From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #229 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Monday, December 8 2003 Volume 02 : Number 229 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 14:15:12 -0700 From: Christopher Bigelow Subject: [AML] (Des News) Richard Paul Evans profile Fiction and fact - Author's sudden fame, wealth was shock to family By Doug Robinson Deseret Morning News There are bits and pieces of Rick Evans' life sprinkled throughout his nine novels. Those Americans who move to Italy in "The Last Promise"? Evans and his family did it. The man who was ambushed by a TV interviewer on the air in "A Perfect Day"? It happened to Evans. The man who is down on his luck and writes a book and then struggles with the demands of fame and fortune in "The Last Promise"? Evans again. A man and wife dancing in their yard at lunchtime in the "Last Promise"? Did it. All these things happened to him. That lonely, elderly woman we visit for several hours on Christmas Eve in "The Christmas Box"? That happened to Evans while he was completing a "home teaching" assignment for his LDS Church ward. But so far, other than a few vignettes, Evans hasn't really written his own story, which could be his best material yet. So many possibilities ... He could write about his boyhood, which was unremarkable except for the fact that he spent long hours alone building a robot and later an actual submarine. His hero - the man he wanted to emulate - was not Joe Montana, but Thomas Edison. He could write about his first aborted attempts at a career. He tried advertising. He started his own newspaper. He ran for the state Legislature. He made animated films. He tried the coupon business. He tried advertising again. He wound up in serious debt. And when he finally found himself with nothing to do one autumn, he wrote a book for his children that made him a multimillionaire, proving again that life is stranger than fiction. Who would believe such a tale? Evans' writing career has been one big happy accident. Today Rick Evans is Richard Paul Evans, the man who wrote "The Christmas Box," which has become the golden goose that produced a huge publishing contract, a movie, a children's shelter, and a holy host of angel statues that are turning up in cemeteries all over the world to watch over children who have passed away. Maybe Evans could write about the pains of learning to live with money and fame, which fell into his family's lap almost overnight. Just the other day, one of Evans' teenage daughters complained that People magazine wanted to take their pictures because she didn't want to fix herself up for the shoot. Not People magazine! Do I have to have my picture taken?! The newness and wonder of it all has worn off. They have millions in the bank, but Evans' wife Keri still clips coupons and looks for sales, and her idea of heaven is T.J. Maxx and Target. Nine years ago, Evans celebrated the release of his book "Timepiece" by buying her an expensive Rolex watch. She refused to wear it until this year. Later, he bought her a chic purse whose value and prestige were completely lost on her until a nephew exclaimed, "Oh, that's a Chanel! That's a $2,000 purse!" "So I keep it in a box, too, and take it out every now and then," she says. He tried to maintain a low profile, but then the newspapers reported that Simon & Schuster paid him $4.5 million just for the hard cover rights in North America. The next day a stranger was calling to tell them she needed $90,000 for a kidney transplant or she would die, the first of many such requests. In trying to adapt to their new life, they fled their old life twice, but each time they came back. They bought a house on an upscale street east of their old neighborhood. They moved back. They lived in Italy for more than a year. They moved back. According to Evans, family and friends turned on them with the arrival of success. Mean things were said about them in a pique of jealousy, and tensions arose, which in turn led to the "forgiveness" theme of one of his books, "Timepiece." "It's been crazy," says Evans. Sitting in his home office on a recent afternoon, Evans looks frazzled. He has just pulled into the driveway after another book promotion tour, and the kids are running in and out of the office, clamoring for his attention. His office is decorated with dark wood paneling, and the shelves are filled with books and art, most conspicuously a statue of Christ and a leather-bound copy of "The Christmas Box." He was 29 when he wrote his first book; now he's 41, but he looks 31. He hears this all the time, he says, with his unlined boyish face and mass of thick brown hair. His idea of a good time is to fight paintball wars on his ranch in southern Utah - "Timepiece Ranch" - and ride four-wheelers with his five children. "I'm getting tired of touring," he says, and runs through the list of upcoming trips. He was in Pocatello this day. He will leave for Michigan before dawn the next day, with stops in Detroit and Ann Arbor. He will return for a few days, then it's off to Newport Beach, Hollywood, Seattle . . . He has been gone for as long as two months. ("One or two children fall apart when he goes on tour," says