[Xmca-l] Re: Time for a Generational Change

[Wendy Maples]

Dear Mike,

As a frequent lurker, I am very grateful for the chance to see and think about some terrifically interesting topics explored by some terrifically interesting people. Thank you for making it happen, and keeping it going.

With gratitude and very best wishes,

Wendy


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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
Sent: 25 October 2016 04:41
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Time for a Generational Change

Mike, all,

thanks for your beautiful e-mail, Mike. It has only been a couple of years, but I have witnessed how much effort and dedication you have invested and continue investing in creating and sustaining a community like xmca. For a youngster fellow like me, coming for the first time to write in a forum where you know some of the most influential authors in the chat literature are there, either actively participating or just lurking from time to time, really freezes you before the keyboard. That's what I first felt until, the first e-mail went out. Since then, I have always felt welcome to write more, and every time have been place in a place from which I could think better and more. And so rather than frozen and stiff, my hands, and with them my thinking, have become a little more flexible, and a little more confident too. Thanks xmca for that, for giving me(us) the trust to contribute, and in so doing giving me(us) the opportunity to become part of a thinking that could have never been just my own. In the little time I have spent here, and as anyone can hear in the the words of those who have been here for much longer, it has become clear how important your role, Mike, and that of the community of xmca'ers that so much respect you, has been in precisely that: giving us trust to speak, which in a very important sense is giving us freedom.

Thanks also for having me in, and for the welcoming words of the others. For a newbie that came in touch with xmca just a couple of years ago, it feels pretty scary to be presented as taking some "pastoral" role, but of course every one here knows that there is nothing like a flock to be pastored (perhaps a herd of cats, as Jay suggested, is best). Mike has presented me as taking the role as "mediator," and that is a convenient term we came up with together. Yet, I should quote here F. T. Mikhailov (thanks Michael for introducing me to this!), for whom it was clear that "the soul knows no mediators." Just in the same sense, I do not think I will mediate much, if mediating is heard to mean standing between xmca and anyone else (its members). If anything, I will only be able to partake in xmca as a member who, as many others already do, cares for and learns from the whole she forms part of. I am very excited about continue growing with xmca, and I hope I will be able to help in moving forward in the very honourable tasks that Mike has invited us taking. It seems to me that xmca has through the years grown into all what is needed to continue growing. Thanks,

Alfredo
________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Chuck Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>
Sent: 24 October 2016 23:18
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Time for a Generational Change

Mike,  As a mostly lurker with occasional outburst, I want to say how
much I have appreciated all you have done to foster interesting thoughts
and to put interesting people in contact.  Now I hope you too will have
the leisure and pleasure of lurking.
Best,
Chuck