Beloved mother, wife, grandmother, great-grandmother.

She was an anchor in my life. A hard worker. A working woman who had to take over providing for her family at a time most didn't. Proud. Strong. A giver of gifts, a naturally lucky woman. She liked to play lotto and play bingo and she won quite a bit at both, then handed it over to her children. A patient teacher. A fun seeker. A woman without much education but a wealth of common sense. A giving woman who took care of us all. Even when she couldn't take care of herself.

I can't imagine the changes she saw in her lifetime. I see her in this photo, an awkward bride of 16. She taught me much about myth and my gypsy heritage. About sacrifice and rewards. About heartbreak and the love that can overcome it.

My life. My world got darker today.

God Bless you Baba. I will always, always remember you.

This morning I found a rather peevish post by artappraiser denouncing the recent troll roasting of Fred Dobbs.

I'm afraid I really must take issue with the following statement:

Meanwhile, what could have been a very good thread for the TPMCafe archive has been ruined; the only links to it may end up being another example of "troll feeding" for some internet forum primer. It's no wonder main contributors in the Book Club tend to talk to each other in posts and seem loathe to jump into the comments.

Now considering those of us that amused ourselves at Freds expense 1.) are not long-time frequent posters, indeed most are fairly recent contributors, and 2.) never encountered a troll anywhere on TPM before, it strikes me as particularly disingenuous and silly to blame the lack of response from "main contributors" on any of us. I'd suggest that the reason for that could be the lack of any contentious debate, but I really wouldn't know. It seems to me the few times I have seen a "main contributor" moved to respond to a comment, it is due to the contentious nature of those comments they are responding to.

As for the food fight that resulted from "feeding the troll" I will agree it's not really up to TPM Cafe standards, but I also wonder if the response had been merely to allow these trolls to make their silly comments without a hard response, that it wouldn't have encouraged more of them to stick around and be disruptive.

Given the nature of these Trolls, (cowardly at best,) it seems to me the proper response is to fight fire with fire and discourage them from sticking around. Most of them prefer environments were they can congregate and reinforce each others nonsense.

There is a case to be made that they are also motivated to "shut down discussion boards" by invading in large numbers and hijacking the conversation. It happened at CNN, CSPAN, Salon, and Atlantic. The former two closed, the latter became pay to play.

I'd hate to see that happen here.

So my question to artappraiser, and others here, is what type of strategy do you want to employ here? I'd prefer thoughtful comments to knee-jerk reactions, so please think it over. I'll happily abide by whatever the consensus is.

Thanks.