Haha. Nice one, David! :D

I have a feeling it's a character trait. One can always find people who say "The world is going to hell in a wheelbarrow." Or, "Things suck now, but we used to live in a golden age." I always think of Ovid: Iron, before that, Bronze, before that, Silver, and it all started with Gold. But before him, there was Hesiod: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, Iron.

Jerome actually put dates on the four ages, a pretty amusing endeavor, given the historical resources he had at hand out there in the desert. Sure, there was the end of the Middle Kingdom in 1674 BCE, and yes, the Minoan eruption happened around 1628 BCE. That's a decent transition from Gold to Silver to Bronze. But what the heck happened in 1472 BCE, to usher in the next age? A lunar eclipse?

People have been getting ink out of this stuff for a while. Two years from now, someone will start a thread that says "It was nice a couple years ago, but things really suck now."

Of course, by then, the photon cloud will hit, and we'll all be toast... ;)

Best,

Bill

Fair enough, David & Jayne & Bill, I say uncle. I do kind of like sharing a character trait with Ovid and Hesiod, though. And even Jerome, in his golden prime. :D

David, that's exactly what I keep telling myself about myself.

As I was telling me friend White Rhino just the other day, the world isn't going to hell in any handbasket. All that nonsense about the good old days with more trees and biomes and such. Why, there is a nice park just outside my office. Someone's always crying about change. Ain't that right, Rhino? Rhino?


Location, location, location. Just a pan-species perspective on world. No charge.

Now the threads of workshops have been purged from the past but archives here to indicate a more vibrant and populated level of thought and discussion. The posts about poetics or what-have-you are longer and less cynical,and there seem to be way more active members alert and awake. I suspect it was just new and exciting to folks back then. There is the Ovid effect. There is also the frog in the boiling water effect.

It is still a very fun place, but more new folks would help the dna. Fact.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers shrilly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young. . . .

And always the loud angry crowd
Very angry and very loud
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

- W.H. Auden, "Law Like Love"

Go ahead, call me Chicken Little, but I think the decline is palpable.

Nemo

Rick Mullin said it: "The Sphere is exhausting."

And it can be. The recent paucity of poems suffers further from lengthy diatribes, recriminations, clarifications, re-recriminations. Maybe there is a seasonality factor. Let's see.

I'm sure most of the older hands have a couple of buds who can offer valued suggestions via email without all the fuss. Sadly they can replicate the best of the forum experience. I happen to like the strange new voices that creep across from time to time.

Another possible problem? The seniors graduate. The freshman class lacks the skills to be let on campus.

If I'm asked to decide whether the Sphere is something less now than what it once was, I tend to remember this thread.

I'll leave you to compare it with what goes on now and reach your own conclusions.

The thing that I found hideously fascinating was the search term "good" that surfaced in strange ways throughout. First like the occasional bubble and then like the beginnings of a seethe.

To quote from one of the posts: "A lot of interesting poems--some marvelous, some godawful."

Ah, subjectivity! as no art is, Faithful and disappointing!

plus ça change...