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Date Posted: 10:42:05 12/14/09 Mon
Author: Ned Depew
Author Host/IP: 75.106.170.109
Subject: Re: shame
In reply to: morgan 's message, "shame" on 06:15:57 12/13/09 Sun

morgan -

please be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Franconia never was exactly as any of us remember it. While we were living our version, there were always many others living theirs. Even in the early days, when - to my eyes - there was more idealism and less cynicism, there were still a number of very cynical, self-absorbed, amoral individuals playing the Franconia system - as they would have played any system - for their own ends and purposes.

Years later, a friend named Bob McGrath offered me some words to live by: 'The world is full of assholes. Don't bother with them. Life's too short. Concentrate on making connections with the good people."

And there were plenty of good people at FC. Many of my favorites are, sad to say, no longer in this physical world, but I carry my connection to them with me as I carry my connections to the many good Franconians whom I still consider to be friends.

If I go to the reunion, it won't be to see Winston and his friends - a group of folks I never knew at Franconia, and hardly know now except at a great distance. It will be to see the people I've kept in touch with and/or carried in my heart all these years, in whose presence I'd enjoy spending a some hours and days.

No one can shame the Franconia you knew and lived in. People can appropriate the name and imagine - even represent - that they embody the spirit, but that's just silly. Franconia was different for every one of us, and it still is.

One of the things we grappled with in planning the Y2KR was how to make all those different Franconias relevant to one another; what we decided was to do less - leave as much as possible to form itself. We sketched outlines and hoped those who chose to be involved would color and illuminate them according to their interests, abilities and desires. That pretty much happened.

As was true at Franconia itself, it wasn't primarily the place or any specific plan (other than the overall vision to allow people room to explore for themselves): it was the people. As it was then, so it will be at 2010. Build a community from those you care for, understand, with whom you adventure, whose ideas interest and provoke you.

In the words of E.M. Forster:
"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

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Replies:

  • Re: shame -- Mary Anna Abuzahra, 17:47:41 12/28/09 Mon
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