January 28, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part IV)
The Eva B. Seeley and Lorna Demidoff Bloodlines
THINGS CHANGED as the years wore on, though. Eva B. Seeley had begun her sleddog career by learning to drive a team of Chinooks in the winter of 1929, according to Michael Jennings (page 58, The New Complete Siberian Husky). That same winter she allegedly saw a team of Siberians at the Poland Spring race and decided to become involved with the breed. Seeley leased the Seppala bitch TOTO from Walter Channing and TOTO, mated to Moseley Taylor's leader TUCK, gave birth to the first Seeley Siberian, TANTA OF ALYESKA, on the eleventh of November in that same year of 1929. TANTA was then mated to a shadowy and mysterious male owned by Leonard Chapman and in August 1932 the famous Seeley "foundation litter" by Chapman's DUKE out of TANTA OF ALYESKA was born. The Chinook Kennels breeding programme subsequently moved forward from the base provided by that litter.
Little information about DUKE survives; Dr. Charles Belford used to tell a strange story about his father's repeated requests to view the dog, and the eventual fulfilment of those requests -- a tale that cast doubt on the dog's origins. No authenticated photos of DUKE survive. It seems strange that so little documentation and so much rumour should surround this male who represented the beginning of the Siberian show-dog bloodlines.
Eva Seeley was an inveterate promoter and publicity-seeker, as well as a person driven by the desire for personal power. In both the Alaskan Malamute and the Siberian Husky breeds she strove for control and domination, and in the main succeeded in getting just that. The evolution of Chinook Kennels' concentration on these two breeds is explained thus by Nancy Cowan (whose knowledge of the subject is far greater than mine):
"Chinook Kennels bred all sorts of sled dogs -- Malamutes, Eskimo sled dogs, Siberian Huskies, some Chinook Dogs, and wolf crosses. But Milton wanted to focus upon a dog breed that would represent Seeley's Chinook Kennels to the world as the Chinook Dog had done for Walden. He fixed their focus on the Malamute, telling Short that the Ricker/Seppala already had a corner on the market for raising Siberians. Short liked the Siberians, and after the dissolution of the Poland Spring kennel, there was no good reason Milton could think of not to breed Siberians."
Chinook Kennels under Milton Seeley’s guidance moved in on the high-visibility U. S. Army and U. S. Navy search and rescue business, collaborating with the military and making Chinook Kennels a staging post for collecting and moving sleddogs into training camps and transport groups. The kennel helped with the founding of the Sledge Dog Division for the U. S. Army Quartermaster Corps at Camp Rimini, Montana. It had provided sleddogs for the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition in 1934, was involved in dog supply for the Third B. A. E. in 1940 and for the U. S. Navy's "Operation Highjump" Antarctic expedition led by Admiral Byrd in 1946. Sleddogs were a hard-nosed business proposition at Chinook Kennels. Milton Seeley saw to that. Nancy explains that he instilled in Short the resolution that they had to produce and sell those dogs so that the kennel should be a profitable business. Short's husband Milton died in 1944; Eva did not forget her lessons; ruthless promotion of Chinook Kennels and of her own Malamute and Siberian Husky bloodlines became an inseparable part of the business plan. (The account by Malamute breeder Robert Zoller, published on the Web as The Zoller Files, documents the lengths to which Eva B. Seeley would go to establish and maintain control over a breed.)
Lorna Taylor at first appeared to be an avid dogsled racer. She divorced Moseley Taylor and married Prince Nicholas Alexandrovitch Loupouchine-Demidoff in 1941; as time went by the race trails perhaps meant less and less to her. Increasingly her efforts were concentrated in the breed ring. Make no mistake about it, though — in the year in which BAYOU OF FOXSTAND was born, Lorna Taylor, soon to be Demidoff, and her Monadnock Kennels would definitely have been considered as belonging to the part-Seppala "Racing Siberian Husky" camp. The Jennings book claims a racing career of twenty years for Mrs. Demidoff.
As the 1940s progressed, though, bench Champions began to flow plentifully from the Monadnock fount. Time progressing, Mrs. Demidoff and Mrs. Seeley began to vie for the coveted honour of producing a flashy, impressive black-and-white blue-eyed Siberian who would be able to compete beyond the Best of Breed level in Group and Show competition. At first it looked as though Eva B. had done it in 1949 with CH. ALYESKA'S SUGGEN OF CHINOOK, whose photo headed the Siberian Husky column in the A.K.C. Gazette for many years. But in 1955 the dog was born that definitively capped the rivalry: CH. MONADNOCK'S PANDO, bred by Mrs. Demidoff by the process described earlier.
