SC - Small fish in a big List

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

Greetings to you all. I hope this new year has brought you, already,
everything your heart desires, served on a silver platter by a god/ess
anxious to grant you your every whim.

I, myself am saddened. My life is rich beyond my hopes and dreams, but there
is one thing that nibbles at my consciousness. It is a wrong left
unadressed, and I feel that I should do so here and now.

Who can doubt the wonders this list has brought us? Before this list, those
of us with little access to the "experts" or, failing that, a really
excellent library, played at cooking medieval food, hoping some day to
finally understand the true concepts of  provisioning for the medieval
masses. If we discovered the guiding spirit of, say, 14th century French
cuisine, we were not even sure if any of our shire-mates would notice or
appreciate the occaision. And then, a miracle happened. SCA-Cooks was born.

When I first subscribed to this list, I was thrilled. Here, finally, were
folks willing to discuss my One True Love, day or night, at length, until I
had the sort of give-and take I had yet to find in any other SCAdian
kitchen. One by one, the folks in my group also began subscribing. The
knowledge this list has imparted to my cook's guild and to myself has been
staggering.

However, when I first subscribed to this list, my husband was hugely
dismayed. He would spend an incredible amount of time downloading my
mail----hundreds of messages a day, with perhaps one or two for him. Imagine
my relief when the Digest was concieved and born. Now I could have my cake
and eat it too.

So why am I saddened? What wrong has occurred? I think you can guess.
Several of my friends and folks I admire have been unsibscribing from this
list over the past few months. Why? Because even with the digest version,
the volume of mail has markedly increased. This would not have been a
cathartic occurance, however, if those posts were intelligent discussions of
historical food and cooking (or SCA food and cooking). Unfortunately, many
of the posts in my digests are running gags which properly belong in the
private mail. Many are emotional outbursts to percieved slights. Many are
"me too" messages. Many quote previously published posts in full, including
all the unsubscribe messages tacked on at the end. Some days I spend hours
going through digests, with very little content to show in the end.

I know personally of three good gentles who have unsubscribed to this list
due to volume, and have heard another intends to do so soon since it
overwhelms his mail server. I humbly submit to you that three good cooks are
three too many to lose. That's three in my area of the known world. How many
do you know of? 

Please, dear cooks, if you value this forum, consider your words before you
hit "send".  And, when appropriate, please consider taking the jokes and
flames to private mail. If you must apologise for the bandwidth you use,
perhaps it could be of better use on  more appropriate subject matter.

Thank-you for listening.

Aoife---guilty of verbosity, too.

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