Back to the Garden: Send Me the Free LP!

A couple of years ago, as we were launching the Rock Town Hall blog that you are presently reading, a Founding Father of this long-running discussion group, one who launched our original Yahoo Groups list with me, was caught in the grips of resistance to the changing tides. He fought valiantly to keep the old list alive, posting his patently hilarious and sometimes offensive rants, ones that increasingly tended to center around insults at me and my co-conspirators in our great leap forward. It was a difficult time for us all.

One post from this time has stuck with me since we flew by the 2-year mark in the launch of this blog. Our passionate Townsman was discussing his newfound love for the Dixie Chicks. He wanted to talk about them, and he wanted to talk about them through the original RTH forum. He threw down the following challenge, in a passage that I’ve kept printed out and in my wallet for the last 2+ years:

I’d like this discussion to take place here and remain here at the “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke site”, where you don’t have to type your response in a box as big as postage stamp, where you don’t have to guess what your written text looks like WHILE YOU’RE TYPING, where you can respond to someone DIRECTLY, where a thread can go on forever if need be, where people recognize the dangers of mercury poisoning and behave accordingly (I gotta give credit here where credit is due – [name delted], ya got balls. BIG FUCKING BALLS THE SIZE OF GLOBES.).

Free LP to anyone who permanently deserts RTH II and returns to RTH I. I can’t promise that it’ll be anything worth any money (I gotta eat and help support those brats I mentioned previously), but it’ll definitely be worth a chuckle.

I know all this appears to be fairly insane, but I miss the roller coaster ride that used to go on here 24/7. The newly installed slow moving monorail is not to my taste. The structure of the thing does not allow one to get up close and personal.

Recently, with the explosion of Facebook, Twitter, and other glib electronic means of “staying in touch,” I’ve been unable to turn away from the mirror that stands before the face of this Rock Town Hall blog—“RTH II” or the “Mercury version,” as some stalwarts from the old list have derisively referred to it. I miss the roller coaster ride. I miss the days when we could “get up close and personal,” when we could refer to each other by more personal nicknames without fear of public exposure. I’ve kept the old Yahoo Group active, even though some of our most resistant founding members have either made the switch to the blog or dropped out of discussions altogether. Until recently, not a week went by when I didn’t ask myself Why? Why bother?

Now I’m glad I’ve kept the original infrastructure intact. It’s time I put some effort into reconnecting with our original mission. Please stay tuned in the coming days as I map out our return to the garden. Your thoughts on this matter are welcome. Thank you.