Founding of the S. H. C. A.
THE FOUNDING of the Siberian Husky Club of America in 1938 was a key factor of the transformation that occurred through the 1940s and 1950s in the breed. Eva B. Seeley was deeply involved in the founding of the S. H. C. A. and eventually became its Honorary Life President. Michael Jennings writes: " 'Short' continued to remain a dominant force in both Malamutes and Siberians until she died in 1985." He also comments: "today these two breeds [Malamutes and Siberians] — although not invented by the Seeleys — are acknowledged to have become what they are largely because of the foundation breeding at this kennel." (References: The New Complete Siberian Husky, pp. 62 and 58.) There is little reason to doubt Mr. Jennings' assertions, except in the case of the original Seppala strain (whose existence as a distinct entity he flatly denies on page 51 of his highly biased book), which owes nothing whatever to any breeding at the Seeleys' kennel. His cautious qualifier, "although not invented by the Seeleys," is certainly correct! The Siberian breed was doing just fine before Eva B. Seeley took a hand in things. A 1938 letter from William Tautges to Dean C. F. Jackson, responding to a notification about the formation of the S. H. C. A., stated:
"My dog, Alaska Kobuk, who was a very fine specimen, died sometime ago. I secured this dog from Julien Hurley, of Fairbanks, Alaska, and I believe that he has some of the finest specimens in America. If you are not already in touch with him, it would be my suggestion that you communicate with him as he can give you some very valuable information in respect to the proper standard as to weight, height, position of ears, carriage of tail, etc."
Ironic indeed, because Dean Jackson was one of Eva Seeley’s faction! Somehow one doubts whether Mr. Jackson took up Mr. Tautges' suggestion.
Julien Hurley, the man who had secured A. K. C. recognition and registration of the Siberian Husky, who had registered the first two dozen A. K. C. Siberians, he who wrote the first breed standard, whose kennel unquestionably sheltered the dominant bloodline of the first half of the 1930 decade, remained in Alaska -- far from the growing centre of Siberian Husky breed development and promotion in New England. Oliver Shattuck, the main representative and exponent of the Northern Light bloodline in New England, was a dog man of the old school, conservative, ethical and cautious. He sold dogs only to a few selected persons. He did not seek power for himself, nor did he cover the ground with his dogs' progeny. He sold breeding stock mainly to one or two others, notably C. H. Young. Although he studded his star male CH. NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK moderately (KOBUCK's A. K. C. master card shows a total of ten matings), he really took little advantage of the head start he had over the Seeleys or the glory that would have been afforded by having the breed's first bench Champion. Indeed, it seems almost as though Julien Hurley deliberately withdrew from active Siberian breeding as the Chinook Kennels ascendancy started to develop.
To be continued . . .
January 20, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part III)
Seppala Bloodline — A Rising Force in the 1930s
THE SEPPALA BLOODLINE was represented just prior to breed registration mostly by Seppala Kennels at Poland Spring, Maine, run by Elizabeth M. Ricker in partnership with Leonhard Seppala. When A. K. C. registration came about, Sepp and Liz Ricker paid it little heed. The Poland Spring kennel in its heyday contained a population of some 160 sleddogs. Out of all the animals housed there, only eight were ever A. K. C. registered. Registration in those days was probably considered mostly an adjunct to dog shows; certainly Seppala and Ricker did not value it very highly.
As dogs were disseminated from Seppala Kennels, the Seppala bloodline came to be represented by other kennels whose focus was mainly on working or racing sleddogs. Best known of these were the successor Seppala Kennels of Harry Roberts Wheeler at Grey Rocks Inn in St. Jovite Station, Quebec, the Cold River Kennels in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, and William L. Shearer III’s Foxstand Kennels in Boston, Massachusetts. But the earliest breeders and racers of Seppalas apart from Sepp and Ricker were the Belfords père et fils.
