hev

Where am I going to get expert advice on Welsh pronunciaton now?

I'll miss you.

Damn it, mav - now I won't be able to make sheep jokes at your expense!
It is my sincere hoope that you will be able to return to the fold at a future date and once again enchant us with your quick and quirky humour and your terrible puns!

all the best, wherever and whatever you do.

Dearest A,

As I've told you, you will be missed. Despite the good efforts of many, in recent months the board just hasn't been up to its past standards, and your absence will accentuate that sad fact. But we all do what we must. One of my favorite sayings: "This, too, shall pass."

Hang in there, my leetle leek, and we shall merrily meet anon.

Dear Mav,

Who to say "Dear Mav" to now? Nobody.

Well, whatever the personal reasons are for your impending absence, I hope they'll turn around and bring you back here....if for no other reason than Dr. Bill has been scrounging up so busily dozens of words, including bumboat man, in a valiant attempt to keep us on course in our separate bumboats--confections of sweet words, baskets of fruity words, and words to sit back and smoke, like the tobacco off a bumboat.

I'll look forward to reading an entry from you sooner than later in the future.

Best regards,
WW

Well, A~...I just can't imagine this place without ya, mate. All the brighter moments and heartfelt tears we've shared as friends and fellow word-addicts will always be a measure of my fondness for you and this site. You, indeed, have a gift for moving eloquence and a most spontaneous, "original" humor!

Hopefully your leaving translates more into the venue of a "hiatus" while you attend to the priorities of your life. Cheers, mate! You will be missed.

Smoothe sailing over steady seas......

like the Welchman you are, you are welching on the implied contract! who else can we count on for wit, and poetry, everything else you do here?

go ahead leave... they were sour grapes any way, what Mav served...

Well, this sucks.

I come and go all the time in different venues, with no notice. Sometimes I'm gone for weeks or months, sometimes years. It's like we're children wandering on a beach and stopping to admire the roundness of some pebble or the luster of some shell, forget how we got where we are or why we started our wanderings in the first place.

Hope to see you again some time!

k

Fotuna rota volvitur.

I can only say:

per ma credensa,
de pretz garnitz
vostra tenesa
e de bels ditz
senes failhensa;
de faitz grazitz
tenetz semensa;
siensa,
sufrensa
avetz
e coneissensa;

Dear Maverick,

I hope it wasn't the deterioration of the former high standards of the board that influenced your decision to take leave, rather, I hope that you will be applying your time and talents towards writing the world's greatest novel.
No one I've ever read has your seemingly effortless skill in making literary art out of the mundane.

Milum.

milum, I must assure you that his leaving has nothing to do with how the board is or isn't. And I might add that a comparatively new person has looked through the old threads, and feels that we've had some just as good in recent times; and that perhaps we "oldsters" are more missing particular personalities than we are missing actual quality. So, although I too have a sense of nostalgia for "how things used to be", I think that it may be a helpful thing if we lessen how much we lament the good old days, and begin to recognize--and to create! --some good NEW days. For example, Recording my thanks.

Two friends were walking through
the desert. During some point of the journey, they
had an argument, and one friend slapped the other
one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt,
but without saying anything, he wrote in the sand:

Today my best friend slapped me in the face.

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis,
where they decided to take a bath. The one who had
been slapped got stuck in the mire and started
drowning, but his friend saved him. After he
recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:

Today my best friend saved my life.

The friend, who had slapped and saved his best
friend, asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in
the sand, and now, you write on a stone, why?"

The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us,
we should write it down in sand, where the winds of
forgiveness can erase it away, but when someone
does something good for us, we must engrave it in
stone where no wind can ever erase it.

Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve
your blessings in stone.

Geoff, a lovely person posted that there is a "flankstone"; if there were such a thing as heartstone, I'd have a plaque made of it affixed to my heart, and engraved on it would be your name...

> "...my best friend..."

Beautiful words - thanks Geoff.

............and Mav, if you're checking these goodbyes........goodbye boyo.

stales