I did not have a chance to look at the sugia [subject] in depth, but I did look briefly at Nedarim around pages 5-6 and saw that a neder can forbid speaking to someone. You see this towards the end of the sugia about Shmuel. He says if one says מודרני ממך אסור I am forbidden to you by a neder [vow] he is forbidden. The Gemara there concludes that he would be forbidden if Shmuel holds ידיים שאינן מוכיחות הווין ידיים. [An indication or hint of a neder/vow even if not perfectly clear is  still a neder/vow.] So we see if he would say openly, "I am forbidden to you to talk or do business or sit in your four yards," these all would be forbidden.

So since the laws of herem [excommunication] derive their power from laws of vows, we see that all these things can be forbidden by means of a herem.
So why is the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication ignored? Even to the degree that it is thought to be totally irrelevant.

[And you can see in laws of vows that it makes no difference why one person might say to another: "I am forbidden to you under a vow." Since the Gra was qualified to make a decree of excommunication then it is valid for whatever reason he saw to do so.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely to me that it was a mistake.

Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages

Musar originally was not supposed to be part of the Yeshiva thing. [Musar is a movement begun by Rav Israel Salanter that holds that people ought to learn much Musar --hours in fact--every day. Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages. There are about four canonical ones and after that about 30 in the penumbra.]

[The yeshiva as an independent institution was begun by a disciple of the Gra. [in the beginning of the 1800's]. [It is not known what the Gra's reaction to it was. There are different versions of the events.] Before that, there was no such thing. The local place where people prayed in the morning simply stayed open during the day and whoever wanted to learn did so. If it was more organized, then it was the rav who was hired by the home owners who was in charge.
Kollel as such was begun by Rav Israel Salanter much later around 1860.
But Musar was eventually absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva.

I had a very good time in two excellent places--Shar Yashuv and the Mir. So the "Litvak yeshiva thing" I know can be an amazing experience and also a good way to gain objective morality.

Impeachment

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind explains the situation well. He traces it back to a basic contradiction in the Enlightenment itself.

He sees the conflict left vs right as rooted in the Enlightenment coming into some kind of blocked alley.
The main theme in his book is that we find a way out of this dead end or else civilization is doomed.

Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work].

The path of my parents was that of balance. That is Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work]. They would not have agreed to the idea of accepting money to learn Torah, but they would agree to the idea of trust in God in order to learn Torah.
These are two different concepts that are confused nowadays very often. They are not the same thing.
One thing is to trust in God that somehow he will make ends meet when you devote yourself to learning Torah.

E Flat Major for violin and winds. file name w15

The Litvak yeshiva is largely based on the Gra--at least in its world view. But also to some degree in its actual workings.

That it is looks upon Torah as being a 24 hour per day, seven days a week as being the goal.

But it does this with a high degree of keeping Torah and creating good character also.

The reason or reason I do not exactly walk on that path are more or less because something it seems I lacked the merit needed for it to work for me. [That is my considerations were mainly practical. If something does not work for me, even if it is in theory the best approach, it still does not change the fact that there is something that I simply can not change about my situation.]

So I have had to depend on the rishonim like Ibn Pakuda and Saadia Gaon that saw Physics as a part of Torah. 

C Major Allegro file name w13    w13 in midi

violin and winds