Alec and his boy Charles Belford (known then as "Sonny") had an importance in the early history of the breed that was much greater than the scant number of dogs their breeding programme is known to have produced. An amazing number of the important dogs of the era passed through the Belfords’ hands, ran on their team, were bought and sold by them. KREE VANKA, TSERKO, SIGRID III OF FOXSTAND, NANNA, BELFORD’S WOLF, SAPSUK OF SEPPALA, VANKA OF SEPPALA 2nd, the Serum Run dogs MATTE and BIJOU — these and more besides were owned or driven by the Belfords. Their contribution to the early history of the breed is poorly understood today because they did not leave behind a large body of stock with their name clearly labelling it.
The Belfords supplied Harry Wheeler with the crucial bitch NANNA (whose actual sire and dam were BELFORD’S WOLF and MONA, not the "Wolf" and "Nan" erroneously published in CKC studbooks and perpetuated in pedigree services). The deal resulted in a string of Wheeler dogs coming to (or passing through) the Belford kennel in the 1930s. The Poland Spring kennel had provided Wheeler with KINGEAK and PEARL in 1930. In 1931 they were followed by core dogs from the Poland Spring kennel, MOLINKA, TOSCA, DUSHKA, BONZO, KREE VANKA, TSERKO and VOLCHOK; Elizabeth Ricker then remarried and went to Europe with her new husband Kaare Nansen. Seppala returned to Alaska, but Wheeler, the Belfords and "The Duchess" Rose Frothingham and her daughter Millie Turner remained, along with William L. Shearer III of Boston, Massachusetts, to represent the Seppala contingent solidly in New England well into the 1950s. The importance of Turner and Shearer is not evident from the records of the 1930s; they were just getting started as the 1940 decade turned.
The entire Seppala group appear to have kept Eva B. Seeley at arm’s length for the most part. Bill Shearer bought two of the Seeley foundation litter, bred a litter or two from them, then discarded the Seeley stock and literally started his bloodline all over again when he acquired the coveted SIGRID III OF FOXSTAND from Sonny Belford at a price equivalent to a year’s college tuition. SIGRID III was bred to the Turner leader "Cossack" — CH. VANKA OF SEPPALA 2nd — and the Foxstand bloodline continued from that foundation mating. Turner once bred a bitch to CH. WONALANCET’S BALDY OF ALYESKA, but there seems to have been little interaction apart from that. Wheeler had nothing to do with Seeleys — but the Seeleys avidly made use of Wheeler-bred males that were sold to other New Englanders! Without the contributions of WOLFE OF SEPPALA, SAPSUK OF SEPPALA, and CH. VANKA OF SEPPALA 2nd, (as well as the non-Wheeler Seppala males BELFORD’S WOLF and SEPP 3rd), the Seeleys would have been reduced to inbreeding endlessly from their first foundation mating, as Jacques Suzanne did.
Others
Jacques Suzanne of the Lake Placid Club in New York was sui generis, an eccentric lone wolf who kept his special bloodline to himself, apparently sharing it only with one other breeder, Jack S. Hagy of Elmira, New York, though he sold Everlyn Washburn one female. He began his breeding with a single pair of sleddogs, POLAIRE and DARKA, of unknown provenance; he inbred on that single mating for many decades thereafter, routinely breeding brothers and sisters.
Margaret Dewey herself was, like Jacques Suzanne, one of the Lake Placid group of dog drivers. She was the daughter of Melville Dewey, founder of the Lake Placid Club. Her bloodline was a curious mix of Poland Spring, Wheeler, Seeley and early Demidoff lines grafted onto early unregistered stock of undocumented origin, some of it apparently grandprogeny of TOGO. She would appear to have been an independent non-partisan in the early scheme of Siberian dog-politics.
In those days no one had a "lock" on the Siberian Husky market, small and new though it was. The dominant Northern Light bloodline, although it was the largest single lineage group, accounted for only 34 per cent of the total number of the group we are analysing. The Seeley group accounted for only 25 per cent (leaving out Lorna’s 5 Northern light crosses from both groups). The Seppala group, hardly 14 1/2 per cent. The Suzanne group, less than 12 1/2 per cent. The Komatik group, about 6.9 per cent.
There was much stronger bloodline diversity in those days!
To be continued . . .
