[Harp-L] Historical perspective of harp-l

[fjm <mktspot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had a gig last night in which my amp plunged off the milk crate it was
perched on and onto the stage floor, I stepped on my mic cord and
unplugged the cord and the coup de grace, I erased a delay program in my
Alesis Midiverb III that I've used for about a decade.  In the mad
scramble through files vainly trying to locate a scrap of paper with the
programmed paramaters written on it I discovered an interesting
historical document.  A "review" of harp-l.  Prior to our previous
majordomo existence we were hosted at Western Kentucky University on an
mx server.  MX's version of a who is review.  On October 29, 1994 harp-l
had exactly 187 subscribers.  At that moment in 1994 harp-l was just
barely 2 years into its existence.  Born October 6, 1992.  Of the 187
subscribers I recognise exactly 10 names of current 2005 subscribers and
that's including mine.  Last time I checked, yesterday, our
subscribership stood at 1107.  In terms of actual posts we're way up
from the dark years where we'd intermittently disappear for weeks in not
months at a time.  We are however down from the peak which was headed
towards 2,000 and occured during the Hugh years at garply.com  Hard
copies of ephemera, what an odd experience.  Kind of like the 40 year
old photos that arrived in my mailbox recently. Somehow I don't see
newer digital medias as being quite as persistent.  fjm