Hi Pat!
It's me, your email pen-pal from the other half of that big state out west somewhere. I decided to give this posting thing another try.
I heartily agree with you on the value of Ray Franz' books. I ended up reading "Christian Freedom" first and then COC. They aare both exposes ( can't make an accent for that word) of the first degree as far as I am concerned. Especially ISOCF is a masterpiece of research and reasoning, and enabled me to let go of the lingering fears of "what if they could be right" about this or that issue, and feel the full weight of indignation of things like disfellowshipping which I had no real personal experience with, never having had a close friend or relative suffer it.
I agree that they made a huge mistake DFing RF not only because he knows where the skeletons are, but because his writing style was so much more readable than 90% of the standard WT output. They should have let him write a lot more. I had no trouble reading the hundreds of pages in his 2 books, but I can barely make it through 3 or 4 pages of the WT before numbness sets in. Of course the object of the subject matter may have something to do with that.
Looking forward to conversational interchange with you here, and in my email box!
LMR