January 13, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part II)
"CARDED" — The First Decade of A. K. C. Registrations
A USEFUL AND FASCINATING BOOKLET was published in 2003 by New Englander Nancy Cowan of Deering, New Hampshire. Entitled "CARDED! (Siberian Husky Profiles Prior to 1945)", it consists largely of photocopies of the index cards accumulated by Margaret Dewey of Komatik Kennels during a three-week period of research in 1942 at the headquarters of the American Kennel Club in New York City. The cards provide a fascinating survey of the earliest registered Siberian sleddog population during the first decade following A. K. C. Siberian Husky breed recognition. With their aid we can survey the registered Siberian population of the 1930s and separate it into bloodline groups.
Thirty-two breeders’ names account for all the Siberians listed in the Dewey card collection; better to say fewer than thirty since in a couple of instances a kennel name was substituted for the actual breeder’s name. About half these names account for fewer than five dogs each in the 284 listings. Some of the breeders fall into reasonably well-defined lineage or bloodline groups according to the original sources of their breeding stock. Others do not. Several names who accounted for only two or three listings in the late 1930s went on to become major players in the 1940s: Marie Turner and William L. Shearer III are the most outstanding examples. Some minor breeders tended to straddle two bloodline groups, but overall tendencies are clear. Next to the names I have shown the number of individual dogs in this group bred by each individual, but to preserve clarity I have taken no account of owners’ names.
An Analytical Breakdown of the "CARDED" Database
Northern Light Bloodline (84 dogs)
Julien A. Hurley, Fairbanks, Alaska - 41
Elsie K. Reeser, Fairbanks, Alaska - 6
Oliver R. Shattuck, Alton, New Hampshire - 18
Ford Cary, Traverse City, Michigan - 3
C. H. Young, Center Sandwich, New Hampshire - 7
John D. McIlhenny, Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania - 7
Norman D. Vaughn, Hamilton, Massachusetts - 2
Chinook/Alyeska Seeley Bloodline (76 dogs)
Mr. and Mrs. Milton Seeley/Chinook Kennels, Wonalancet, New Hampshire - 57
Lorna B. Taylor, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire - 19
Seppala Bloodline (41 dogs)
Leonhard Seppala, Fairbanks, Alaska - 5
Alex G. Belford, Laconia, New Hampshire - 1
Elizabeth M. Ricker/Seppala Kennels, Poland Spring, Maine - 8
Harry R. Wheeler, Canada - 13
Stouder Thompson, Willoughby/Gates Mills, Ohio - 6
Kathryn S. Post, Montclair, New Jersey - 6
Marie Turner, Beverly Farms/South Hamilton, Massachusetts - 2
Suzanne Bloodline (35 dogs)
Jacques Suzanne, Lake Placid Club, New York - 21
Jack S. Hagy, Elmira, New York - 14
Komatik Bloodline (21 dogs)
Margaret A. Dewey/Komatik Kennels, Lake Placid Club, New York - 15
Edward A. Shepard, Cassville, New York - 4
Dr. Beverly Sproul, Lake Placid, New York - 2
Others (20 dogs)
Laika Kennels, Ipswitch, Massachusetts - 1
Everlyn Washburn, Lewiston, Maine - 3
Ray J. Thornton, Lake Placid, New York - 3
Joseph A. Booth, Carlisle, Massachusetts - 1
Joel E. Nordholm, Jr., Tilton, New Hampshire - 3
William L. Shearer III, Boston, Massachusetts - 4
Margaret S. Deardorff, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - 4
Nancy Moffat, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire – 1
Imported Stock (7 dogs)
"Import" - 7
It should be noted that the above numbers represent A. K. C. registrations only, and bear little relationship to the actual sleddog populations of the various groups! In particular the Seppala faction, especially Ricker and Wheeler, registered very few of the animals they produced.
Northern Light — Dominant Bloodline in 1930
THE EARLIEST AND LARGEST single bloodline group is that headed by Judge Julien A. Hurley of Fairbanks, Alaska, whose Northern Light Kennels registered the first two dozen or so AKC Siberian Huskies. No fewer than 84 dogs are accounted for by the Northern Light bloodline group; moreover, it should be noted that even Lorna B. Taylor, whose 19 entries are credited to the Seeley bloodline group, actually bred her prized foundation bitch TOSCA OF ALYESKA to NORTHERN LIGHT LITTLE BEAR—five of those 19 entries come from that mating! It should begin to be quite obvious now that the most dominant and widespread bloodline group in 1930 was the Northern Light lineage. The Seppala bloodline was second in the breadth of its distribution, though not in number of registered animals, largely because Seppala Kennels seemed to take a jaundiced view of registration, both the Poland Spring original and its St. Jovite successor!