Keri. "They share him with a lot of people.") Evans is talking about his books and what they have meant to people. He has written about childhood, forgiveness, self-discovery, domestic abuse, suicide, love and priorities, and they have found their mark. No one will ever mistake him for Hemingway. Evans is an improving, functional writer and has come a long way from a man who made a living writing radio ads. "It's gotten better," says a friend, accurately. "I admire the improvement in his writing." Keri, referring to "The Christmas Box," says, "He knows it's not like a work of literature. It was the story. I think that's why people related so strongly to it." He receives dozens of letters and e-mails each day from around the world, and many more during the Christmas season. One woman wrote that she had endured domestic abuse for years until she read "The Looking Glass" and decided she was worthy of being loved. He says that three people had planned suicide until they read "Carousel." More than a decade after "The Christmas Box" was written, he still receives letters from people who were moved by the story. One woman handed him a poem she had written to thank him for the book. Another woman showed him a picture of her deceased child that she wore on a necklace and told him his book got her through the tragedy. The author finds all of this deeply gratifying. "If I stopped writing, it would leave a hole in the market," he says. "I write a book no one else does. I try to write books that have some emotional impact. Or any impact at all. Half of the people will hate anything sentimental. The rest will say we're too jaded and anything that makes you feel is valuable." Evans is the Accidental Writer, of course. He never planned any of this. His story is well known. Between jobs, he decided to write a book for his children. "It's a common thing to want to write a book," he says now. "Everyone I told about the book said they wanted to write one, too." Keri was skeptical. She says, "I thought, 'Well, that's nice. It's a good break for him. He'll get back to work soon.' " He finished it in five weeks and asked Keri to read it. "I was worried about reading it because what if I didn't like it," she says. "I loved it. The first thing I said was 'Where did you get this story from?' I couldn't believe it. I was very emotional after reading it. I was sobbing. I always knew that was the kind of person he was. I was so proud he has those kinds of feelings and can show them, things that are close to the heart. He is very sensitive." His friend and former business partner, Evan Twede, wasn't so enthusiastic. "I had an opportunity to invest in it," he says ruefully. "I didn't believe in the project. I bought my wife a minivan instead. I thought it was a sweet story, but I didn't consider it an epiphany." Evans gave the book to his daughters as a Christmas present (he named the characters in the book after members of his family), reading it aloud to them on Christmas Eve of 1992. Jenna, the older of the two daughters, liked the book immediately; Allyson wanted to watch TV. "She was bored," says Evans. "I liked it better than I thought I would," he continues. "It was a spiritual experience for me. All of a sudden it would come, blocks of the story, sometimes in the middle of the night. I'd get up and work on it." He originally printed 20 copies at Kinko's and gave them to family and friends. In the coming months, those same family and friends had loaned the book to other acquaintances, and soon strangers were calling Evans on the phone asking for their own copies. "That's when I realized something peculiar was going on," he says. In 1993, after publishers refused to publish the book, he decided to publish it himself and place them with local bookstores. He printed 7,000 copies and they sold out. He printed another 9,000 copies and they sold out two weeks before Christmas. For the following Christmas season he arranged to print 400,000 copies, underwritten by a friend, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett. Again they sold out. He arranged to have another 500,000 copies published and they sold. By then, he had begun to peddle the book regionally, arranging his own book tours and traveling the West, from Oregon to Texas. "I was on the road constantly," he recalls. "I had never done anything like that. It was frightening. I hadn't flown much. I arrived in Dallas, and I was scared. It was a strange city. I mean, outside of my (LDS Church) mission (to Taiwan) I hadn't been out of this bubble much." But, for a marketing/advertising exec, this was doing what he does best. In 1994, the book reached No. 2 on the New York Times Best Seller List, which qualifies as a miracle in the book business for a book without a publisher. By now, he was receiving staggering offers from publishing houses. One caller offered him $2 million over the phone just for the North American hardcover rights. Simon-Schuster won the bidding war with an offer of $4.5 million. This didn't even include paperback rights, movie royalties or international sales. In 1995, the book reached No. 1 in hardcover and No. 1 in paperbook on the New York Times Best Seller List. This was heady stuff