Well, I did get via email what Tom MacWood referred to on his Reply #52 as his 'counterpoint' of Bob Crosby's essay on here entitled "Joshua Crane."
Thank you for emailing it to me Tom MacWood, I appreciate that.
In the hope of not violating some trust or unspoken agreement I am going to include what Tom MacWood said to me about his so-called 'counterpoint' essay in that email. Here it is:
"TEP
Let me warn you the format is unusual. The meat of the essay is all
Bob's; the footnotes and images are mine. Its sort of an essay within
as essay.
TM"
(there are a number of ‘sics” I should have included in MacWood’s email to me but I’ll spare you all because he is a really poor grammarian with his writing on here)
I would even be glad to put on here what I said to him in response to his email message before I even began to read his so-called 'counterpoint' essay to Bob Crosby's essay entitled "Joshua Crane," if anyone else is interested!
When Tom MacWood says the format is unusual I think I'd agree with him completely.
It seems he counterpoints Crosby's essay only when Crosby puts in a footnote, and the numbers of Tom MacWood's "counterpoints" which are in the format of numerical notes throughout Crosby's essay seem to correspond numerically identically to Crosby's own footnotes in his essay. I cannot yet quite figure out exactly why that is!
Could it be that the only items and points Crosby presents in his essay that he footnoted are the only items and points in Crosby's essay that Tom MacWood disagrees with? If that were the case it most certainly would be a most remarkably COINCIDENTAL "counterpoint" essay!
In Tom MacWood's post on here mentioning his ‘counterpoint’ essay he says Ran Morrissett did not put his "counterpoint" essay on here because he (Ran) felt it was too controversial, and MacWood goes on to say;
“My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate.”
I wonder if Ran Morrissett felt this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay of Tom MacWood’s was too controversial to put on here or perhaps just not very good or worthwhile enough for any of us to read and consider. I suppose only Ran Morrissett can answer that and I doubt he’d be interested in doing that. For my part, even though I certainly will read the entire Tom MacWood ‘counterpoint’ essay which he kindly sent me, I must say I have gotten through just ten of Crosby’s footnote numbers and MacWood’s commensurate counterpoints in footnote format and my opinion of MacWood as a GCA or historical analyst is less now than it was before and it was frighteningly low before I read this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay to Bob Crosby’s extremely good essay on here entitled “Joshua Crane.”
However, I don’t see anything remotely controversial about this “counterpoint” essay of MacWood’s and I see no reason not to post it on a thread rather than on the “In My Opinion” section of this website. I’m quite sure that would not bother Ran Morrissett.
If no one is interested in seeing it, that’s fine by me but if anyone is interested in seeing it and considering it just say the word and I’ll start at the beginning of it and slowly post it.