Re: Death Visits Ridecamp (rewritten)

["Linda B. Merims" <lbm@ici.net>]

People new to Ridecamp who don't know what this is all about
may want to read the original March 21, 2000 version of Howard's
story in the Ridecamp archives.  Click on:

http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp/archives/past/00/12/msg00209.html

I don't know all the details of what happened, only what I
was able to piece together from the conversations on
Ridecamp.

Howard was new to endurance.  He overrode his horse at an
event and it almost died.  He wrote this account of his experience
and published it on Ridecamp.  Most people took it for
what he intended it:  a cautionary tale of the dangers
of participating in this sport without adequate preparation
and experience, told with amazing honesty by someone
trying to come to terms with the consequences of his
own foolish actions.  Some people gave him hell for the story,
complaining of what they "heard" as a "flip" tone in
the account.  To see all the hubbub, go to the Index
for that week:

http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp/archives/past/00/12/ 

The Editor of AERC's official journal picked up on the article
and ran the *first half* of if in the May, 2000 issue of
_Endurance News_.  To see the hubbub over that, see the
Archives beginning the week of May 9, 2000:

http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/archives/past/00/19/

In particular, Cheryl Newbanks' leadoff attack on Howard:

http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/archives/past/00/19/msg00131.html

At that point, I lost track of what actually happened.  All
I know is that the *second* half of Howard's story never
appeared in _Endurance News_.  Somebody or somebodies evidently
raised some kind of an uproar and got Howard's story killed.
I don't know whether it was over their objection to their
perception of Howard's "tone" (the old "inappropriate" argument)
or whether it was a feeling that the sport was airing its
dirty laundry in public by publishing an account of a horse
almost dying at an endurance event in its official journal.
My guess is probably both.

Now it appears that Howard is trying to get the second half
of his article--or the whole thing--published by revising it
to remove the language that some people found not nice or
inappropriate or whatever.

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
Massachusetts, USA