for a guy with a $30,000 advertising job. Evans had bounced around from one venture to the next until then. A Cottonwood High grad, he attended the University of Utah hoping to study journalism, but when he couldn't get into the classes, he majored in speech communication with law-school ambitions. He wanted to write for The Chronicle, the school newspaper, but couldn't get on the staff. He waited for staffers to quit or miss their assignments and be fired. By the end of the year, he was editor. He served as an intern for Norm Bangerter's gubernatorial campaign. He started his own newspaper, The Collegiate, which he hoped would challenge The Chronicle. The venture lasted long enough to pay his way through school. He dropped out of school to support his wife and first child and went to work for Evan Twede advertising, writing radio and TV commercials (Haircuts Plus, Kinko's copy centers). Eventually, Evans formed his own advertising firm. Then he started a coupon business and a firm called ClayMagic Productions, which made animated movies ala "Toy Story," but none of these ventures took off. Evans went $40,000 in debt. "He tried a lot of things just hoping something would work," says Keri. "I knew that was the way he was before we married. I knew he would be trying everything in the world. He's an entrepreneur. Nothing he does surprises me. But it was stressful, not making money. He carried the load himself. He kept (financial problems) from me. It was bad, down to the bare nothing. I was worried. I really didn't know how bad it was until afterward." Twede asked to meet with Evans and convinced him to form a partnership in another advertising firm. "When I found him he was sitting on the curb looking pretty lost," he says. "He was hating his life. He just wasn't making enough money." They handled Dave Buhler's unsuccessful mayoral race against Deedee Corradini. They teamed again to run the successful Bennett campaign for the U.S. Senate. And then Evans decided to run for office himself. He won the convention and primary runoffs as a Republican candidate for the state Legislature but lost to Democrat Mary Carlson by the narrowest of margins. "That was one of the great things that happened to me," Evans says now. He had planned to write the book for his children, and now he had plenty of free time to begin it. "If he had won that race, he never would have written that book," says Twede. The book's first critique appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune - the critic wrote that he had been ready to bash the book but, much to his surprise, wound up liking it. An Indiana newspaper wrote that it was a simple story, but that it might become a classic. It was only later that critics turned on the book's unabashed sentimentality. "When the book made money, my agent warned me that the honeymoon was over, that the critics would hate me," he says. "Now critics have come around again." Evans has continued to churn out books since then - nine novels, plus five children's books - but none has come close to matching the success of "The Christmas Box," which sold some 8 million copies worldwide - more than the rest of his books combined. Most of his books have done reasonably well, with "The Letter" selling close to 1 million copies in hardcover and becoming the 11th biggest book of 1997. Three of his books have been turned into TV movies. Says Keri, "Every time he writes a book, I'm the first one to read it. 'The Last Promise' is my favorite. We kind of lived where everything took place in that book. I thought it was his best writing." Not that she doesn't have some of the critic in her. "I didn't like one of his books (which was never published). That was hard." When the money came in, the Evanses clung to their normalcy as if it were a security blanket. Evans himself drove a Honda Civic with a cracked windshield for more than a year. "We didn't want things to change," he says. "We were worried money would change us. I came from a family where we were always struggling financially. You become anti-wealth. Like someone is evil if they have money. Some of it is resentment and the treatment by rich kids when I was growing up. They get more for Christmas and go places you can't go. Maybe it's a survival technique." Evans' life became a two-minute drill, with book tours and appearances on "Good Morning America" and the "Today" show, and Newsweek on the phone and the Time magazine photographer waiting in the lobby and a four-inch stack of papers requesting interviews and meetings with the author. "My head was spinning . . . " says Evans. "There's a scene in 'A Perfect Day' when a man asks his wife if she would go back if they could. Keri would rather it didn't happen. Money means nothing to her." Says Keri, "When Rick told me the figures they were talking about, I was excited, then I was worried. I was worried it would change what people thought of us. I was worried about our children. We saw a financial adviser and he warned us about giving the kids too much, and how it had led to drug problems and that kind of thing. I was shocked. I was like 'just give it back.' I really felt that way. I didn't want the kids to think money was the most important