Pope John II the abdicant:
> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
> > Are you sure you can't receive them in digest form? If you leave
> > completely, I'm sure we'll all miss your witty and knowledgeable
> > commentary.
>
> Thanks, but I think I need to cut off cold turkey. I spend too much
> time reading email and far too much time writing it.
>
> > BTW, would this be the first time you've left the list since its
> > inception?
>
> Or at any rate since my arrival, which was a month or two after
> the inception.

I read your announcement with the same pang of grief others
have felt. The grief partly the grief one feels at the passing
of an era, and partly at the loss of your participation.
That loss is not just of the oxymoronic counterpoint of your
messages' costive brevity taken singly and laxate profusion
taken jointly, though one holds it in wry affection, and not
just of their other much-celebrated much-sung qualities, but
also of the sense of being in colloquy with a person who is
made on an epic scale.

I myself have stayed subscribed largely for considerations of
historical continuity, so that there should be one subscriber
who has been subscribed without interruption since the list
began. But I must confess that for the last few years my
strategy for keeping up with the list has relied heavily on
reading no messages but yours and those of a few others.

(I recently noticed that I had been thinking that I was
getting closer to you in age, since I am now (a year
short of) the age you were when we electronically met
fourteen years ago, and indeed a hoary spring of grey is
come to my beard; I had irrationally forgotten that you too
would be ageing at the same rate as me. Strange to think
that Conlang list will soon -- or perhaps already --
be older than some of its subscribers, and that some
conlangers will not be able to imagine what being a
conlanger was like before the age of the internet.)

--And.