Goofy nursing
Donald Duck’s Nephews:
It is a question of due proportion, but it is important that many of us post things tangential to even
antiquity and certainly to
numismatics.
Here we are, thousands of registered
members from many countries, of all ages, with, I am sure, a sense of
Forvm as a real collective entity. That is one reason why we not only profit but enjoy belonging to it. That is why occasionally we share pets and babies and other hobbies and send one another birthday greetings. Our numismatic pursuits are enriched by our communality. We also profit by refraining, by and large, from imposing with it on those who are not so disposed. That’s what Be Nice means.
But we really do belong to
Forvm. I think of who and how many might read something every time I post in a
thread.
Almost every day there are persons opining about the internet, whether
good or bad. It fills air time while waiting for some news conference or another.
Any of us who have been
members of
Forvm for some time have absorbed, from the way that each of us writes, from the coins that each of us prefers, from the use of the rest of our lives that (with appropriate selectiveness) we share in the form of pictures and favorite books and empresses, and the like, and not least in the forms of humor that we enjoy a quite extensive and varied notion, certainly not codified, of course, of
Forvm as a collective entity. Whenever Jochen departs from the strictly numismatically relevant, as here, on a tangent from the
Roma Commemoratives (and inviting us even to compare the genealogy of
Romulus and
Remus), it is to give us a real treat. The artistic and intellectual life of
Frankfurt, to be sure, is highly evolved. But I’m sure that Goofy / Wölfin needed no analysis to explain its magic.
We all are somewhat alike, mentally, though each of us is unique, seriously unique. It is of great value to us ‘political
animals’ (Aristotle) to understand each others’ jokes and passions. To share, quite remarkably, the lives of Genji and of Murasaki and to share it in different translations as we share, say, chamber
music and Lieder in different performances, is wonderful, awe-inspiring. Also, however, is the awareness that no one else’s experiences of such things is identical to ours. Consciousness and self-consciousness.
But, of course, if nothing else we have the answer to the ‘issue’ of the internet. The contacts made here are such as cannot be made elsewhere or otherwise. They are more like the experience, the life experience, of the books we read. But they are also manifold and interactive. I have been seeking a rationale for my conviction that the internet is NOT a
poor substitute for the ‘real’, for the carnal.
I think, on the contrary, that if we use it as it deserves to be used (consider what goes into providing it), it is the new frontier of consciousness.
Pat L.