Having been told about the post on the Flame board, I came to look. Robert asked to talk, and since I was leaving, I took him up on it. Below is most of the text of that letter. Since it was written frankly, without the careful diction I normally use here, it will be the best explanation for my departure that I can muster.

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Hi, Robert...

E' 's post to the Flame Board was about me. Before he posted it, Raoul sent me a personal email thanking me for a post, and I had just -- finally -- figured out that posting to HZ was an exercise in masochism for me.

Never have I wanted to be one of those who say "I'm going now!" "Don't try and stop me!" "I'm really leaving and you'll all be sorry when I go!" "You will be sorry..." "OK, I've decided to forgive you." I had to make a decision: Walk away and try to get something meaningful done elsewhere, or continue to bang away fruitlessly at HZ, becoming bitter and eventually shrill, not contributing to any real balance and undermining my own object of understanding the Right as anger erodes that understanding. The only time I remember actually having an impact was a remarkable exchange concerning internet filters. The rest of the time, I feel that kindly virtual pat on the head, or read the annoyed, "Why don't you get this?", except when I agree with the opinion expressed. On the whole, I think everyone will feel more comfortable talking to each other and reinforcing their own beliefs.

The fact is, I will miss the personalities, but I won't miss the Right Rampant. I feel like a voice in the wilderness, and I can do that at home. The fact is, I feel very sharply the criticism of my way of thinking because this way of thinking has informed the actions of the most generous people I know, people upon whom I have tried to model my life. I'm not afraid to defend myself and my philosophy, but I do that here in Klanland every damn day of my life. HabitableZone has been a way for me to try to make sense of the people in my own community, because the philosophy there [here] is very much the same, but not racist, and the overall literacy of the posters is much higher than some of the flesh-and-blood people I deal with daily.

It's become too much of an effort for me to choreograph my words so carefully, avoiding things that I know will provoke a flame war, but still being true to what I see and what I feel and everything I've synthesized from reading. listening, studying, talking...all to so little effect. More to the point, many posts I read could not offend, hurt and worry me more if they were addressed directly to me. Life is hard enough without visiting regularly a place in which I am held in contempt, even if the people there don't know they do.

My grandfather taught me to read when I was two. He was a wonderful man, a railraod worker who never finished high school, but who used the public library as his university, and took me there when I was very little. (This was the first but one of the most pivotal things that steered me into the librarian's path I am now in.) He thought that reading to children was important, and that it was equally important for the adult to enjoy what he was reading, so I learned the sound of English from the 16th century: he read to me from Hamlet and Macbeth. He taught me that I had 2 ears and 1 tongue for a reason: that I was meant to listen twice as much as to speak. He was also a Republican, and hated FDR with a passion I had no knowledge of until I listened to my father talk about how Father Coughlin was considered a great man in his house. This illumined the meaning of my uncle's death during the invasion of France very differently. He is a hero to the world at large; to me, who has read and now owns his essays, he was an accidental soldier, an artist who was probably mere cannon fodder; to my grandparents, he was the beloved prodigal, the disobedient child who never made it home.

[Had I thought of it at the time, I would have added that, only a few years ago, I came across an American Expeditionary Force insignia that belonged to my grandfather. I had never known he was a machine gunner in WWI. It was a brutal job, to sit fortified and mow down men climbing out of trenches, and I know he was a prime target himself, as the enemy tried to take out those who meted out death by the company. Grandpa didn't think much of war. He never said why. Perhaps, like Patton, he saw no affirmation, no heroism in modern warfare, only slaughter.]

There is always, always a subtext, personal and invisible. I look for that subtext, because it gives meaning to the great events around us. I see no quest for depth at HZ, only a rush to judgment.

I'm tired, Robert. I've tried to make a home at HZ and failed. I will leave the desert and start walking, hoping to find my way to the sea, whose depth has ever soothed me. There may be some home by the sea on the Net, waiting for me.

Thank you for doing your best. I'll miss all of you.

Best regards and best wishes--
Mary Anne

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I think you can see that I can no longer stay to be a pet liberal. The funny part is, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen's tart remark to Dan Quayle, I know liberals, and I'm no liberal. ;s I can no longer participate meaningfully here. Some of you may understand this, but regardless of whether you do or not, I will miss you. It's time for me to go somewhere where I can not only hear, but be heard.

Thanks for the lessons you taught me. I will cherish them.

Bye--
Mary Anne