[Magdalen] testing w/ a new ISP

[James Handsfield]

Access to the pub was never by invitation or application only.  It’s just that we were small and didn’t broadcast that we were there.

Maybe it’s time to recite some of the history.

As most remember, it all started with Anglican-L hosted by American University.  Charles Smith was the owner operator.  

When American University decided to no longer host Anglican-L, Charles started up his own ISP, Dragon.com <http://dragon.com/>, and created St. Sam’s.  As has been noted, there were some difficulties with the management, and St. Bede’s was created, this time with a ‘vestry’ to govern the list.  The problem was that the vestry members came from all over, and rarely were they all on line at the same time.  

That, too, descended to having a lot of petty scraps, and when it looked like the list was going to fail, several of us (Molly Wolf, Mary Jane Anderson of blessed memory, Gillian Barr, and I decided to set up a new list.  After a lot of discussion we chose the concept of a pub.  Tony Clavier provided the Anglican underpinnings for us, and we decided to name it Magdalen’s Rose and Compass, Magdalen being George Herbert’s mother, and the compass from the Anglican Communion logo.

Molly paid a small amount for a server that Brian Reid set up for us.  He also guided us in the best ways to operate an email list, and following his guidance we created the publican system with three publicans (Mary Jane, Gillian, and me - Molly opted out).  Each publican would have equal authority although I took the title of publican with Mary Jane and Gillian taking the titles of assistant publicans.  In reality we were equals.

We never looked to be a large list, but one where no topic was proscribed, but where any discussion would be carried out respectfully, following the statement derived from the Baptismal Covenant:  Strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.  That turned out to be a pretty good formula.  We had our trials from time to time, but Maddies has remained a safe place to stop in, have a libation of one’s choice, and there the company.

Chad and Sally are doing an excellent job of maintaining the list with their own ways that they’ve developed.

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Education is its own reward, both for the individual and for society.

Jim Handsfield
jhandsfield at att.net

> On Dec 9, 2014, at 9:15 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Then someone told me about Maddie's, which at that point was by invitation or application only.