thing in life and that they were not going to have to work for things they wanted. I was really scared. What would people think of me? My friends didn't have a lot of money. I was struggling to come to terms with it. I still am." Evans wrote about a man who has to rediscover his priorities after finding money and fame in "A Perfect Day," and he admits there is much about his own life in there. "Life got confusing," he says. "Fortunately, I had things to keep me focused. You can only be so cruel when you're changing diapers at 1 in the morning. The kids are everything. And I have a wife who doesn't get into the pretense of it. The other thing is my faith. It has been my North Star." It was years before they adapted to their new life, though. Even before they came into money, they had determined that they needed to move out of their small, cramped home. They used their fortune to buy a nice, but not extravagant, 4,000-square-foot house. They stayed about 18 months. Their children were unhappy. They bought another old home in their old neighborhood, bulldozed it and built a large, brick home in its place amid World War II-era homes. In 2000, they packed up the family and moved to Italy to escape the madness. They planned to stay a year; they stayed 18 months. Even as they departed for their new home, Keri and Rick were asking each other, "What are we doing?" They wanted to escape the phone and the book tour demands. They lived in a small, cold cottage in the countryside that was centuries old and poorly heated. It was so cold that they wore coats inside the house during the winter. "Maybe it was a midlife crisis," says Evans. "I was 40. I wondered if I had lived all my dreams. I was doing the same thing every year - write a book, promote it, then go back in the den and write another book. The kids were getting older. It was actually Keri's idea. She wanted an experience outside of Utah. Her family is originally from Italy. "At first it was miserable. We have five little kids. We don't speak the language. The Italians don't like Americans and are rude. Just to find a grocery store took two days. We just tried to survive. It got great, though. No one called. No one visited. We just had each other. In my heart I felt like we needed to do it, but I didn't want to. . . . It was good for our marriage and family. Here we're just so busy. I couldn't tell you the last time we had dinner together before we left. Over there we ate every meal together." The Evanses grew more comfortable with their good fortune. Evans allowed himself some indulgences. He bought a ranch - a converted 200-acre ostrich farm. He bought a Lexus (now nine years old). He bought a Prowler sports car. But they have also adapted to the money by using it for children and people in need. Once Evans was on the radio when a man called and told listeners that his brother was dying of cancer and that Evans had paid to send them all to Disneyland. "There have been completely anonymous acts of kindness that no one will ever know about," says Twede. Told that they could no longer have children, they adopted a child "and then of course we had a fourth child, the same age," says Evans. They also bought and continue to support a charity - The Christmas Box House, a temporary shelter where abused and neglected children are evaluated, treated and cared for. They are just completing their fourth House in Utah. "I think it has a lot to do with the Mormon faith," says Evans. "We seem to believe that wealth is bad. But we've been able to do good things with it. We struggle almost daily seeing people who are unfortunate and knowing we have a lot. It's not fair. At a book signing the other day, a man came up to me and asked for $5,000 so he could run for president. I said, 'No, I can house 50 children in the Christmas Box House with that.' " Says Keri, "The Christmas Box House has been such a blessing. We were given this gift, so there are many things we can do with it. I would feel horrible if we didn't. The House has been great. We see so many amazing people who give time and money for these children. It's heartwarming." Evans himself marvels at "the good that has come from "The Christmas Box." While writing the book, Evans visited an elderly woman on Christmas Eve, and she happened to tell him about an angel statue in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. Evans worked the angel into his book, and after it was published, he received calls from people wanting to see the statue. Evans had never seen it himself, so one day he and the elderly woman went to see the statue only to discover that it was gone. "A lot of people were looking for the angel because they had lost children," he says. "I thought, wouldn't it be cool to rebuild that angel statue so that people who have lost children would have a place to go and comfort and support each other." Evans commissioned sculptors Ortho and Jared Fairbanks to build a new statue in its place. When it was completed, they held a dedicatory ceremony in the cemetery. About 200 people showed up, most of them grieving for children they had lost. It has become an annual event each Dec. 6. This year will mark the 10th anniversary. Since then, nearly 50 