Gosh...

[p-lo@ix.netcom.com (Peter Manchester)]

	"They say that it's the darkest
	Right before the dawn."

	Lines that occur to me for a number of reasons:

	Most immediately, while we are nine days into the sun's return
from Winter Solstice, it is still dark early and deep here at the
bottom of the old year.

	Casting a broader view, we are at the nadir of the Lull--not
to say the Abyss--between releases by our Principal, Ms. Bush.  Many
worthies old and new have been keeping the fires stoked, keeping
threads unfurling, keeping the group alluring to new discoverers.  But
I have lain fallow for a year now; even for weeks at a time of late
left off from lurking.  It has been months since I have even played
any music, much less revisited our Lady.

	And coming to cases:  AM, I still haven't even printed your
tractate--though the disk and hardcopy illustrations are safe together
in a marbled box (that takes some explanation, but nevermind for now).
Cindy L., I still haven't even  !!!!*played*!!!!  much less thanked
you for cutting me in (all undeserved) on Summer 95's tape thing.  And
Karen, Andy, Bill, Steve0, Larry H., the lot of you; I was in the City
from Friday, Herb Caen Day through Sunday, June 30 (with excursions to
Elk, Santa Clara, St. Helena, and Pleasanton--yes, in that order) and
I didn't even ring anybody's phone!  Is there a more lamentable
miscreant who draws breath upon this planet?

	But, to return to the thought as Dylan sang it:

	"They say that it's the darkest
	Right before the dawn."

	Maybe this year comes the dawn.  I am almost completely
escaped from administrative assignments, for starters.  I have learned
my way around the Web and Usenet and am about to cut the thread to the
digest.  Gaffa seems to be in great shape; it got through the annual
thread about...the 'angel thing'...more gracefully than ever before.
The archives are more brilliantly mounted now than any of us could
have imagined even five years ago.

	Therefore pardon me this longwindedness, but I have missed
being close to this newsgroup, am in the process of repenting for all
my derelictions, and somehow--more palpably than faith, more solidly
than hope, more conclusively than reason--"I just know that something
good is going to happen!"

	Therefore welcome to 1997, and a Happy New Year to everyone!
  
........................................................................
                                                       Peter Manchester
     "C'mon, we all sing!"                           p-lo@ix.netcom.com
                                                              72020,366