This month marks seven years since I first encountered Erik Kain and Scott Payne, not to mention Will Brafford and JL Wall, during a guest stint covering for John Schwenkler at Upturned Earth and, then, the short-lived but wonderful site Culture11. Â It’s also been perhaps seven and a half years since I invited the blogger then known as East Coast Libertarian (and known to y’all mostly as just “Dave”) to join me at my old site, and perhaps eight years since Roland Dodds was one of my first blogroll exchanges at that old site.
Many of you, I suspect, will need to read this post if you want to know what happened next. Â Others of you already read that tale. Â What astounds me is how many of you know most of that tale not because you read it, but because we lived so much of it together – Jaybird, North, KatherineMW, greginak, Michael Drew, Mike Dwyer, Burt Likko, Jason Kuznicki, Tod Kelly, Will Truman, Russell Saunders…. to name just a few of the folks who first came around these parts in 2009 and never really left.
In the nearly seven years since we launched the site formerly known as The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, most of the eight original writers have moved on, some to bigger and better things, some to disinterest. Yet despite the loss of most of the original OGs, a name change, a relaunch and a massive modernization effort, an ever-changing roster of front-pagers, the death of the old blogosphere writ large, and too many flared tempers to count, this place still feels like home. It still often feels like the “Blogosphere Built for Two (or Three or Four or Five)” that Scott Payne first described seven years ago next month.
Sure, tempers flare, and sure the dialogue long ago largely (though not entirely) moved off the front page and into the comment section. Â But, brutal as it may sometimes get, dialogue still occurs here as often as not, and there aren’t many places left where that happens.
In the last seven years, I’ve learned so much from so many of you. Â I’ve found that few things can make me step back and question my firmest beliefs like a sharp riposte from John Howard Griffin, that a common wildflower is a powerful metaphor for women’s rights, that puns can be funny….sometimes (thanks, Mike Schilling), and that there are people in the world who actually are open-minded enough to be persuaded. Â I’ve learned how to decipher Jaybird, how to understand the game of cricket, and, as the folks from Leaguefest Chicago can attest, where to find a bowler hat. Â Of course, few things have been as special as getting to meet so many of you in person, whether at one of the Leaguefests, at a bar in Manhattan marveling at the frequency of farmersonly.com ads on TV, as guests at my house, as a guest at yours, or by getting a tour of Louisville (complete with a bourbon tasting) from a native son who hates bourbon. Â I’ve gotten valuable advice and formed professional relationships with some of you, and can only wish that I’d had more opportunities to pay it forward.
As you may – or may not – have noticed, I’ve been largely absent from these parts the last few months.  In fact, while this month marks seven years since the first conversation between Erik, Scott, and I – a conversation that became the model for the League of Ordinary Gentlemen (and thus, the Ordinary Times) – it also marks eight months since I last wrote a post, and until Monday, three months since my last comment.
This absence wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, nor should it be interpreted as a reflection on the state of the site – to the contrary, I am nothing short of amazed at the caliber of the changes that CK, Tod, Will, Burt, and others have made in the last few months, and they deserve the undying gratitude of everyone around here for the absurd amount of time they’ve invested in improving the site, especially CK.
I just seem to have run out of things I think are worth saying, particularly in terms of writing a full front page post.  Perhaps the bug might strike me again in the future, I’ve thought, and so I refrained from stepping down, allowing myself to occasionally (but increasingly rarely) throw in a word behind the scenes.  But the length of my absence tells me that, no, the bug isn’t going to strike again.  The final straw came recently when I decided to make a huge change in my real life that I am quite certain will make it impossible to find the time to write a proper post for at least the foreseeable future, and quite likely longer than that.
And so it is time to accept the bittersweet reality and retire from online writing. Â I expect that, when I have the opportunity, you’ll see me pop my head up in the comments section every now and then, just to say hello. Â This community has come to mean too much to me over the years to ever abandon it completely. Besides, there’s something that will always be here that’s even more important than a good conversation: friends.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=u5o582N3wOQ%26w%3D660
And because I’ve never been able to help myself when given an opportunity to post a song from New Jersey’s masters of sentimentality:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d2Leo9HSaGQ%26w%3D660
Man, I posted this with a most heavy heart.
Thanks for everything, Mark. I already miss you.Report
It’s great thing that you helped create, Mark. I regret I was never able to get to a gathering to meet you in person. Good luck with the new endeavor, and in the next phase(s) of your life more generally.Report
Ah, dude. I’ll just say to you what my comics guy said to me: “Nobody ever stops collecting comics. They just stop getting stuff for a while.”
I look forward to you still showing up from time to time.
I hope that coming out and saying that this is what you’re doing allows some of your fields to lie fallow enough that you will find yourself with a thought that just won’t go away, no matter what you do, and the only thing that you can do is write a paragraph or five about it. But that’s my hope for me.
My hope for you is that you feel like a burden has been lifted and your path is easier because of officially putting this down.Report
It’s a sad note for me. I always considered @mark-thompson to be a close blogbrother, both from our early days as among the then-few lawyers on the site as well as a number of harmonies between our modes of thought. But it’s been when he and I have disagreed — cordially, intelligently, respectfully, and with a careful eye towards teasing out the nuance upon which our disagreement rested — that I’ve found Mark’s engagement the most profitable. I’ve been proud to share a masthead with him.
