Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Can I borrow a condom..

.cause I think we're screwed.

(End of political commentary.)

I'm having a little trouble settling in at any new site and I'm feeling the loss of the ol' cafe. There has been some good stuff written lately, especially by DickDay and Acamus, so there is no shortage of material but for me something is missing. I noticed a post by Robert Reich at the cafe that is three days old. It has 14 comments and 3 recommends. Now that would be a fail even for me. I would be asking myself what was wrong with my thinking/writing. In this case though I think there is something larger going on. The old cafe was an organic thing that grew into a community over time. Like urban renewal, one can demolish a neighborhood and build condominiums but the charm won't return with the new residents.

On the other hand, I recall that back in the late 1950's when the S.F. police drove the bohemians out of North Beach, they migrated to other places including a little known neighborhood called Haight-Ashbury. So it is clear that the charm comes from the people, not the location. But it will take time for the new location(s) to gain that "charm" so patience and maybe even circumspection is the order of the day.

I didn't have a point to make. I just wanted to share my thought. If I had a point I guess it is that after thanking everyone who has put the effort into creating new homes for the café diaspora, I think it may take a while for the whole business to settle out. We are sort of e-bohemians, individuals who share a willingness to look at life in unconventional ways and who need to share some kind of community for emotional rescue at worst or cross-fertilization and stimulation at best? So it is not an unimportant problem where we gather but it may be a while before the problem is solved.

(Cross posted everywhere except Europa.)

10 comments:

cmaukonen said...

Well Larry, I find that each site has it's own distinct personality. I feel at hime at each depending on my mood and where my head is at at the time.

cmaukonen said...

Checking new commenting style now.

TheraP said...

I miss you, Larry....

ARTHUR OF THE ROUNDISH TABLE said...

Okay Larry, I am attempting to comment again.

Like C says, there are different personalities of these different sites.

I am here and on Once Upon and Dag.

I usually try something out here or Once and then revise it after reviewing comments 15 hours later on Dag.

the end
lets see if it works!!!

Anonymous said...

There was something so easy, so habitue about logging into the Cafe to see what any one (known) had said, whether in a post or in a comment.

The end of the Cafe would have been hard enough. But each of us -- because life does, in fact, go on -- has had other experiences, in the interim .... weddings, births, funerals (not necessarily in that order) that only seem, right now, to emphasize the poignancy of our fragmentation, from each other.

I am grateful to find you, and you and you, here. So that we may begin to re-collect ourselves, because in our community, each had value, but the sum of us was greater than its parts.

Anonymous said...

Charming? You want charming, come to MY blog. It's chockful o' charm. Or something equally sticky.

Anyway, it's just me there. I run off anyone who hangs around too long. Dick comes by now and then, slides some smokes under the door.

Josh is an idiot. Can I just say that, out loud? Sure I can. He's an idiot. A man who's lost his sense of what he was doing. Same as the damned White House. Same disease.

Which is why I'm aiming to blog for ever-smaller audiences. Soon, it'll just be me. Which will bring with it... purity. Purity of views. Truth-telling, nothing hidden. Singing, in perfect harmony.

Silent Night.

Anonymous said...

- quinn above.

LarryH said...

Anonymous?

Hey Jack is that you? Colonel Ripper? It’s me – Mandrake – Larry Mandrake. Still working on the Purity Of Essence thing I see. POE –OPE – EPO – ah those were fun days. I guess the surgery didn’t help. So how is the food at the sanitarium?

~flowerchild~ said...

I know I am in the minority, but I think the Cafe will return at TPM. If the plan was to eliminate it permanently, the page design would already be reflecting that decision. The Reader's Blog marker is still there. There is no 'This space for rent' sign.

In the meantime, I divide my available time between here, Once Upon, Dag and TPM. It's kind of a hassle and I get completely the unsettled element Larry is writing about. But, I will continue to wander around reading the scattered voices of the Cafe where ever they end up because I want to more than need to.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure there's a lot of us just hanging around waiting, hoping the cafe returns. None of the sites replace it, the community is fragmented. I don't thing any of the sites will grow to replace it because there's not anything like the tpm main page to draw them in. Out of 100 or probably more people who view tpm's main page 1 might wander back and become part of the readers blog community.

That's what brought about the dynamic community at tpm. What is there at the refugee sites to bring in the traffic to recreate that?

I hope like flowerchild that the continued existence of the readers blog links indicates that josh might still bring it back. Until then I'm just casually perusing what's happening at the refugee sites.

oceankat