How did the formatting of that big post look? Was it all jagged like your message below? I wrote it in Ultra Edit then pasted it in without carriage returns. Yahoo's stupid and often messes up the emails. In a letter like this, I'm putting in manual returns. If it's too ugly I can try sending it again. Good about the never too much information. I have a lot! I think you're right about "If Wishes Were Horses..." (you know, I totally forgot about that song and didn't realize you were thinking of it when you asked that question). I remember reading somewhere, maybe in the fanzine (which started out named Rhodeways, but then Sharon changed the name to Terra Incognita), that the song was about having to make the hard hard choice to put a cat of hers to sleep. I listened to it recently when I had to put a cat of mine to sleep. I don't call her my "lyrical soul mate" for nothing. I'm sorry about the loss of your horse. I grew up on a farm and we had a horse. Interesting that Happy could evoke such rememberances and feelings in you. She does that. You said: > wow, she can really get into your heart and under > your skin and inside your nerve endings, can't she? Wow Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. Thank you for articulating that. If you think I'm enthusiastic now, you should have seen me in the Kate group right before the creation of ecto. I was obnoxiously enthusiastic. It did good though, because it got a lot of people to pay attention to her so that when the flame war happened, there were many people willing to follow us to ecto. It all started with a lyrics project. At the time the first 4 albums (hereafter referred to as the "1st4") were only available on cassette, which Happy and Kevin hand-dubbed whenever there was an order. We had gotten on the Internet in 1989 (or '88, my memory is hazy) and I immediately started talking about Happy, and several people ordered the cassettes from Happy and Kevin (I referred to them as H&K). None of the cassettes came with lyrics and none were available anywhere, so 2 other Ectophiles and I decided to transcribe the lyrics. We'd work on it and I'd send them to Happy, she'd make corrections and send them back When they were all done I formatted them (very silly-looking, in retrospect) and posted them to ecto. That took up a lot of room and caused a firestorm. Thus was born Ecto. Long story short. I found this last night when I was looking for something else. It's not from that time but it has a long post from me from that time. You'll see how delighted I was that people were actually talking about Happy! http://www.smoe.org/lists/ecto/v11.n079 (Happy lyrics project) A completely different thing, this is amusing. It's a joke reel I put together of a lot of different times I played Happy on my old radio show and what I said, starting with the very first time I played Happy, to my last live show before we moved up to Chicago, which was was a 6-hour marathon, and me playing Happy the last hour, before signing off early in the morning, dead tired. It's 22 minutes long, but you might get a kick out of it. http://www.wretchawry.com/happy/rarities/SIGKC_HistoryOfHappy.mp3 Vickie --- Jennifer Sexton wrote: > Hi Vickie, > > Wonderful. Thank you for the great email. You will never > overwhelm me > with "too much information", because I am one of those > over-attentive > to detail, obsessive types who never gets enough. I am > committed to > the idea of an article, and I'm keeping the notion of a book > perking > on my favorite back burners to see how the article goes. I > think it > is a very exciting idea! > > How interesting about the horses. You know-- her song "If > Wishes Were > Horses" so perfectly, heartbreakingly captured the way I felt > about a > horse who died ... maybe the lyrics and the music somehow > became so > enmeshed in my heart with the way it made me feel that I guess > I > invented the idea that Happy must have felt the same way and > written > it after a similar experience. That song makes me feel that > loss so > intensely... wow, she can really get into your heart and under > your > skin and inside your nerve endings, can't she? Wow. > > Ha ha, your enthusiasm is just sparkling and wonderful. I > recognize > you as a sister of enthusiasm! > > let's keep this conversation going. > > Jen > > >