Dear Garrison

They've abruptly shut down the Chatterbox. Did you know they were going to do this? Did you give permission or approval? Do you know why they did it?

John W.

Marblehead, MA

I asked the website manager to shut down the Chatterbox so as to give it a rest, John. It's become a rather tiny inbred chat room and not particularly interesting. I hadn't looked at it for years and then one day I did and I found the chitchat sort of dopey, nothing inviting to an outsider surfing by, nothing relevant to anything that takes place on the show or on public radio, just a tiny club of cronies ribbing each other. So we'll give it a rest and try to figure out how to run an interactive room in which people can speak freely but where private chatter is edited out. So shoot me. I thought it was dumb.