The U.N. of F.M. (United Nations of F_Minor)

[Birgitte Jorgensen <bj@kemmunet.net.mt>]

Jacqueline wrote:

> A multilingual list is a marvellous project : do you know how many
> languages are spoken or understood by the F minor's members ?

No idea, Jacqueline, but based on a loose geography of Gould CD sales, I imagine all the Latin-based Romantic
languages and Germanic languages, Japanese undoubtedly, and Russian and Finnish are represented... probably also
Slavic tongues and Greek. Maybe Hindi and Arabic, who knows? Not likely any Esperanto speakers, but I wouldn't be
surprised to see a substantial number of "minor" languages. Canadian for sure, eh?

I wonder if our Listress, Mary Jo Watts, has ever considered taking a quick socio-demographic snapshot of the
F_Minor List. Although there are only 301 subscribers at present, I would be interested to see the results of a
current survey of the members (just the basics: a profile of languages spoken and understood, occupation, age,
educational level and field, nationality and residency, gender distribution, income, other musical and cultural
interests, etc.) to learn more about who is magnetically attracted to Gould's music and mind, at least the
computing and Internet-connected branch of the Gouldian community. No link to individual names, of course,
although we'll know some people are cheating if more than half the respondents list their occupation as rocket
scientist or Spinal Tap groupie. Would anyone like to know who "us" is as a group, or is a discussion list of
complete anonymity preferable?

What do you think, Mary Jo?

-Birgitte Jorgensen