Mr. MacWood:
I said:
"If it is true that the course was made ready for play in three months and play began about June 1st, 1894, then logically the timeline would indicate those three members probably laid out the course to be made ready for play in three months at some point just before March 1894."
You responded to that in #213 with:
"Where do you come up with this stuff? That was a rhetorical question....we know where your info comes from. The same guy who had no idea Willie Campbell was the pro at Myopia and who forgot to tell us when and where Leeds went overseas, and what subsequent changes he made to the course (even though he aledgedly had access to his diary)."
What was a rhetorical question, Mr. MacWood?
First of all, I don't believe you do know where my information comes from, certainly not all of it. Clearly most of my information comes from Edward Weeks's 1975 Myopia history book.
But you ask where I come up with this stuff. Let me explain to you how I try to go about this kind of analysis if the need seems to arise as it apparently has with you contending that Willie Campbell laid out Myopia's original nine contrary to what was reported in the Myopia history book.
What I do, in that case, is carefully analyze not just what Edward Weeks said about Appleton, Merrill and Gardner laying out the original nine in the early spring of 1894 as soon as the snow melted but exactly how he saai it. If I see that he simply writes this kind of account with no quotations from some source material he may be referring to I basically ask myself what is it he’s using to come up with these stories of these events? Would it be indirect oral remembrances from people after the fact or would it be actual contemporaneous documents from the administrative records of the club itself and those involved at that time. Or would he be just creating somewhat elaborate and detailed stories of events right out of whole cloth and his own imaginative mind?
I remind you, Mr. MacWood, Edward Weeks was the editor of a prominent American magazine---Town and Country, and the guy definitely knew how to research and write and how to reference what he is writing about and using to write about a whole lot better than a couple of highly speculative revisionist amateur writers and researchers who write IMO pieces on this website like you and David Moriarty.
So when I see things like those stories out of quotations but particularly in quotations in his history book I ask myself what was it that he was sitting there referring to and looking at when he wrote what he did?
Then I go to the club and ask them if they still have that source material---eg club contemporaneous records and administrative records and such that was part of the recordings of the events that were taking placed when Myopia was first laying out a golf course.
If I get lucky a club still has that original contemporaneous source material the history writer was sitting there referring to when he researched and wrote his history book. By the way, it appears pretty obvious that Weeks and Batchelder and others researched that history for a couple of decades before Weeks’s book was published.
And if a club has that kind of original source material I analyze it just as weeks did years ago. Having done that and then if I run into someone like you and Moriarty who simply retorts that all of that almost automatically has to be either a lie or total hyperbole aforethought simply to create some “legend” out of an architect of theirs, like a Leeds or a Wilson, then do you know what I say to myself? I say that noone in their right mind needs to consider this kind of illogical opinion and contention from a couple of idiots plying some kind of personal self promotion agenda on an INTERNET website who’ve never even been to these golf clubs!
That's where I come up with some of this thing you arrogantly refer to as 'Stuff', Mr. MacWood!
Now, let me ask you---where do you come up with your "stuff"? Is it from some article in the Boston Globe from that time that you for some odd reason still refuse to produce? I'll remind you that in my opinion, and in the open of most logical minds, the contemporaneous source material from the administrative undertakings of a golf club in the process of creating something like a golf course are going to trump for accuracy the reporting of some indirect newspaper reporter any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The reasons for that are patently obvious---the former is direct and the latter is inherently indirect. I should also remind you that according to those who really do know the history of Boston and its newspapers that the Boston Globe was basically considered to be a real "rag" and certainly in the context of the society of Boston at that time.
I do want to engage you in this in an intelligent and mature way and if you somehow trump the architectural history of Myopia at that particular time or any time, believe me we all, including Myopia, will give you all the credit you deserve for it. We'll all make you look like a research and analytical hero if that's what you want which is patently obvious that you do want on this website Mr. MacWood.
None of us involved with Myopia or Merion are children here, Mr. MacWood, and we are not being defensive as you keep accusing us of being. We're all grown-ups here and all we are interested in is seeing that the accuracy of this history is established.
So if you have something, then show it to us instead of always hiding behind this dumb and excuse transparent "PLEDGE" of yours.
This isn't much different than that Merion charade you and Moriarty carried on. Merion was actually really expectant when they heard that someone may've found that Macdonald, a man whose reputation they know and understand, might have done more in the design process than Merion ever knew. But when they actually read that essay on here their collective response was----"Are they kidding us, who are these people who never even came here, who never even analyzed our records and who completely torture easily establishable events and timelines to come up with this kind of revisionist crap?"
They think you two are total analytical amateurs apparently on some kind of agenda to just topple so-call "legends" at any and all costs to make some name for yourselves with an unsuspecting public such as those on here and they are completely right about that.
Try to do better this time with Myopia's architectural history, would you please Mr. MacWood? Produce something other than your speculative opinion and constant “point-missing questions and if somehow you pull it off and it is clearly supportable by documentation, believe me the club, me, and everyone else will not only give you all the credit you seek, we will all sincerely thank you for establishing the accurate architectural history of a really prominent American golf course!
But the way you’ve been going about it is not yet even in the ballpark!