In the La-La Land of SDC, home of the clueless, the bumsteads, and the eternal armchair mushers, they are talking about Seppalas again. I would have thought they would already have covered the entire extent occupied in that topic (in their own minds and imaginations at least) in the long-winded 14-page thread of a year or so ago, but no. I don't know who most of the people doing the talking are, they are names I see only on SDC and nowhere else, for the most part, and usually pseudonymous at that. But the message is clear enough.
"What happened?" "What did we miss?"
It has been cruelly hot in the computer room (a MacPro should only occupy an air-conditioned office in summertime, they put out about as much heat as a two-bar electric fire) or I would have attempted to explain simple realities at greater length than I already have. Although, that said, I would have thought that there was enough info in the existing blog posts for an intelligent person to fill in the small gaps and figure out what happened. Guess not, huh?
Anyone who ever read a book entitled Atlas Shrugged and/or its companion volume The Fountainhead, both written in the mid-twentieth century by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, should have a head start on understanding just what happened to the SSSD Project. There exists in North American society a "looter" mentality (as Rand called it) that is summarised by the maxim, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The needier you become, the bigger you win under that system -- if you're a paraplegic moron with sixteen children, you've got it made, but if you're a producer, an innovator, a doer, you become a helpless slave. As well as being needy and/or helpless, having the ethics of a shoplifter is also a big help. Ms. Rand's thesis was that the only defense the productive individual has in such a system is to adopt the "organised labour" tactic, to go on strike, to refuse to continue to produce without fair compensation.
TAANSTAAFL!
("There Ain't Any Such Thing As A Free Lunch.") In return for the large investment in money, time, energy and sacrifice of personal freedom that was involved in mounting the Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project, I expected others to put their shoulders to the wheel and act like something more than passive consumers. I also expected to be able to sell SSSD broodstock for considerably more than DW cull prices. Looking back, I fear those were naïve expectations on my part. Response was always timid, uncertain and reluctant when I asked for assistance with website management, information management, ID certificate production, the Seppala Wiki, or similar projects. But people were quick to DEMAND a "real paper Newsletter" for ISA (which none of them were prepared to fund or produce). Andy Romness and his wife did a creditable job of re-incorporating I.S.A. -- but then Andy bluntly told me: "I have been working to gain members and supporters but time and again I am told no thanks, great dogs and basic idea but Jeffrey is not someone I can deal with." After that resounding vote of no confidence, I withdrew from the new I.S.A.; and of course, took my property with me when I left. There was a wide variety of other complaints and accusations which, taken all together, made it obvious that Andy and I could not continue to work together. That, along with the fact that Seppala Kennels has repeatedly been taken advantage of by people who want Seppalas but seem to think they should not have to pay a fair price for them, or for stud services, or for anything else, convinced me that it was time to put the "SSSD Project" to bed for good.
As for the "terrific resources" and the "electronic library," now. (And thanks for the compliments, folks, BTW.) If anyone had bothered to actually take a look before posting (okay, I realise doing that is not customary), they might have discovered over two dozen of the best of my articles and web pages already re-edited and posted to "Jeffrey's Articles" on the SK website. MY CHOICE. And "Redhead," please bear in mind before your plans get too far advanced that Tamara Davis illegally ripped photos from the original 1998 SSSD website because she "thought those photos ought to be preserved" -- and later made them available to the ISSSC for its new website, not to mention for ConKC/ISSSC teeshirts and coffee mugs. And I trust she regrets having done so. I learned enough from that to assure anyone today that I will energetically defend copyright to any of the SSSD Project web materials, photographs, articles, etc. Unfortunately those are not "public resources" to be appropriated by whomever desires.
What bothers me most is that the people doing the whining -- just as before -- are people who are not friends of mine, in many cases their true identities not even known to me, people who never bother to contact me about anything -- yet who somehow have a feeling of entitlement to my work.
I would be quite amenable to discussing, with any person who dares to email me and sign his real name and true location, the possibility of restoring other educational resources to the web (as, for example, the "Siberian Husky Bloodlines" website), if I can be convinced that there is something more to it than a simple desire to get something for nothing.
Once again the subject of a "book" has been mentioned. It is a possibility, but similarly I would need to be convinced that the return on invested time, energy and effort would be something more than derisory. In other words, I don't somehow feel that I automatically owe a Seppala book to the people who never gave enough committed support to the SSSD Project itself to allow it to survive as anything other than a constant sinkhole for energy, time and funds.
THE DOGS have always given me all I could ask of them, and more, and they continue to do so. I cannot say the same for those who profess admiration for and interest in those same dogs. But I'm STILL willing to be convinced.