Hail and farewell

[Amy Z]

Hi, all!

Wow, I can't believe I number among the ancients . . . though my 
right knee *has* been feeling mighty rusty in this damp weather.  
Thanks for the compliment of the invitation.

But after giving it some thought and sharing my reservations with 
Neil, I've decided to give it a miss.  It will be difficult enough to 
keep up with HPfGU in the post-OoP rush, much less a second group.  I 
could just post here instead, but I'm really not comfortable 
effectively saying "I'm going to go share my thoughts about OoP 
somewhere else" not only to 7300 members, but to people who didn't 
make the cut (which clearly isn't determined chronologically) and are 
(a) some of my closest friends on the list and (b) some of the people 
I most want to discuss the book with.  

I'm sure some of you are feeling like HPfGU isn't the list they knew 
and loved anymore.  I can understand that, and if you prefer to go 
off and talk in a private room, do.  The idea of an onlist book 
discussion is to have fun and to talk about the books in the way you 
enjoy, and with the people you want to talk to.  But for myself . . . 
well, my experience at a recent NYC meet-up was instructive for me.  
At first I thought, look, what I really want is to meet Neil (his 
visit was the occasion for our getting together) and see some of my 
best friends from HPfGU, and geez, do I have to meet up with these 
people whose names I don't even know too?  But I really enjoyed 
talking not only to the people I'd been longing to meet, or those I 
had met before, but also the people I didn't know from Adam's off 
ox.  

The same happens on the list all the time.  People who were once mere 
newbies with odd handles are now the people whose posts I most look 
forward to.

I haven't been active on the main list for a long time, so I'm sure 
there are lots of interesting newbies (some of whom stopped being 
newbies a year ago) whose take on things I have yet to hear.  And now 
I have the chance to hear what they have to say about OoP . . . yeah, 
that's where I want to be.  I hope some of you will be there too, as 
I've been looking forward to hearing *your* views on OoP for two and 
a half years.

All the best,
Amy