How This Topic Was Selected

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

How This Topic Was Selected

Post by johnkarls »

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No comments or questions were received from the addressees of the following e-mail.

---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: Re: April 12 Meeting Cancellation
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sat, March 18, 2017 12:30 pm MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-EmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: The 8 To/Cc Addressees Listed Below
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To:

June Taylor

Cc: The Positive/Negative RSVP’s for April 12

Norm Guice
Jay Hansen
Marcia Hansen
Ted Gurney
Tucker Gurney
George Kunath
Michael Leith

Dear June,

I had just finished sending off a reply to Norm Guice’s incoming e-mail (third and fourth items down) when yours arrived.

And was delighted that you RSVP’d already for our May 10 meeting already even though you might not have focused on what the topic would be.

Since Marcia Hansen’s incoming e-mail (second item down) inquired how the next topic is chosen, perhaps it is worthwhile at this point to explain -- and give you a chance to withdraw your RSVP if you wish.

On every occasion in the past, except one, when we have had to cancel for lack of a quorum, we have always followed the policy that rather than remain stuck on a topic that might be incapable of generating a lot of interest, we will move to the Suggested Topic from among those posted on our bulletin board that has the greatest number of “views.”

[The one exception was the cancellation of our 4/9/2014 meeting following which I took a nine-month sabbatical (during which we had 2 so-called Ad Hoc meetings) to write my book “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s Apartheid ‘Justice’ System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffen)” which was based on all of the materials in the third and fourth sections of our bulletin board and which was never published because nobody was interested -- I would have had to self-publish on-line and didn’t want to suffer the indignity of a complete lack of interest which seemed looming since there had been no inquiries about it for more than two years by the time I finished it in Jan 2015. Sorry for being long-winded (as usual), but I wanted to explain that upon resuming “normal order” for our Feb 2015 meeting, all of the Proposed Topics had aged nearly a year and new issues had appeared -- so it seemed appropriate to give notice that we would conduct a new vote following a week for anyone to post new topics.]

You might be interested to know that after sending out the April 12 Meeting Cancellation Notice early this morning, I checked the Proposed Topics section of the bulletin board (the second section), and noticed some very-interesting details.

The Proposed Topic with the most “views” (“Destroying Great Salt Lake To Grow Low-Profit Hay For China” with 670 “views” at the moment) was actually addressed at our 2/8/2017 meeting when I morphed the Meeting Topic for which the focus book was “Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession” by Craig Childs, to include “Destroying Great Salt Lake” and morphed the Meeting Title to “The Mormon Church Condoning The Wanton Destruction of Great Salt Lake.”

[I think you would all agree, as would the other 2/8/2017 attendees who are not copied on this e-mail, that the morphing worked out well because we did focus for 90 minutes on “Finders Keepers” at which point the discussion “ran out of steam.” Whereupon, I raised in the closing minutes the “Great Salt Lake” developments and we agreed unanimously to Re-Activate our Great Salt Lake Working Group.]

Accordingly, I plan to move the “Great Salt Lake” Proposed Topic that is currently listed as active down to the “Expired” portion of the Proposed Topics section of the bulletin board -- though instead of the prefix “EXPIRED” I will insert a prefix “ADDRESSED 2/8/2017.”

That leaves the very-interesting situation that your 9/12/2016 Topic Proposal entitled “The CIA - A Constitutional Crisis?” has expired because it did not receive any votes for the 6 meetings from 9/14/2016 to 2/8/2017.

HOWEVER, in substance your “The CIA - A Constitutional Crisis?” is, in many ways, identical to the Proposed Topic which (after retiring “Great Salt Lake”) has the greatest number of “views” -- “Authoritarian Rule By Our Intelligence Services” currently with 486 “views.”

So following our normal rules, “Authoritarian Rule By Our Intelligence Services” for which the Focus Book is George Orwell’s “1984” is the topic for our May 10 meeting.

BUT, since Orwell’s 1984 (Signet’s 1964 “mass market paperback” is only $4.99 on Amazon.com) is only 267 pages and all of us (except Tucker Gurney) read more than 1,000 pages/month, I intend to merge your “The CIA - A Constitutional Crisis?” into the Meeting Focus with at least the strong recommendation that the materials you recommended be read (and at least for “extra credit” in the event they are extremely lengthy).

Re Marcia’s comment in her e-mail (second item down) about how she thought I was being “too hard” on Tucker, the correspondence with Tucker (most of which Marcia did not see) maintained consistently throughout that an RSVP only requires a “good faith intention” to read the focus book (as distinguished from materials/comments posted on the bulletin board for which exercising judgment re relevance and importance in reading is appropriate) -- and an inability to carry through on that “good faith intention” should produce a cancellation of the RSVP.

After all, our group does have standards to maintain (and a public-meeting insistence on not having to read the focus book tells other listeners that reading the focus book is optional).

Especially since many of our published positions are repeated ver batim (though without attribution) in the national news media. [Indeed, one of our authors, Diane Ravitch, even picked up one of our comments without attribution in her next book.]

And, as noted in the PS of my e-mail to Norm Guice (third item down), Friedman’s book (sans notes and index) was only 453 pages which, when divided by the 35 days between the March 8 and April 12 meetings, required only a “good faith intention” to read fewer than 13 pages/day.

We now have 53 days until our May 10 meeting to read 267 pages -- which is approximately only 5 pages/day. So at least a “strong recommendation” to read your materials (I haven’t had time to check their length yet) should be reasonable.

If you or anyone else has any questions or comments, then as always please let me know.

Your friend,

John K.


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: April 12 Meeting Cancellation
From: Utah Owl (aka June Taylor)
Date: Sat, March 18, 2017 10:50 am MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Sorry, John…I am still recovering from a long-lasting upper-respiratory infection..and have had friends from the east coast visiting for this week thru next Tuesday. So I have been remiss in keeping up with my emails. Put me down as positive for the May meeting (I was planning to make the April meeting but evidently I didn’t tell you that).

June


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: April 12 Meeting Cancellation
From: Marcia Hansen
Date: Sat, March 18, 2017 8:33 am MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John,

I am sorry you needed to cancel the meeting. The reason we said we would not attend was we could not take it out of the library because there were so many holds on it, I did not want to buy it, I didn’t think I could finish it, and Jay did not like the author and the book’s content. I hope it doesn’t automatically become next month’s book. How is the next month’s book chosen? I think you might have been a little harsh with Tucker and her comment about not finishing books to be read for the book club. Of course, you were correct to remind everyone to finish the book but I hope she comes back.

Have a great weekend!

Marcia


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: April 12 Meeting Cancellation
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sat, March 18, 2017 10:50 am MDT
To: Norm Guice
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Dear Norm,

My sentiments exactly!!!

Indeed, the comments on the face of the bulletin board say almost exactly that -- "AND NO, I will NOT shun reading his book -- because every book by a competent author contains important nuggets of information that were not theretofore known."

Happy reading!!!

Your friend,

John K.

PS - BTW did you realize that the book is only 453 pages excluding notes and index -- and that 453 pages divided by 35 days (this is the once-per-quarter five-week gap between meetings) is fewer than 13 pages/day???


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: April 12 Meeting Cancellation
From: Norman Guice
Date: Sat, March 18, 2017 9:56 am MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Too bad, but I'll continue to read Thank you for being late.

Norm

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