Saturday, June 24, 2006

UUAGA06: The "UU Voice" is Dying of Lonliness

So I'm walking through the exhibit hall when I catch a glimpse of Michael Durall sitting in the All Souls Tulsa booth. I pick up a printed copy of the UU Voice.

"You can have that for free," Durall says.

"Thanks," I say, ever the polite chick.

"Enjoy it," he said whistfully. "It might be the last issue."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, I get tired of never hearing from anyone. Sometimes I put out an issue and not even one person writes me to tell me what they think.

I, of course, know the solution to this problem: insult the church of the sub-genius.

But I come up with a more self serving solution.

"Why don't you put it online, with each story easy to link to individually? I'm sure bloggers would comment on it." He gives me this hilariously skeptical expression. "So I'm guessing blogger response isn't worth what regular response is?" I fill in.

He doesn't say one way or another. We go on talking about the UU voice for a bit and I wander off.

I've been kicking around adding funny interviews with well-known UUs to my blog as a feature. But I think I will wait on asking Durall.

CC

5 comments:

Steven Rowe said...

maybe he remembers the exact same subject broached by Philocrites on his blog! (ie: go to web)

Robin Edgar said...

Feel free to interview me ChaliceChick. . . ;-)

Jamie Goodwin said...

Weird, I wrote him once - emailed him actually and he didn't respond. At the time I just figured he has so much email he didn't have time to get back to me. Guess I didn't rate as an actual "response".

Steve Caldwell said...

I wrote to him in response to his post-GA 2005 story in the Fall 2005 issue where he reported that Bill Sinkford announced at the 2005 GA that we were "abandoning Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU)."

The Fall 2005 issue is still online here:

http://www.uuvoice.org/fall05/index.htm

Since I knew that the available materials on the UUA Youth Office web site describing The Consultation on Ministry to and With Youth say that YRUU isn't going away, I wrote to Michael Durrell and asked about what appeared to be a factual error in his reporting.

He wrote back in a very emotional ALL-CAPS SHOUTING reply to me.

Perhaps he really didn't care what his readers thought when the readers disagreed with his reporting. A SHOUTING reply certainly doesn't sound respectful to me.

PeaceBang said...

Michael is a Lone Ranger riding a dying horse.
If he gets people talking about the articles that will ruin his perception that he's a lone, prophetic voice crying in the wilderness. My sense is that he really doesn't want to give up his persecuted and mizundastood schtick.