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Introduction
The following, slightly edited, is the
introduction to Nostrum online:
Nostrum is a
fictional look at the high school debate universe, written by Jules
O'Shaughnessy and the Nostrumite. The first series of Nostrum was published in the 1990s in weekly episodes until the two
authors essentially ran out of gas. Along the way they published enough
material to make Tolstoy look like a piker, but for a while it had all been
lost in the primeval mists of the original old AOL website. Then, thanks to the
dedication of Jim Menick, who obviously had nothing better to do with his time,
the episodes were republished online, both as print versions and audios. Menick
made it through recording about half of the audios before he, too, ran out of
gas. Audios of the original series, up through episode 72, are available, both
at jimmenick.com and on iTunes. After episode 72, the episodes continue up
through 181 in print only, at which point series one ended.
And
that was where we thought it would all end, until Jules, unsuccessful in
reclaiming the Moravian throne, returned to the United States and rejoined the
Nostrumite in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to create Series 2. Some people call
this Nostrum: The Next Generation.
Others call it The Nostrum Strikes
Back, or Nostrum Part Deux, or Nostrum 2: Just When You Thought It Was Safe
to go Back Into the Debate Tournament. We simply call it a sad failure
of imagination, but who listens to us, anyhow? Once again, Menick provided
narration for the series, and both written and spoken versions of all of Series
2 are available on jimmenick.com.
As
Series 2 faded into the past, the debate world let out a sigh of relief,
thinking it was finally rid of this scourge, but then Jules and the Nostrumite,
frustrated that in both previous series they had started the story early in the
fictional debate season and never gotten even as far as Thanksgiving, decided
to give it yet another shot, this time concentrating on the end of the season,
specifically the Combat of Conquerors, long aluded to in the earlier series but
never approached even closely. The time had come, they said, to rectify this
oversight. Sadly, those episodes were never published.
Of course, some of the
above isn’t true.
I, Jim Menick, all by
my lonesome, began writing Nostrum because, as a parent judge and later a new
coach traveling to debate tournaments every weekend, I suddenly had a lot of
time on my hands, I liked to write, and I had something to write about. I
created the team of Jules O’Shaughnessy and the Nostrumite as the pseudonyms
for my authorship to protect my anonymity. I’m pretty sure plenty of people eventually
knew it was me, but probably more people didn’t, and certainly not in the
beginning, when I was just another soul on the forensic highway. My method of
distributing the episodes was to send them out unsolicited on the popular ld-l
listserver, one at a time, on Wednesdays during the season. I did this for many
years, and entertained myself enormously.
After a while I just
pooped out, but there were a couple of attempts to revive things. First I tried
to create a new fictional universe at Tennessee Williams High School, then I
went back to Nostrum. I never did get the momentum that I had had in the
beginning, however.
This volume of the
Ultimate Nostrum contains all the episodes of the original series, with some
annotations, a dramatis personae and a Table of Contents of the episodes, which
is pretty entertaining all by itself. A second volume will contain the messages
that were sent out with each episode outlining the weekly adventures of Jules
and the Nostrumite, plus the complete sets of TWHS, Nostrum 2 and the
never-before-seen Nostrum 3.
So, settle back, my
friend. The amount of material here is amazing. If you’re a part of the debate
world, some of it may seem familiar, although like everything, debate has
evolved in the years since this was written. The people, however, are about the
same.
And as you read it,
never forget, Nostrum is based on a true story.
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