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Re: Mea culpa

Title: Re: [GWL] Mea culpa
I agree wholeheartedly.
 
Fran
 
On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 02:08:42 -0600 Larry Maupin <larrymaupin@sbcglobal.net> writes:
on 3/15/03 11:07 PM, Lon J. Rombough at lonrom@hevanet.com wrote:
> As I've said before, THIS list was
> created for garden WRITING, but we are in serious danger of letting it slip
> into being just a garden list.

Lon -
I think we all greatly appreciate your continued effort to manage this list. Thank you! And I agree with your desire to keep gardening related chat on the Organic list, but I have a different perspective about the Garden Writers' list. After 30 years in the nursery business and 4 years as a part-time garden writer/photographer, I still feel like a novice much of the time on the Garden Writer's list. I have a lot to learn about the garden writing business, and, more to the point, I have a lot to learn about many of the important issues that we all discuss and write about, such as our recent invasive plant/fish thread. I'm looking at that issue from the perspective of a garden writer, not as a gardener. I'm learning about it so I can write about it. I've communicated both on and off list with people who are informed about the issues, and I appreciate their opinions which shape my own.

The other gardening lists I'm on or have been on don't begin to touch the depth of discussion we enjoy here, which includes many of the finest and most knowledgeable gardeners in the world. I've been the "big fish" in a little garden list pond and learned very little (but I did so to share my knowledge). Even the bigger gardening lists with many hundreds of members seem chatty and shallow compared to the Garden Writers' list. I'd rather be a little fish in the bigger pond of garden writers.

As another example, I remember a thread on heirloom tomatoes a while back, a topic I'm not particularly interested in. However, as the discussion went on for a few days, I gained an insight into an aspect of this gardening industry that had eluded me previously. Lists of varieties, sources, names of books and their publishers and authors, links to more info, comments from experts -- all of it added to my storehouse of horticultural knowledge. I would bet that the best of the gardening sites on the web could not touch the quality of information on heirloom tomatoes that we received from this list.

I have shared ideas with other professional photographers on this list, and I have gotten writing assignments from editors on this list. I doubt if that would ever happen on a general gardening list. Lastly, this list includes some very fine researchers and indexers of horticultural knowledge and publications. It never takes long for a new topic or question to generate volumes of text and links from these fine researchers.

That's my opinion. And thank you again for maintaining such a valuable list. It was formed to satisfy a need, and it is still needed. I would feel a terrible loss if it went away.
--
Larry Maupin
Maupin Photography
Freelance Garden Writer/Photographer
Member, Garden Writers Assoc.
larrymaupin@sbcglobal.net
Dallas, TX   214/341-3933
 

Fran Gustman,  fgustman@juno.com
Editor, HortResources Newsletter
Editor, Wild Ones Journal,  www.for-wild.org
Boston, MA
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