Ramblings and Musings

V Janczuk's Mini Port Raid - Very Sara

It's been a long time since I have visited or entered in my Blog book, but it was vjanczuk's e-mail to us cancelling the Mini Port Raid of departed writer VerySara that prompted me to write this.

I have been an admirer of Veronica for several reasons, and not the least because she is, like my elder daughter, full of what we describe as joie-de-vivre. She is, at the same time, innocent, wise, candid, very perceptive, vivacious and inventive. Her Mini Port Raid has been a very well-run contest and I, for one, have enjoyed participating in the same.

When she had first made the announcement to raid Sara's port, the "victim" (if I may call her so with no disrespect (May her soul R.I.P., Amen)) was very much alive and I had decided to join that round. In the interim, Sara died, leaving behind a very despondent, dejected and depressed Veronica (and all the rest of us too), and Veronica, naturally, did not know what to do. Her first decision, if I remember correctly, had been to cancel the Raid and decide on a new "victim". Within a few days, acting purportedly on advice from well-meaning friends and colleagues, she sent us a mail that we would, in fact, be raiding Sara as a tribute to her writing and as a final good-bye.

I was not a little worried about this, as, aside from the issue that our reviews would be totally wasted and so would our GP's, the main thing on my mind was if this reviewing threw up grammatical errors and mistakes in Sara's writing, what would happen to those? Since she wasn't around, and all reviews had to be made public, would it not amount to insulting a dear, departed member on Public Pages? Alternatively, we would all end up giving top ratings and ignore the mistakes, something that my conscience would not have allowed.

Now, I get this new mail from her announcing that she has received many mails from senior writers and friends, in response to which she has cancelled the raid on Sara's port.

I think that is the right thing to do, even if we end up keeping the month blank, since disrespect to a dead person is worse than plaudits galore.

At the same time, I was keen to know if WDC has discontinued the system of colouring the dead members's Ports white. In that way, one can know that a certain port belongs to a member no longer alive. At the same time, the WDC system must NOT allow rating AND reviewing of ALL THE ITEMS in a white port. They should stay on the system as free pages. In fact, contests and forums run by a deceased member may ALSO be converted by the moderators to static items and kept as single or at the most two or three pages in the Port concerned.

Responses to the above thoughts are welcome.