Always Learning, 11 years of discussions

The Always Learning" list on yahoo is eleven years old today.

The first post was by Deb Lewis, and was about spirituality and children. There have been nearly 70,000 posts, most of them really solidly about unschooling, and some of them complaining about me wanting the discussion to be so seriously on topic.

There are over 3,000 members (Yahoo says nearly 4,000, but I know some of them have forgotten they joined, so I round down). It makes the world a better place for some people, and maybe that's the only way to make the world better for lots more people.

I'm grateful to those who have been in that discussion for eleven whole years, and to those who found it later and understood and helped us.

This is the image I put there, when yahoogroups allowed for an image. It was a leaf that fell off the fruitless mulberry that's right outside our room, and my office. It grew funny, and I thought it was interesting, so I throw it on the scanner with a piece of paper over it, and that was the page's image.

Later someone said he thought it was there because it looked like a brain. I hadn't see it that way until he mentioned it. I had seen interesting imperfection, and a swirliness. I suppose other people made different associations with it, and some probalby thought "a leaf."

It's the season of Thanksgiving. I'm grateful that yahoo created a tool that Joyce, Pam and I could use to maintain unschooling discussions. I'm glad for Deb Lewis and others whose thoughts are lofty and deep all at once. :-) There is an abundance of generosity there on that discussion.