Here's a link to that first month and the text of the first post.
If you
read past the first week things begin to pick up. There are
actually more
than a couple of people still subscribed to harp-l who were around
pretty
much as the list began.
Harp-l began as a humble student run LISTSERV hosted on the Western
Kentucky University computer systems. The original listowner was
Chris
Pierce. When it was no longer possible for Chris to run the list we
were
forced to find a new home, we settled at Garply systems and we were
run by
Hugh Messenger. An interesting time and the the list was hopping. Our
peak post volume occurred in this time frame. Hugh's life changed
and he
was no longer able to keep up with the tasks of list ownership.
We continued to be hosted by garply and later the entity that garply
became. SPAH at the behest of Douglas Tate covered the costs of our
hosting. Initially Danny Wilson and then later a team of 3 took
over the
ownership duties. The team of 3 included Michael Polesky, Ken
Deifik and
I believe Robert Gaustad. Michael quickly became the last man
standing
and ran the list for years with the assistance of Jonas Karlsson and a
small team of volunteers called harp-l-workers.
Our Garply hosting became less reliable as the company's interests,
ownership and focus shifted. If you peruse the archives you'll
notice a
gap. That gap was generated by a Garply disk crash. Michael
personally
paid to have the disk replaced in a era when a replacement disk for
a DEC
Alpha was close to a thousand dollars. Years later Michael paid to
have
the 2nd Garply disk data recovered when it was shipped to me loose
in a
box damaging the drive. All of the harp-l archives including the
gap era
were recovered. The reason they are not currently up is they have
formatting issues.
From Garply we moved to a new host whose name currently escapes
me. We
did acquire the use of the name harp-l.com at that time. Dave Gage
generously obtained the domain name and paid those fees for years
for us.
Our hosting was unreliable. We were off line for a couple of months
twice. Membership being loyal we always bounced back but it cost us.
Other resources became available and harp-l has never again been as
prolific as it was during the Garply era.
I've been involved with harp-l since the WKU era. I became involved
with
the harp-l-workers group during the Garply era and during the middle
of
the Michael Polesky era I was in many senses the person running harp-
l.
Frustrated with our hosting I teamed with Ben Nathanson another long
time
harp-l member to find a better more reliable way to keep harp-l
afloat.
We ended up acquiring the harp-l.org domain name and used it to test
hosting sites . We got lucky and our second hosting choice,
rimuhosting
ended up working perfectly for us. We set up parallel lists using
the 2
domain names. This way we were able to beta test the new system while
still maintaining the old list. We switched from our long time mail
list
software, Majordomo, to our current system Mailman.
On July 30, 2004 harp-l was finally hosted on its own server with
control
over every aspect of the system. We own the domain names thanks to
Keith
Graham and Dave Gage who generously allowed us to acquire them. We
are no
longer SPAH supported, we've been independent since the server switch.
So thanks to Chris Pierce our founder and each and every one of you
who
helped along the way. That a student run internet list started
before we
had web browsers still exists today is more than a minor miracle.
harp-l-listowner
http://harp-l.org/pipermail/harp-l/1992-October/date.html
WELCOME to all!!!
This listserver is for harmonica lovers/players/enthusists/and any one
else that is interested.
This is not for any one particular style of music. I hope that
through this list much can be learned from all different forms of
harmonica playing.
Blues, Jazz, Swing, Folk, Country, Rock, and ALL others are welcome.
If you have questions or if you would like to share your ideas,
experience and knowledge, please feel free.
It will probably start out slow, but after a while I think this list
should work out well.
Thanks.
Good Harpin',
Chris Pierce
---
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Pierce | In the Light and Sound of God
Gilbert Hall | Dragon's Gate Kung Fu: Ja-Kari-
Do
1505 Russellville Rd Rm 327 |
Bowling Green KY 42101-3565 | Departments of Biology and
Chemistry