The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion. 

Although politics and religion are not completely off-limits, classmates are asked to be positive in their posts and not to be too repetitive or allow a dialog to degenerate into an argument. 

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Response" button to add your entry to the forum.

David Cordell

We're having foundation work done to our house. A really fun use of money.

David Cordell

Does everybody else know that rocker Phil Collins was a huge collector of Alamo memorabilia and gave a huge amount to the Alamo itself?

https://www.thealamo.org/visit/exhibits/collins/index.html

Steve Keene

Janalu,

Without  a job and sequestered in my house, I spend much of the day in my recliner. I try to watch tv, but find most of my time spent in hypnagogic hallucination.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Steve,

I do that too, for a while, but soon realize that if I do that too much, I will develop a "wide load" in my derriere region, so I make myself get up and move around for a while.  Certain days I even climb up on my treadmill and tread!

Remember that recent commercial that claimed, "Calories are our friends?" 

It was a fib.

I think it may have been a potato chip commercial.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

A generation taught to hate the country will refuse to defend it too.  Let that sink in.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Lance,

It is beautiful music, isn't it?

Don't you wonder how it is done?  How does a composer put together all the different lines of music for all the different instruments and have them all come together to form the end product?

I guess the answer is one by one, with trial and error, after a central theme evolves from the mind of the composer.

Takes a lot of work and a "good ear," I assume.

I studied piano for many years and tried to compose a little bit.  HA!  I didn't have the patience or the stamina!  I marveled at Beethoven who became deaf, yet still composed!!

David Cordell

Lance,

I wish I were really knowledgeable, but I am just a listener. Here are a few that I enjoy.

Debusse's Clair de Lune.

Pachelbel's Canon.

Beethoven's 9th - Ode to Joy. You should like that one.

Beethoven's 5th, ever since I saw the Leonard Bernstein Children's Concerts on TV in the early 60s.

Lots of others.

I have always loved Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Pick this up at the 14:40 mark.

Steve Keene

Janalu,

I use my treadmill as a flagpole.

Steve Keene

David,

I bet there are a lot  of folks that are not posting on the forum and are sitting back and thinking that their ideas don't count, that they would not be appreciated and that there is nothing they can post that might change things.

Why is it that we have a lot of science fiction movies about time travel back into the past ike the Terminator series, Back to the Future and many others where you change one little thing and it can have vast repercussions for today?  However, people never connect that if you you change one mind,  get people to think one little thought or affect people's attitudes in a small way today  that it can have vast consequences for the future.

David Cordell

Steve,

Are you suggesting that I do anything in particular on this website to address your concern?

I feel that there are lots of concepts about which additional input might change my mind. For example, I have changed my position on COVID-19. 

That said, is there anything that anyone could say on this or any other forum that would cause you to lose your religious faith? I don't think so. Would you like to go to a forum which consists entirely of atheist screeds? Would that make you happy? It wouldn't make me happy, and I simply wouldn't do it.

I have a Facebook account, but I am not comfortabIe with that format.  I read this forum because I enjoy reading what others have to say, and I like the fact that we have RHS in the late '60s in common. There was a time when I dreaded reading it because of angry, repetitive posts. It is a fact that many forum readers became ex forum readers for the same reason. I know this because they have told me so.

Anyway, I am pretty comfortable with the explanation that is at the top of the Message Forum page. If you can suggest improvements in that statement, let me know.

Steve Keene

David,

I think you misinterpreted my post  I addressed it to you as a convenience, but it is really addressed to those individual "lurkers" as you call them.  I was pointing out that we can imagine a small change that might be made in time travel to a point in the past that could put us into an alternate reality today.  I was encouraging those lurkers to speak out, because their voices could make a small difference today that might put us in an alternate future.  It is a hopeful and encouraging message.  You seem to be overly defensive that I am somehow disparaging how you run this forum.  My post had nothing to do with that.

David Cordell

Moi?? Overly defensive??

I take your point. 

