Reflections

[pecunium]

Something from this comment sort of demanded a reply.

getting your take on it was one of the first things I wondered about when the memos were released.

And that, my friends, is part of why I keep coming back to the topic. To quote Gilbert and Sullivan, I am "A Slave of Duty (and the Wikipedia entry is wrong... the New York performance was the second, and unauthorised).

All things being equal... I could probably contrive to ignore this shit. I know what I think of it, and I know, pretty much, that nothing all that new is likely to surface. If something all that new were to surface, it would make a much larger splash than these did.

But there are those who don't know, and there are those who want to know what someone who ought to know thinks. I am also prone to picking at scabs. Just how the decisions were reached intrigues me (I make my own sausage sometimes too).

But when I sat to do msg you and ask if you'd had the time to look over them... I found couldn't do that. If you wanted to talk about it or needed to talk aobut it, sign me up. But my military childhood and military spouse experience toldme that we don't ask our troops to talk about it. We don't pry.

I appreciate the not prying. I don't know (in the broader sense) if that level of not prying is a net gain. We might be better off if we thought we could talk about things.

This isn't as hard for me as you might think. I am not trying to don some suffering cloak of martyrdom. If I really didn't want to to go through this stuff, I wouldn't. I may have spent more time being thorough in the reading because I was planning to write about it (and even that missed some details which I have to go back to, there are some truly damning passages which don't relate to the specifics).

So, to all of you who wanted to know what I had to say... thank you. It makes it easier to do the work of reading. For not sending me a note, making it seem an onus, as opposed to a responsibilty I freely accepted, thank you as well.

Comments

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the not prying. I don't know (in the broader sense) if that level of not prying is a net gain. We might be better off if we thought we could talk about things.

*thinky*

[slave2tehtink.livejournal.com]

A question for you actually just occurred to me, and it probably constitutes prying. May I drop you an e-mail on the understanding that you can always not answer?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Sure. I'm real good at not answering questions. :)

Seriously, feel free to ask me anything. If I can talk about it, I'll decide about whether I want to. No harm, no foul.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Um, the Wikipedia entry looks correct to me. It says the New York production that opened on 31 Dec 1879 was the official premiere, which is correct, and the English copyright-holding performance the previous day, which was not an official premiere, is mentioned below. And the New York production was authorized; G&S came over to the US to supervise it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Ok. Other websites I saw said the New York premiere was, "pirated".

[calimac.livejournal.com]

It was "The Pirates of Pinafore" whose activities led to this elaborate scheme for premiering the follow-up. The choice of pirates as the actual subject of said follow-up might, or might not, have had anything to do with this.

[elf]

But there are those who don't know, and there are those who want to know what someone who ought to know thinks.

Thank you.

I don't read these things, because I find them depressing as hell. (I attempt to avoid the news as well, but I have a habit of finding myself attached to news & history junkies and wind up absorbing a lot by osmosis.) I know what bureaucratic doublespeak looks like; I know how far people are willing to go "for a good cause;" I know what kinds of dodges they use to deflect questions or accusations of guilt. Wading through the details of the US Government's #honorfail is not conducive to my mental health.

But *someone* has to do it, because in order to stop it, or not do it next time, someone has to say, "This thing, this one right here is over the line. And see notes 3, 12, and 35 where they said they knew it was over the line, but had decided the lines only applied to someone else."

Thank you for tackling that part. It helps keep me from believing the military is an intrinsically evil construct, if intelligent, honorable people who are (or were) part of it, can say "I loved it, and it screwed up here."

[elf]

Followup: by "these things" I mean "official memo releases and the like," not journal entries about them. I don't read the originals because the doublespeak is spread so thick, I have trouble believing anyone took it seriously, and I wind up believing we're all living in a surrealist's nightmare.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the not prying. I don't know (in the broader sense) if that level of not prying is a net gain. We might be better off if we thought we could talk about things

See, in the broader sense I think we (collectively) probably would be better off if we did talk about it. But I think individuals should have the right to not talk about it and to not be poked to talk about it.

So my comment there was my very own sleepy, typo-laden way of trying to say thank you while stressing that it's nothing you should feel obligated to do.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'll just say thank you for taking on the challenge, and for sending feedback to the rest of us on it.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Once again, thank you. I always appreciate reading what you have to say about topics that you know from the inside. We need that.