angels have been erected around the world, and more than a hundred more are under construction. Evans devotes part of his staff to helping people bring statues to their area. "We don't make money on them, we just help people get the statues," he explains. "We have a mold. We help people raise funds (to get a statue). "I love the angel," Evans continues. "The London Daily Telegraph called about it. There's this movement to build monuments to children. The reporter asked me what I attribute it to. I said, 'Pain. Thousands of people have lost children and feel so alone. This is a way for people to pull together.' " Evans, meanwhile, will go on writing his books, but the future might hold other ventures, including politics. "He's a risk taker," says Twede. "He's young, funded and he has a real desire to help people, and he's smart. Once he got into writing, he said he was done with his failed visions. He told me, 'I'm going to make a difference.' He found his train to allow him to accomplish what he wanted to do, which is to help people. I know this guy better than anyone. His heart is amazing." - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 09:34:02 -0800 From: Sugar Beet Subject: [AML] Sugar Beet Sample Copy Offer Hey, would you be interested in seeing a sample copy of the new printed Sugar Beet? If so, simply use the PayPal link below or mail your $4 check to The Sugar Beet, PO Box 1086, Orem, UT 84059. We'll include a coupon for $4 off a subscription! http://sugarbeet.c.tep1.com/maabIAEaa2ya9bemu1yb/ If you want to go ahead and subscribe now, you'll receive 96 pages of Mormonism's most compelling news, opinion, and advice. Simply use the PayPal link below or mail your $19.95 check for 6 bimonthly issues to The Sugar Beet, PO Box 1086, Orem, UT 84059. http://sugarbeet.c.tep1.com/maabIAEaa2ya8bemu1yb/ Don't miss out on our premiere issue next month! ==================================================================== Update your profile here: http://sugarbeet.u.tep1.com/survey/?a84D2N.bemu1y.YW1sLWxp Unsubscribe here: http://sugarbeet.u.tep1.com/survey/?a84D2N.bemu1y.YW1sLWxp.u Delivered by Topica Email Publisher, http://www.email-publisher.com/ - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 14:21:33 -0700 From: "Eric Samuelsen" Subject: RE: [AML] The Envious Critic (was: Harry Potter) I've been away, stuffing myself on turkey, and, well, stuffing (I make mine with apples and sausage, yummy), and so, on arriving home, I found this response from my good friend Scott Parkin. Believe me, I don't see this as remotely ad hominem. But I would like to respond. >But in this specific instance, I think he went too far. I think he was >hurtful and I think he knew he was doing it. The fact that he's a >working artist makes the condemnation that much more damaging; he >knows that his position of authority lends his words more weight. >Which is why I think Brother Dutcher shouldn't have commented at >all--he's become far too big a hammer to wield against a film that >made few if any pretensions to art. It doesn't matter whether his >criticism was valid; as the reputed "father of Mormon cinema" >Dutcher's opinions carry too much weight to be casually used against >another working artist. The closest I have come to leaving the Church ever in my life came some seventeen years ago. I shan't bore you with the details, but I was made to feel terribly unwelcome in my home ward, and skipped Church for four consecutive Sundays. And then I got a grip on myself and came back. The second closest I have ever come to leaving the Church came after seeing Singles Ward. My experience with that film was depressing, alienating. I left in a state of despair. This isn't just being melodramatic; it's an honest response to the film. =20 I wanted to review the film, because I thought that that reaction to it would be of value. The film is a comedy, a cheerfully anarchic look at Mormon culture. My reaction to it, ideally, would have been laughter. Barring that, my reaction probably ought to have been indifference. I saw two children's films over the weekend (long story; workman at our home, my wife working, kids not in school.) One, Brother Bear, left me cold. The other, Elf, I laughed a lot and enjoyed thoroughly. So those are two valid reactions to pieces of popular entertainment.=20 But I didn't have either of those reactions to Singles Ward. I didn't even feel indifferent towards it. I felt horrid. Okay, I'm an active member of the Church, and I write comedy, and I write plays and films, and I wanted to leave the Church after seeing the film. If someone had that reaction to one of my plays or to my novel, I'd want to know. It might even make me rethink what I was doing. =20 So I blasted it. And I thought about how the filmmakers might feel if they read my review. I thought, first and foremost, that they might just be offended and blow me off. Fine, I could live with that. Second, they might get depressed and stop making films. Unlikely, but that would have been okay with me too. Third, they might seriously consider my criticisms of the film, and make their next film better as a result. That would be ideal. =20 But also unlikely. I WAS too extreme in my criticism. I was far more likely to just make them feel bad. I just wanted to strike out, to let the world know how rotten their film made me feel. In retrospect, that doesn't strike me as the most mature possible response. So I've probably made an enemy or two. That's a shame, because I don't want to make enemies in this bad ol' world. And it's a shame, because I don't have any credibility with Halestorm right now, and neither does Richard, and frankly, we could help. They're important filmmakers, and their work continues to be mediocre. That seems the real shame.