# For Josh: Apology for (apparent) Unintended Offence *The Urth list — 4 messages, 2 voices, 28 Jul 2003* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *28 Jul 2003, 16:50* >> While I would very much like to be a part of something like this, and in >> fact live in the right part of the world - the east bay to be >> semi-precise >> -- in fact, my beloved Spousal Overunit went to hiskul in East San >> Jose - I do not believe it likely to happen. > For your information, I live in a three bedroom house with a big yard > and garden in a very nice, very middle class, very quiet neighborhood. > > There are rough neighborhoods in East San Jose, some of them not too > far away. Mine, however, is very quiet and peaceful. Josh, I'm not sure what, in the above-quoted passage, gave you to think that I was putting down either yourself or East San Jose, but whatever it was, I apologize, in front of the same group before which I apparently offended you. I intended nothing of the sort. H'mmm. Parsing carefully. "right part of the world" -- meaning not too far from your proposed location. If you took the word "right" as implying that I regard the East Bay as somehow superior to East SJ, well, all I can say to that is, the East Bay has Milpitas; how can it be suprior to anything? "my beloved Spousal Overunit went to hiskul in East San Jose" -- if you read that as meaning "Some of my best friends ...", well, no, that _wasn't_ what I meant; what I meant is that I'd spent a fairly significant amount of time in East SJ myself, visiting my inlaws (before they moved out-of-state). We still go down there occasionally to do random bits of maintenance on the house my beloved SO grew up in, which is -- incidentally -- a three-bedroom house with a small yard, but with a swimming pool, in a very nice, very quiet, very middle class neighborhood. (If you took offense at my misspelling of "high school," well I won't apologize for that, but it had nothing to do with East San Jose, it had to do with my experiences with the California public school system in the 1970s.) Nor does my dubiousness that such a thing is likely to happen have anything to do with the location, other than it being quite a long ways away from Chicagoland. I know for a fact that Wolfe has attended at least two conventions in San Jose. > I am sorry. There really is no polite way to say 'fuck you, white boy'. There probably is, but that isn't one of them. Nonetheless, I have to say that nothing I've said in this conversation up to the last paragraph has anything to do with "race." I don't think the concept of "race" is particularly useful or meaningful, except as a way of dividing people up and setting them at each others' throats so that the two-headed one-party system in this country can stay in power. Based on your comment, I presume that you are not a "white boy." This is the first inkling I had that it might be so -- if pressed to guess, based on your name I would have supposed you to be Jewish -- nor would I have given a rat's backside if I had known. All I knew -- and all I know _now_ really -- was that the person posting under that name was an intelligent person with an interesting email persona, and a lot of knowledge about esoteric subjects, some of which I also know something about, others of which I would like to know something about, and a few of which just sort of go right past me (like I said about alchemy). Given that, it's interesting to me that you assumed me to be white. Probably a safe assumption, based on my own persona. And yu're right, I am in fact of Euro descent, and don't even have the decency to be ashamed of it. Nor am I excessively proud of it; nothing my ancestors did is any credit or blame to me, though I suppose that, as a white American, I can take a little comfort in knowing that none of them came to this country any earlier than the 1880's, and thus they not only cannot have owned slaves, but are also extremely unlikely to have taken part in any of the major slaughters of this continent's prior inhabitants. Despite my British-Irish name, my ancestry is overwhelmingly Eastern European, mostly Slavs and Ashkenazim, with a bit of Brit on my father's side. The Irish part of the name comes from the Spousal Overunit. > I am ashamed. I'm sorry. I don't know what you have to be ashamed of, but if my writing gave you something to be ashamed of, I apologize. >> My expectation is that, confronted with the suggestion of such a thing, >> Mr. >> Wolfe is likely to regard it as the concoction of a gaggle of >> hero-worshippin fanboys (and -girls), > Thank you for your encouragement and support. The phrase I would use is "realism tinged with pessimism." One thing writers and artists express over and over again is a