Oliver R. Shattuck of Alton, New Hampshire was an experienced dog man before the Siberians came along. His Pointsetter Kennels was well known for its gundog breeding, and Shattuck was a skilled dogsled builder! Well before Siberian breed recognition in 1930 he had acquired Siberian bitches AMMORO and RIGA from Seppala Kennels in Poland Spring, as well as a Seppala male TEX purchased from the Gunnar Kaasen tour team, and had begun breeding. He began to acquire stock from Julien Hurley and by November 1929 had already bred one litter from NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK and NORTHERN LIGHT LASKA. He continued to acquire and breed Northern Light stock after breed recognition.
To these facts must be added another significant dimension. In the early bench show history of the breed, the Northern Light bloodline was not at all an obscure sideshow. The first bench show Champion of the breed—an honour that must have been hotly contested among the early fanciers—was CH. NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK, owned by Shattuck. KOBUCK was a white Siberian with brown eyes. Another Shattuck Siberian, KOBUCK’s daughter POLA (also white I believe), came close to becoming the first female Champion as well, but died still lacking one point for her bench title. (Viral diseases such as distemper took a heavy toll of dogs in those days, when every dog show and race brought a strong risk of infection and there were no preventive vaccines.) Shattuck’s dogs regularly won over the dogs of the Seeleys, Dean Jackson, and others, creating a long-standing prejudice in the Seeley camp against white Siberians. As late as the mid-1960s there was still agitation for adding all-white coat colour as a disqualification to the breed standard, coupled with great discrimination against whites in conformation classes.
To be continued . . .January 06, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part I)
The Message of BAYOU OF FOXSTAND
Copyright ©2005, 2006 by J. Jeffrey Bragg
OF ALL THE MANY PEDIGREES that I have seen in a lifetime in the canine fancy, I have a single favourite. It is the pedigree of a little Siberian Husky bitch whose registered name was BAYOU OF FOXSTAND. (Here is a link to BAYOU's pedigree.) She was born in 1940, bred by Joe Booth of Carlisle, Massachusetts. She was dark grey with blue eyes. Her sire was SURGUT OF SEPPALA from Harry Wheeler; her dam was DUCHESS OF HUSKYLAND, whose sire was Millie Turner's Wheeler leader SAPSUK OF SEPPALA. Three-quarters of her pedigree displays Harry Wheeler origins. Ah, but the other quarter has quite a tale to tell. No other Siberian sleddog pedigree, surely, is quite so packed with history as BAYOU’s; no other has so urgent a message for the breeders of today.
But what dogs are these, in the ancestry of BAYOU's maternal grandam, ROLLINSFORD NINA OF MARILYN? KOTLIK, NERA OF MARILYN, TILLIE, CH. NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK? They surely are not Wheeler dogs, neither are they from the Seeleys’ Chinook Kennels line. Where can we find out about these dogs?
The Modern Monolithic Siberian Husky Population
IT IS AN UNFORTUNATE human tendency to assume that things do not change much, despite the fact that we are surrounded by constant change. Siberian breed fanciers assume that their breed has always been more or less as it is today. Today the Siberian Husky breed, as found in registries of the American Kennel Club, the Canadian Kennel Club, and similar national registries, is overwhelmingly composed of the descendants of show dogs, today largely harking back to the "Innisfree" bloodline of Kathleen and Col. Norbert Kanzler. Before Innisfree, the ruling show bloodline was Lorna Demidoff’s "Monadnock" and its offshoots.
Just how monolithic and homogeneous the overall Siberian Husky breed population is today, at least as far as its great majority of show dogs and pet stock goes, is not generally realised. Even as early as 1966, out of 103 dogs entered at the Siberian Husky Club of America’s National Specialty, 100 were the descendants of one highly successful show dog: CH. MONADNOCK’S PANDO, then still alive. Popular, heavily-promoted show bloodlines tend to gain rapid ascendancy within the overall breed population. The people who do the bulk of the breeding ride on the coattails of show ring winners; red ink in the pedigree impresses those who buy pet stock and the breeders know that. Today, if you see a Siberian on the street, it’s usually a safe enough bet to assume that he’s a descendant of CH. MONADNOCK’S PANDO.