=20 So, Scott's right. Mea culpa. Contexts do matter. Not because I wield a particularly big hammer or anything. =20 Here's what I've concluded. I did the right thing in reviewing the film, and the review was accurate and truthful and good. I just shouldn't have sent it out. First draft, second draft; I should have rethought it, and rewritten it, reviewed it more moderately. I'll try that next time. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 15:01:44 -0700 From: "Bill Willson" Subject: Re: [AML] Harry Potter Sorry folks, I've been away, but now that I'm back, here we go again. - ----- Original Message ----- > I think there is a lot of frustration with hard-core fans and writers of the= > sci-fi/fantasy genre who for years have been writing similar stories for= > years before Rowling came on the scene. All of a sudden some young English= > woman writes a book and it sells like hot cakes. If it wasn't for Lord of= > the Rings, people still wouldn't be reading other books in that genre. I= > dare say that there are a lot of books out there that fall by the wayside= > and never get read that are more creative and original that anything in the= > Harry Potter series. Rowling has certainly earned her spot as a household= > name, but owes a lot to her predecessors like J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis. = > I don't mind people reading Harry Potter, but I wish they'd read some of= > the classics of that genre and some of the other contemporary stuff that is= > just as good. Otherwise, I always feel like they're just reading it= > because it's a fad and it's the thing to do. What makes you think people who are reading Harry Potter now haven't read any of these other classics? I've read all of the Potter books so far, and I read Tolkin and Lewis almost thirty years ago. > > It will be interesting to see how people view the Harry Potter boosk 100= > years from now. Will they be regarded as classics or some just flavor of= > the month piece of popcorn entertainment in the form of a book? I guess it= > will depend on who you ask. Stephen King says in his review of book five: Speaking about storybook villains, "the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts does just fine in this [role of villan] regard. The gently smiling Dolores Umbridge, with her girlish voice, toadlike face, and clutching, stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter. One needn't be a child to remember The Really Scary Teacher, the one who terrified us so badly that we dreaded the walk to school in the morning, and we turn the pages partly in fervent hopes that she will get her comeuppance...but also in growing fear of what she will get up to next. For surely a teacher capable of banning Harry Potter from playing Quidditch is capable of anything. 6. Last, but not least, how good are these books? How good are they, really? One can only guess...assuming, that is, one doesn't have access to Dumbledore's wonderful Pensieve Glass. My own feeling is that they are much better than Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which is their only contemporary competitor. Will kids (and adults as well) still be wild about Harry 100 years from now, or 200? My best guess is that he will indeed stand time's test and wind up on a shelf where only the best are kept; I think Harry will take his place with Alice, Huck, Frodo, and Dorothy, and this is one series not just for the decade, but for the ages. **** The beautiful thing about good literature is that it appeals to people of all ages, and as with any work, if the reader doesn't like it they have the choice of laying it down and moving on to something they find more enjoyable. Bill Willson, writer http://www.iwillwriteit.com http://www.latterdaybard.com Here's a great place for LDS artists to show and sell their work. http://www.minutemall.com CHECK IT OUT! - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 09:45:43 -0600 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: [AML] Moderator Note: AML-List Not Defunct Folks, Apologies for not sending anything out the last half of last week. Things got a little crazy here, with sickness at my end (not serious, and over now, but badly timed) and much end-of-semester grading. I hope to start sending out posts later today and get caught up on things tomorrow. Time will continue to be tight for me, however, and any "sticky" moderator issues may simply have to go on the back burner for now. Apologies again, and thanks for your understanding. Jonathan Langford AML-List Moderator-flavor-of-the-month - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #229 ******************************