Washingtonian article
CTY-L has been having a long discussion arising out of an article by Courtney Rubin which talks about life at CTY. Many people felt the article was condescending; I didn't get that impression. OK, some parts are harsh -- but, overall, I found the article touching.
I feel less intimately connected to CTY than some people and I didn't participate in all of the social forms there. For example, I never went to a CTY dance; I never had a CTY girlfriend; I never kissed or hugged anyone at CTY. Socializing there for me was much more intellectual than tactile -- so I remember political debates, Diplomacy, card games, card tricks, shaggy-dog stories, more card games, and hearing about public-key cryptography (and hearing for the first time about the EFF, I believe, unless that was the following year at HCSSiM). I remember cultural things, and they were meaningful to me, but I didn't have a girlfriend, and somehow I have this sense that so many people found CTY meaningful through having a girlfriend and going to a dance.
And I didn't ultimately succeed in staying in touch with people from there, which sometimes seems to be a sign of inadequacy.
