Actually, Carl, I thought you had been on the list from the very
beginning. But as long as you are telling something about the history of
the list let me let Maurice know how I came to be moderator if you can
call it that. I first found out about Blind Democracy when Miriam
invited me to subscribe. I think she did that based on one of my email
signatures that she saw on another list. I eventually left the group
because I was getting too much email and this list seemed to be the most
expendable. But then on another email list one of the two list owners
got rather upset about another of my email signatures. By the way, I
change that signature about once a month. Lately I have been using
quotes promoting the materialist philosophy, but I have used overtly
political signatures in the past. Anyway, that list co-owner started
sending me some rather nasty private emails and I got the impression
that he was about to expel me from his list because he didn't like my
politics. So I resubscribed to Blind Democracy again with the idea to
recruit support for my freedom of speech if it came to that. The man in
question did eventually calm down a bit and later he died, so that
particular crisis was resolved, but I remained on the Blind Democracy
list. At that time the list was hosted by a web site called Octothorp
and as time went on the owner of that web site died too. Without anyone
to maintain it the site just fell apart and this email list stopped
working. We list members stayed in touch and tried to carry on for a
while by replying to all in our emails and adding numerous addresses to
each original post, but that was very awkward and was not sustainable.
It was obvious that the list needed to be reestablished on another host
site that was dedicated to email lists, but no one wanted to do it.
Everyone seemed to think it took a technical wizard to set up an email
list, but all that was really necessary was to follow the prompts. I had
been on the verge of unsubscribing just before Octothorp fell apart, but
I decided that if no one else was going to reestablish the list the job
fell to me. I started to set it up on Yahoo groups even though I had
heard that lately Yahoo had made their groups pretty close to
inaccessible and when I tried to set up a new group there I found out
that was true. I got only so far and couldn't continue. So I tried
another web site. The next one that popped into my mind was Freelists. I
was able to set it up and the subscriber list was still accessible from
Octo thorp, so we were able to invite everyone to subscribe to the new
group. Some people never made the transition, but they were people who
never posted anyway and I suspect that their email addresses were
moribund. So I became the new de facto list owner and moderator. Like I
said, I was on the verge of unsubscribing anyway and I didn't
particularly want the job of moderator, but I had gone and committed
myself to it. So I decided to moderate by not moderating. That is, this
is a free speech zone. You can say anything you want here and its okay
with me. If a spammer comes along I do block that, but other than that
no one gets blocked or expelled with one exception. There was one person
who decided to use the list for long vicious insult messages at me. I
was the target and it was fine with me if he kept on insulting me, but
it was rather upsetting other list members. I finally got pressured into
doing something about him. I didn't want to block him, so I took the
least drastic action. There was a choice in the settings of just
blocking his posts and letting him read everyone else's posts. I think
he decided that if he couldn't insult me that he didn't want to be a
part of the group at all, so he hasn't bothered us for a while except by
private message and that even is getting to be more rare.
___
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys
it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and
findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really
good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone.
Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw
them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/2/2020 4:45 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
A word of welcome, Maurice. Blind Democracy is a well kept secret.
The original list began long before I was aware of it, but my
understanding is that the list was begun by Charles Crawford and Penny
Reader, as a place for ACB members who were under fire by the then
"leadership"
Someone will correct me, if I'm too far off course. Anyway, the list
began to slide to the political Left, and those who worshiped Mothers
and Apple Pie and 200% Made in America, all of them few, swore a
mighty oath and left for Mitchville, Kentucky. For me, as an old
rehab teacher doing my entries and searches on-line, it was a way to
relax and unload, and practice expressing personal opinions instead of
my too many years of writing in boring bureaucratese.
As for me, I'm Carl Jarvis, self proclaimed Progressive. I'm still
recovering from years laboring in the political field as a democrat.
And further back in my wanderings, I became a born again Christian.
After about ten years I became an unborn Heathen and embraced
Agnosticism...if indeed Agnosticism can be embraced. Some, even on
this list, insist that I am an Atheist. But I say nay, I know what I
don't believe...or is it, what I do believe?
I was born in Spokane, Washington back in 1935, the middle child. At
least I was different than my two sisters. I grew up in Seattle, did
free lance photography, worked in a drapery factory, and transitioned
from a person of low vision to one of total blindness in 1965. After
hunting down the office of services for the blind, and self teaching
myself Braille, I returned to college. My first wife and I had a
small daughter, and we'd been married for five years prior to my
becoming blind. After another five years, we went our separate ways.
Eventually I became employed by the Services for the Blind, first
teaching food service management, then becoming an instructor,
teaching Braille and "adjustment skills" to adult students in the
Orientation and Training Center. Later I directed the OTC before
taking early retirement and moving to the Olympic Peninsula. Cathy
and I set up Peninsula Rehabilitation Services in 1995, and we closed
our services this past June 30, due in in part to the COVID-19
pandemic.
Over the years I became more Progressive, but I moved my focus from
the Democratic Party, suffering from the Party's leadership deciding
to abandon the Working Class in favor of the Corporate dollars, and I
spent the next 56 years working in the field of work with the blind.
That's enough of myself. What can you tell us about who you are, and
what drives you?
Carl Jarvis
