Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I don't mean to be provocative, but *how* long is "awhile?" I've purged megabytes of LUG stuff from my system, and I don't, as others seem to, decline to read messages from folks whose opinions I don't care to hear. I can't at all see how you can construct my comments as an attempt to '"dictate" the contents of this group, a role, as dannyg has pointed out, that is in any event already assigned to others. I don't much care whether I get an answer to a question, but I suppose that I'm old-fashioned enough to relish a certain civility of discourse, no matter how muscular, and to want to eschew the ad hominum as an argumentative strategy (from which I would exclude you, Eric). There's a wonderful old novel that invents the rhetorical device of "argumentum ad tripodium," which is to say that men, as it were, have a third leg to stand upon. Here we might create a new trope: "argumentum ad longus Leicium" (pardon the dog latin), where tenure on the list determines the hierarchies of expressible opinion. You take my interest in a question that I've posed to a unique community, in all seriousness, and with good will and genuine interest as a premature interloping. What's so threatening about the conversation? *I* could do a "Leica bug" schtick (all of which I've quite enjoyed), but the truth is that the camera, so long as it does what *I* want it to do, is of secondary importance to other considerations. Leicas, in a curious way, taught me how to *see,* if I know how to see. I'm not sure why that's the case. My first camera (at 16) was a Nikon F, but within a year I had a IIIc, and since then (I'm 43), I've never been without IIIfs or one or more of the Ms. I use Contax Gs a lot now, but I carry a IIIf in my bag daily. Things don't quite look *real* to me through an SLR. I can't explain why this is the case, which in part gives rise to the query I posed to the LUG. Chandos At 10:07 PM 6/13/98 -0500, you wrote: >At 04:26 PM 6/13/98 -0400, you wrote: > >>For raising this consideration, I am condemned as a "snob," "elitist," the >>arrogator of "rights" of interpretation that I am unlicensed to claim. > >Maybe you just need to hang out for a while and get a feel for how things >are done around here before jumping in with both feet and telling what we >DON'T talk about. We talk about a lot of things. Technology, great lenses, >favorite films, trips we took, people we've met. photographers we admire, >and we get around, some times, to talking about what you want. Be patient, >it will come. > >No one has a right to dictate what the content of discussion is (besides >the owner of the list) and so maybe a better approach isn't to criticize >because it isn't going the way you want. Just start a discussion on the >topic you're interested in as an alternative. >-- > >Eric Welch >St. Joseph, MO >http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch > >Drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes...died from nine hours of >liposuction and plastic surgery -- or, as it's commonly known here in >Beverly Hills, natural causes. > >Bill Maher > Chandos Michael Brown Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies College of William and Mary http://www.resnet.wm.edu/~cmbrow/