Note to Admin: As Helen has implied in one of her friendly posts, WS indeed now has the record in my book for the greatest liberality if not the most restrained language because the other board I recently mentioned as No. 1 actually has deleted one of my posts which WS had kept.

Hence it occurred to me that many of our participants who have had similar experiences might be interested in this note on the reliability of email, the function of Letters to the Fourth Estate, and Political Incorrectness in composition, if not my deathless prose which might inspire some of our our very literate members. It is incidentally a Letter to the Editor

Of course I have disguised names to protect the guilty but if you think it inappropriate to a board of this sort I will understand if you delete it. But thank you for all your past forbearance

Hi DDD [Managing Ed.]:

I vow not to pester you again except possibly in some sort of dire emergency like not getting my morning paper, but thanks to our recent communications I am fairly assured that you are receiving my email. But some background:

A couple years or so ago as I might have mentioned before, owing to a malfunction in your server for about 18 months I was unable to reach several specific addresses over there at the Conquerville, CA Daily Applicator. What made me suspect a software breakdown was that none of my magnificent Letters to the Editor were being accepted

What finally assured me that the problem was in your server and not mine was a most remarkable coincidence when at a garage sale by sheer chance I struck up a conversation with a perfect stranger. When we somehow got to discussing email, this lady remarked that she was experiencing exactly the same trouble, but she attributed it to the Leftish slant of her Letters, asserting that the Applicator’s Editorial Department was simply blocking her contributions on account of its unfortunate Right-Wing proclivities

Of course I assured her that no self-respecting editor would do that but having heard her story it was immediately apparent that something had gone wrong in Bill Gates’ territory and that I would have to take some kind of action. Sure enough, when I advised the Applicator through one of the addresses I was fairly sure was still accessible, your IT’s looked into the situation and made the necessary repairs; whereupon sure enough my Letters–or at least some of the better ones–began appearing again

One of the addresses incidentally was Stu Quaker’s and as we had been very good friends over a long period through our many contacts when he wrote about my hobbies or when I made a clever remark that he could use in his column, after the long hiatus I was afraid his failure to respond meant that I had one way or another offended him. Incidentally his having gone on to Greener Pastures, we all of us miss him dearly

However, I now have reason to believe thanks to the vagaries of Bill’s software your server is again on the fritz and so I am sure you will want to contact the appropriate Department with an eye to corrective measures

DDD thank you for your attention to this matter; yours for more diverse and possibly witty developments of the Op-Ed; while a most prosperous and happy New Year–Dale Hileman, Carrot Valley


PS: I have taken the liberty of forwarding this to a couple of my very favorite IT’s; my No. 1 Son Lee Scott and our very good buddy Nick, who if your techs are unable to resolve the problem this time, may be able to help out, as well as my very good and true engineer acquaintance Blade who is an in the business of the Fourth Estate and who might also be able to shed some light upon the difficulty

Oh PS again, you have my permission to use the above as a Letter to the Editor but I will understand if you don’t as Political Incorrectness of the sort of which I’m often apparently very guilty, would prevent it and of course it isn’t usual for the Establishment to air its soiled underpants in that manner. Nonetheless I hope you might derive a chuckle from it

dalehileman