Who Was Lorna Demidoff and where did PANDO come from?
MRS. DEMIDOFF was around on the Siberian scene in the 1930s; she was Lorna Taylor then, the wife of newspaper magnate Moseley Taylor. The fifth- and sixth-generation ancestors of PANDO were also around at that same time, but few of them belonged to Lorna Taylor. In fact, the Monadnock bloodline stems almost entirely from a single foundation bitch, TOSCA OF ALYESKA, one of the Eva B. Seeley foundation litter (DUKE x TANTA OF ALYESKA) that was purchased for Lorna by her husband circa 1933.
In 1938 Lorna bred TOSCA OF ALYESKA to BELFORD’S WOLF to produce CH. PANDA, her first show champion and lead dog, and again in 1940 to Fred Lovejoy’s VANKA OF SEPPALA (not to Millie Turner’s CH. VANKA OF SEPPALA 2nd as erroneously stated in Michael Jennings’ The New Complete Siberian Husky) to produce CH. KIRA OF MONADNOCK. She then bred CH. PANDA to a male owned and bred by Millie Turner, VALUIKI OF COLD RIVER, which mating produced CH. VANYA OF MONADNOCK 3rd. That male, bred to CH. KIRA OF MONADNOCK, produced the bitches TANYA OF MONADNOCK and NADEJDA. NADEJDA, inbred back to her own sire, produced PANDA GIRL. PANDA GIRL and TANYA OF MONADNOCK were both mated with William Belletete’s IZOK OF GAP MOUNTAIN. The progeny of those matings, plus Mrs. Seeley’s CH. ALYESKA’S SUGGEN OF CHINOOK, became the grandparents of Mrs. Demidoff’s dominant show dog CH. MONADNOCK’S PANDO. His pedigree (here is a link to PANDO's pedigree) will help clarify the relationships and the manner in which Mrs. Demidoff forged show ring domination from a single bitch.
Many Siberian fanciers are aware of these facts to a greater or lesser extent. But is that really all we need to know about the history of the Siberian dog during its first decade of AKC registration? It is all that most people know, but it does not present an adequate picture of the breed population in the 1930s, not at all. Neither Mrs. Demidoff nor Mrs. Seeley were the dominant breeders of the 1930s, though breed clubs like to give the impression that they were.
There is an appalling unawareness of the real breed history of the 1930s decade today. Little information can be had from those who ought to be best able to supply it, such as The Siberian Husky Club of America and Siberian Husky Club of Canada. The breed clubs seem to care little about the history of their breed; they do nothing to encourage research and awareness among breeders. Other than vague, generalised, brief historical sketches, little information is provided on Internet websites dealing with the Siberian Husky breed, at least those of breed clubs and show dog fanciers! (The greatest single accumulation of detailed, factual Siberian Husky history is found, oddly enough, on the Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project website.) But there is another handy source that we can tap, one that tells all by itself a very clear tale of early breed history.
To be continued . . .January 04, 2006
Destabilised
On the evening of 2nd January, dotCanada's "King" server experienced a catastrophic failure in which its "FAT directories became unstable," taking the server down and rendering the files on its hard drive unrecoverable -- apparently. It took the SSSD Project website, SledDogBlog, and Legacy Sleddogs Online newsletter with it. All have now been restored from a month-old backup, but anything entered for the last four weeks has been lost. I've done a lot of revision work on the Project website in that time...
Up to this point I haven't been saving copies of MovableType entries to SledDogBlog and Legacy Sleddogs Online. Live and learn! Things are still chaotic, and this entry itself is in the nature of a test, as up to this point, though user access has been restored, I've been unable to edit and save anything or to upload new files, as the webhost was "experiencing some permissions problems on the recovered files." If I can save and publish this entry, it represents a giant step back to functionality.
Internet connectivity and communication are great things, but boy, have we come to count on them -- and when things go west, the result is chaos, destabilisation, and emotional upset! Well -- would YOU like to repeat all the work you've done for the past four weeks -- assuming you COULD??? I'm not going to try to reconstruct the recent posts on this newsletter; I'll need to put the effort into restoring the website revisions! But if anyone's worried about the feature article "The Message of BAYOU OF FOXSTAND," fear not. The text is safe; I'll just have to reformat all of it for the newsletter -- all over again.