fear of fans who want more of them than their work, who want a piece of _them_. Approaching Wolfe with a proposal of this sort would, I think, need to be done in a way that would overcome a great deal of natural suspicion that this was precisely what was going on here -- and "We will listen to whatever _you_ want to talk about" seems likely to arouse suspicion that this is precisely that sort of fans. _I_ know it isn't. But to convince _him_ that it isn't, is going to require something -- either an approach from someone he knows and trusts, or else an extremely _professional_ approach. Something to convince him that this is in fact worthwhile -- not merely in terms of money, but in terms of the disruption it will necessarily entail to his work schedule, his home life, etc.; how is this better from _his_ point of view than the several days' time it will take away from working on his current novel? > In either case you will have the same chance as everybody else to > participate. Thank you. --Dan'l --- ### Josh Geller *28 Jul 2003, 17:23 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* OK, Dan, apparently I misread what you were saying. >>> You wrote: >>> -- in fact, my beloved Spousal Overunit went to hiskul in East San >>> Jose - I do not believe it likely to happen. Which I misinterpreted. Everyone out here is a bit sensitive about this issue. Lots of people, especially in the whiter parts of the South Bay, sneer at East San Jose, and I jumped to the conclusion that you were doing the same. On a second reading, I see no justification for that conclusion, and am sorry I said 'fuck you, white boy' to you. I get a little hot under the collar sometimes. I would, however, still like to thank you for all of the encouragement and support you are giving me with my little almost-project. . --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *28 Jul 2003, 17:43 · follows Josh Geller* > Which I misinterpreted. Everyone out here is a bit sensitive about this > issue. Lots of people, especially in the whiter parts of the South Bay, > sneer at East San Jose, and I jumped to the conclusion that you were > doing the same. On a second reading, I see no justification for that > conclusion, and am sorry I said 'fuck you, white boy' to you. I get a > little hot under the collar sometimes. I can understand that. My Spousal Overunit has also been known to jump down the throats of jerks who treat ESJ as a huge undifferentiated slum/barrio. I don't do that, but I also know better than to think that way. Oh, and gracious apology noted and accepted. > I would, however, still like to thank you for all of the encouragement > and support you are giving me with my little almost-project. As for that: I do not intend to be coldwatering it. I have a personal approach of looking for rocks and shoals long before the shore is even visible, which leads people to think I'm a naysayer. I'm really not; I'm really hoping to avoid the rocks and shoals and get to shore safely. Which is a lousy metaphor because I'm not even comfortable on boats, but there it is. Just call me the white boy who cried "Wolfe." --- ### Josh Geller *28 Jul 2003, 18:13 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* OK then. J. ___ >> On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 10:43, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: >> Which I misinterpreted. Everyone out here is a bit sensitive about this >> issue. Lots of people, especially in the whiter parts of the South Bay, >> sneer at East San Jose, and I jumped to the conclusion that you were >> doing the same. On a second reading, I see no justification for that >> conclusion, and am sorry I said 'fuck you, white boy' to you. I get a >> little hot under the collar sometimes. > I can understand that. My Spousal Overunit has also been known to > jump down the throats of jerks who treat ESJ as a huge undifferentiated > slum/barrio. I don't do that, but I also know better than to think that > way. > > Oh, and gracious apology noted and accepted. >> I would, however, still like to thank you for all of the encouragement >> and support you are giving me with my little almost-project. > As for that: I do not intend to be coldwatering it. I have a personal > approach of looking for rocks and shoals long before the shore is even > visible, which leads people to think I'm a naysayer. I'm really not; I'm > really hoping to avoid the rocks and shoals and get to shore safely. > Which is a lousy metaphor because I'm not even comfortable on boats, > but there it is. > > Just call me the white boy who cried "Wolfe." > > --Blattid > > _________________________________________________________________ > STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > > > -- ---