Enjoy the best of luck with your future endeavors, my friend, and I am quite confident you shall be remarkably successful in them.Report
I am prostrate with grief. Please stay around at least; read the comments or throw in your own two cents. I understand very clearly the challenge of writing actual posts; I can wind off a lengthy comment in my sleep but I can’t write a front page post to save my life; so I don’t blame you. But your voice would be really appreciated among the commentariate.Report
Mark,
I’ve always considered your posts and (especially!) comments in discussion, to be express the very best of not only what the internet, but public discourse generally, can be: charitable to your interlocutor, carefully considered, well-reasoned, and well justified. I’ve not always agreed with you, but reading your thoughts has certainly made me understand more deeply and clearly other ways of thinking about policy, politics and culture, but perhaps more importantly helped me to understand, clarify, and improve-upon my own thinking about important issues by having those views tested in the best way possible: the presentation of evidence and argument. So thank you for that.
Good luck in the future.Report
I must say that it is the writers of this site, exemplified by Mark, who have affected me the most in my political thinking.
For anyone who remembers my posts from my first visits, I think differently now, speak differently as a result of our interactions.
I wish you well in your journeys. The effects of your writing will be lasting and beneficial.Report
I fully expect you to return and grace us with your presence. In the meantime, enjoy and go thoughtfully.
Thank you for everything.Report
You’ll be missed. I’m hoping (very selfishly) that you’ll still find things you’ll want to write about from time to time.Report
Sorry to hear you are bowing out. Good luck with what ever changes you are making. Your contributions have been missed in your fallow period. I’ll second what others have said but your thoughtful and well argued posts have helped me learn and understand many things. We’ll be a little bit poorer for your absence.
It’s amazing what you have helped to create and how it has lasted and grown. Take several pats on the back out of petty cash.
Some Gaslight Anthem is always appreciated.Report
Say it ain’t so.
There are a handful of writers–not just on this site, but on internetworld in general–whose writings I will not deny myself. James Fallows is one. Oliver Sacks is another. You, Mr. Thompson, are in that heady company.
I have found everything you’ve written (or, at least, everything from you that I’ve read), interesting, nuanced, non-dogmatic and insightful. Scoff if you must, but that combination of qualities is exceedingly rare.
So I’m really just here to tell you that you’re wrong! You have not run out of things to say. You’ve simply grown tired of writing (which I periodically experience myself). So take a break. Go to Aruba. Attend Burning Man. But come back.
Regardless of what you decide, you have been one of the things that has kept me coming to this site. Thanks for that.Report
Goodbye, Mark. It was beautiful meeting you and your wife in Chicago. It was a privilege to read your posts. Be well.Report
Mark: If, as you promise, you from time to time return to comment, and the results are of the usual shamingly high quality, then you’ll be the equivalent of a top post-er here anyway, and maybe we’ll foil your fiendish plans by “rescuing” them, making you an “author” despite yourself.
I can’t be the only one curious about what the all-consuming change in your life specifically and concretely is. I hope someday you fill us in… in whatever format.
(and thanks for the shoutout)Report
Mark,
I fully expect that this will not be the last thing we’ll read from you. I understand that sometimes it’s important to take time to live one’s life so that there can be things to write about. Your work here has always served as a model for good journalism and good editorial.Report
Good bye Mark. I hope all goes well in the next phase of your life.Report
Be at peace.Report
Good luck. I’ll miss reading your posts and comments, but am hopeful to see you around some more.Report
Bummer (for us). Good luck, good sir, and don’t be a stranger. As a Gaslight Anthem fan, you may find this of interest:
https://youtu.be/FA1TsteS7z0Report
Fair winds & following seas, mon ami. Don’t be a stranger.Report
Sad to see you go. Hope you’ll find your way back often.Report
You’re the one who first got me interested in this site. I’m sorry to see you go. Hope you stick around and comment when you have the time.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQJGpmOzfpA
(not the proper video, but it’s the proper line.)Report
“and perhaps eight years since Roland Dodds was one of my first blogroll exchanges at that old site”
What exchange was this? I have no recollection of it, but then again, it was 8 years ago.
I always enjoyed your pieces, and I am sure I will see you pop up in the comments section from time to time.Report
Best wishes Mark. I hope that, when you do find something to say again, you’ll be back. Because you’ll certainly be missed.Report
Godspeed, Mark.Report
Come over to my house and we can have a retirement party. You’re close enough. 😉Report
This is one of those things that I saw coming down the line and yet it doesn’t make it one bit easier to hear. It’s so weird to have these friends out in the digital world that you have never met, or only spent one evening with (trying to understand how anyone could like that yucky brown stuff) and yet you feel a stronger connection to them than many people you see daily. Mark, you are a brother in the best sense of the word and every time I see your kudos on one of my posts, it feels like an A+ from my favorite professor. I don’t think I can adequately convey just how much you have been part of my political evolution in the last 6 years and for that I thank you.
I know we’ll still hear from you from time to time but the site will be a little darker for your departure. Be well my friend and if you ever make it back to my hometown, I’ll have a country ham sandwich waiting for you.Report
Mark,
Two things keep coming to mind. The first is simply the echo of what everyone else has already said here.
The second: seven years! When did that happen?
All best, man. Maybe you’ll be better at breaking up with the internet than I’ve been from time to time. But (like everyone else has said) it’ll only be to our benefit if you aren’t.Report
Heartfelt thanks and wishes for good luck from a lurker. Go Bills!Report
May the road rise to meet you, and may you not be a stranger.
I’ve really enjoyed your contributions here.Report
I don’t have a lot to add, except that predictions that one will not be writing have a funny way of failing to come true.
I’m hoping that’s the case here, too.Report
Sorry to hear but happy that you have new things to pursue. I hope they prove rewarding and fulfilling. Now that I’m back in NYC, don’t hesitate to reach out if you find yourself in the city and in need of a drinking companion.Report