However, in defense of my defensiveness, consider that I have been the recipient of a lot of criticism and barbs on this site and at least one other. I find it impossible to re-set to zero. Rather, it is cumulative. It's like a woman who delivers her 13th child. That child isn't too much of a burden, if it weren't for the other twelve.

That said, I'm not whining. 

By the way, at the request of a classmate, I no longer use the term "lurkers" even though it is the common term for people who read message boards but don't post. Why not use your excellent wordsmith skills to come up with a non-offensive replacement term that has a catchy acronymn or abbreviation?

But to your intended point, yes, I hope more classmates will post and that they will feel that they can do so without fear of being verbally assaulted.

Lowell Tuttle

David, Steve, and La nce.

One of the things that this site doesn't do is allow references back to older posts easily.  You can scroll back to its beginning, however, and re live past positions to which people contributed.

It would be nice if there was a "search" option that had subjects, contributor's names, or dates.

There have been a lot of posters and posters' opinions and the site's content has evolved a lot over the years.

I have started searches for ideas people put in my head from way back in the menu, but when I look for something, I get transfixed on the who's, what's, and why's of old posts.  That's because there is no reference other than a page number to look up.

I suggest "reticents" go back to the beginning pages and see what this all evolved from, scroll to different pages from then, and see that ideas and articles are prettying interesting.

It is amazing the people who started out saying things and who are no longer here.  Some of them are no longer hear for reason (deceased.)  Sort keeps those ones eternal....

Lowell Tuttle

I just went back and read page 11.  Just a random page choice.  Pretty cool to view Daryl Summers and Sharond Studeville (?)

Reticents...go back and read.  Then, if you still want to be silent...fine..

Steve Keene

David,

I am partial to the term "chicken fingers".  I would like them to each give us a couple of nuggets instead.

Steve Keene

Maybe the term "post poltroon.".

Hollis Carolyn Heyn

David Cordell

Lowell, there is a search feature, but it isn't very obvious. Scroll up on a Message Forum page until you see the "Prior Page" button. Just to the left of it is a magnifying glass. Click the magnifying glass to open the search window. It's a bit slow, but I have used it many times. Unfortunately, "naked AND women" doesn't pull up anything.

I give credit to Lance for prodding Class Creator to create the function.

David Cordell

Steve, maybe non-posting readers -- NPRs. I value NPRs. On many, many occasions they have shared their thoughts with me and once in a while, I have shared them on the site without identifying the NPR.

David Cordell

If you can get TCM on your cable or streaming service, try to watch Some Like It Hot at 4:45 Central time tomorrow (Friday).

Steve Keene

David,

Post ghosties.

David Cordell

Balderdash, Lance.

The vast majority of my students come to class and listen without ever speaking up.

People read the newspaper every day, but only a few send in a letter to the editor.

A lot of people read what's on the site, but don't feel comfortable posting. Maybe they are a bit shy. Maybe they don't want to be drawn into an acrimonious discussion. That's their business, and they are welcome on this website.

So, please don't insult my non-posting readers. Allow them to do what they want without pushing your own values on them. We should feel honored that they would take the time to read what we write.

Steve Keene

David,

Using the acronym NPR makes me think of National Public Radio a socialist and Democrat leaning information network.  Let's not disparage the Post Ghosties with that.  A more accurate and appropriate acronym is for Won't Try Forum, or WTF.

I guess you are right.  I feel honored that they are allowed to criticize us under a cloak of anonymity.

Bob Davidson

Lance, David, etc.:

I'm one of those lurkers.  I find some of the posts interesting and enjoyable, but generally don't have anything in particular to add.  On a lot of the topics, I just don't have an opinion.  On the ones I care about a great deal, like some political issues and my personal religious beliefs, I have no interest in joining the middel of long-running arguments.

I hadn't considered that I'm some kind of slacker, not doing my part to advance a program.

Steve Keene

Bob Davidson,

I salute you.  I will listen to your input any time.