Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 18:01:03 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Beyond a Great Con...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Only now catching up with some of the WSFA list mail:

At 12:50 AM 10/22/2005, dicconf wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Elspeth Kovar wrote:
>
> > At 05:32 PM 10/21/2005, dicconf wrote:
> >
> >>> "Some people have a genius for the game
> >>> Of pouring oil upon the troubled flame"
> >>>
> >>> was absolutely a snarky remark,
> >>
> >> Yes.
> >
> > Which response surprised me; I'd expected a rationalization.  Thank you
> > very much for your honesty.
>
>And I didn't expect from you the dishonesty of deleting the next lines:

I'm sorry, it wasn't intended as dishonesty.

I was writing in a hurry since I was about to leave for Capclave but wanted
to reply as I wouldn't have time to for some time afterwards.  So I didn't
word "Which response surprised me . . ." as I should have when writing
rather than speaking.  In person the manner would have conveyed respect and
an apology for my having expected a rationalization.

Since I was responding to that part for that reason alone, and you'd said
"that ends my discussion with you", I then skipped down to something you'd
said not related to the initial discussion.  It wasn't intended to ignore
the remark about Wellington but to go on with another.  I didn't realize
how important the Wellington section was to you, and I'm sorry that my
response came across in the wrong way.

Um, I'm going to skip the Wellington again, since despite other people's
responses, which were really quite good, I think that this really does end
this part of the discussion.  If it doesn't, why don't we take it to
private email.

> >> And that ends my discussion with you.  Let us return to our _moutons_.
> >
> > My French is rather shabby these days, being mainly used with the help of a
> > dictionary for reading poetry.
>[snip]
> > Without pulling out the by ragged dictionary I take it to mean "return to
> > our sheep."  Which invokes a lovely and peaceful image of pastures rather
> > than "let us tend to our own sheep", which might be what you meant.
> >
> > Let's all go with the peaceful.
>
>Well, that is sort of the idea.  It's from a story by Rabelais in which a
>farmer sues a neighbor for stealing his sheep, but when the case comes to
>court he starts kicking up a fuss over a different issue, so the judge has
>to keep saying "revenons nous moutons" ("let's get back to our sheep"),
>which became a catchphrase for "let's get back to the subject" -- which,
>IIRC, was how to minimize bad feeling and tension in WSFA, not whether
>somebody should be blamed for doing his little bit to maximize it.

An excellent story to refer to.  We mainly stuck to poetry and Democracy in
America when reading French in college so I never read Rabelais in the
original.  And having just checked my shelves and car my battered copy of
the English translation has gone wandering.  I'll have to order another one
but in the meantime could you tell me which story it is?

(To explain, I first kept my copy in my desk at work as lunch time reading
for the times that someone had swiped my copy of the WPost.  It's remained
something that has gone with me now and then as short pieces to read when I
have to wait for something but I'd replaced it in the car with Plutarch's
Lives.  Which is also now out since it was a hardback and proved to be too
heavy.)

Elspeth