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I just checked - oh my gosh! I became a member of Ricochet on April 4, 2015. I am still a member for several good reasons, but let's explore how I first became a member of Ricochet...
My dear sister loves books — no, not digital. She combs through discounted book bins at various Goodwills and discount shops. She attends "library book sales" at vintage bookstores, and taught me to do the same (go early - skate past the grey hairs and bring cash and lots of totes - look for old leather-bound books first). She found a book in such a bin.
"Oh my gosh!!" she hollered. "You have to read this book!! I'll mail it to you when I am done reading it!" The book was called Menace in Europe: Why The Continent's Crisis is America's Too. The author's name was Claire Berlinski.
It was a page turner. I loved it, along with all the real-life drama that was unfolding across Europe then ( had no idea at the time). As she predicted, the crisis did reach America's shores. Who was this @claireberlinski? I wanted to know and to find more books that she wrote. That search led me to find her as a writer on Ricochet. Here I am, eleven years later.
I bought and read her two awesome spy novels and her outstanding biography on Margaret Thatcher. I liked this woman named Claire! She liked cats - she rescued 7 from her life in Istanbul and kept them in her Paris apartment. She looked after her dad, a famous science guy named David Berlinski who has quite the resume himself!
I found I liked Claire's books and contributions on Ricochet very much. But I found much more than that: a platform of the most diverse and interesting people across the world, who write about all sorts of things. It might be politics or religion (the two things we were told never to bring up at parties or Thanksgiving dinner), science, social media, good grammar and manners, outer space, food, gardening, poetry, medicine, computers, intelligence (both human and AI), government, concrete (!), movies and entertainment, war, peace, dogs and cats, music, cigars and bourbon, and everything in-between. This was a place where you could be yourself, because there were editors and reviewers with the lightning bolt! No picking on members, no foul language. There were rules! I liked Ricochet!
So thank you, @claireberlinski, for introducing me to Ricochet. It's grown quite a bit in eleven years, and I have gotten older too! I have a new three-year-old cat (adopted at 6 months). I hope your cats are well, and your dad and you.
Thank you to my amazing and beautiful sister, who taught me to appreciate real books, especially the old ones. I have been enlightened by Claire and my sister to "search for the new in the old," to always keep learning and be curious, and to appreciate places like Ricochet where people like me can write, comment and speak freely without judgment (but always with a challenge!).
P.S. That is a picture of a surfing dog above that I found somewhere during my eleven years as a member. His name is Ricochet. How appropriate. Keep reading, writing and surfing!
What brought you to Ricochet?
Discussion (31)
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Jinx! Menace In Europe and fangirling Claire was what brought me to Ricochet as well.
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Claire is that which brought also me to Ricochet!
* * *
(Or is it “she who”? Or, the most technically correct of the three English forms, though perfectly, perversely, useless in this case: “he who”?
(Were I drooling woke, it would have to be “Claire are they who”….or “Claire is they who?” The woke are never clear about this, or much of anything.)
(Or is it “Claire be them what?”)
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"What brought [me] to Ricochet?"
What initially brought me to Ricochet was Powerline.
This is an excerpt I wrote on a post about my sixth RicoVersary, in December of 2016, wherein I mentioned that I'd found out about Ricochet from another of my favorite blogs, PowerLine, where, on August 9, 2010, in a post called Moonlighting at Ricochet, John Hinderaker had written:
John Hinderaker was--at the time--one of a rotating selection of “Guest of the Week” columnists. I thought that was a great idea, have advocated for it since, and hope to see such a thing reinstated, although “Guest of the Month” might work better. Such a feature brings new life and voices to the site, and doesn’t impose too much of a burden on the guest, who’s only in it for the short-term.
As a result of that Powerline post, I began my short, unacknowledged, and anonymous, career as a Ricochet lurker.
I loved it.
And I knew I was going to love it even more on November 9, 2010, when I came across this post:
Remember @busysystemadmin? I think he was replaced by @Max. Was Max just as busy? I don’t know, and I won’t speculate. Not right now, at least.
This post decided me. I was going to sign up. Because, by heavens, I love to write, and, right or wrong, I often think I have something to say. And here was a perfect opportunity–to say whatever it was to a group of complete strangers, where it wouldn’t really matter if I horrified, bored, or frightened them. And where I could be assured of a readership that was, at least in theory, politically and thoughtfully on approximately the same page as I was. In other words, a complete no-brainer (something, as many of you have helpfully pointed out over the years, I am really good at, and eminently qualified for), and a win all-round.
So, here I still am.
***The link in the 2010 Powerline post, in which Hinderaker invites people to see what he wrote on Ricochet in August of 2010 no longer points to the correct spot and--instead--redirects only to the main site, ricochet.com. In fact, it's not possible to search Ricochet for any posts or comments written by Hinderaker, as he doesn't appear to have ever generated any activity here at all.
Technology's great when it works. Not so great when it fails, and falsifies the record, as it seems to have done in this case.
I think this is the argument often used to mitigate (by supposed "loons" like Glenn Beck) against reliance on the digital record which can--on a whim, as the result of, or simply because, people can't be bothered to maintain the chain of custody--be altered in order to change the meaning or historical intent of written material or to send people off in the wrong direction. Sorry to see it happen more and more often here.
If we--as Conservatives--would like to depend on evidentiary reasons for our decisions, then surely we shouldn't have the rug pulled out from under our feet whenever it's convenient--for some--to simply erase the digital record for their own purposes. Either that record means as much as the physically written one, or it doesn't.
I'm educable. And I'm getting the message.
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Clare was also one of the reasons I came to Ricochet. I still follow her on Substack at Cosmopolitan Globalist. Like many otherwise intelligent people, she occasionally wanders into TDS territory, but she remains capable of reminding us why we read her in the first place. Her recent piece, “The Believers,” on Iran’s leadership was one of those reminders, excellent stuff. Why I stay is people like “She”
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Yeah, I still follow her there, too, and I agree that she drifts in and out of TDS. But yeah I still see how it was that she lured me into Ricochet.
And yeah, why I stay is the same reason you do.
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