A moderator change

[Everyman]

I thought I should let those who have been members of this group for some years know that Laurel, who has been a moderator of this group for many years and was the leader of many of our most successful discussions, has withdrawn as a moderator of the group.

It is sadness to think of the group without her stabilizing and joyful active participation, but life and health do move on for all of us. I just want to acknowledge formally my very great appreciation for her long years of service to the group and my enormous respect for her wisdom and her willingness to share so generously her knowledge of the books we love.

[Nemo]

Laurel taught me new ways to appreciate poetry. I don't think I would have enjoyed Dante and T.S.Eliot as much as I did without her leading the discussions.

Is she doing well healthwise?

[Everyman]

Nemo wrote: "Laurel taught me new ways to appreciate poetry. I don't think I would have enjoyed Dante and T.S.Eliot as much as I did without her leading the discussions.

Is she doing well healthwise?"

She's never been robust, and of course we're all getting older, but I don't think there's any immediate health problem with her. At least not that I know of, but she's not one to complain, and I haven't been in close touch with her for awhile.

[Nemo]

Everyman wrote: "...of course we're all getting older..."

Getting older? You haven't changed a bit since I joined the group 7 years ago. :)

[Christopher]

I think he means none of us is getting any younger.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Cphe wrote: "Well the avatars tend to stay the same - I rarely think of posters aging over the years.

We all tend to make "good friends" or people you "gel" with without ever meeting them face to face and it's..."

That's right--I still think of you as the same kangaroo I've always known :)

[Lily]

Bryan wrote: "That's right--I still think of you [Cphe] as the same kangaroo I've always known :) ..."

Laurel will always be for me the moderator from back in the days when Barnes and Noble had online book discussions and she walked a cadre of us through so many great classics. I especially remember War and Peace when she asked us each to select a character and to follow the text from the perspective of that character (contributing as well whatever other insights we might want to share). It was a fun way to interrogate that monster of a novel.

Unfortunately, B&N seems to have destroyed the archives from those discussions. (I went back to them for many years afterwards and still frequently wish for them.) Its management lacked the vision, or the guts, to figure out how to leverage what its people had walked a long way towards creating. Sort of like some of the early development labs of Xerox in California? The payback moved elsewhere, with some things inevitably lost in the process.

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "Laurel will always be for me the moderator from back in the days when Barnes and Noble had online book discussions and she walked a cadre of us through so many great classics. ."

That's where I, too, got to know her and cherish the discussions she led. She and I went from there, as the B&N group slowly disintegrated through the loss of leadership, to start a Shakespeare reading and discussion group on Yahoo. We both then found Goodreads. A year after I joined GR, not finding any groups that really satisfied my desire for in depth discussion of quality classics, I started this group. She was one of its first members and for many years a stalwart leader of many of our discussions. I like to think that the group offered her the ability to get back to the quality work she was known for on B&N.

So like you, she and I go back a long way. I wonder how many more alumni of those old B&N days there are here.

[[deleted user]]

I loved Laurel's leading us thru Eliot.