To the rest of the membership, we can only say that we hope you'll be patient with a new editorial team as we work to keep Short Tales the useful communications tool it always has been. We stand on the shoulders of giants, as the saying is. Claire and Sandy have given so much for the FBA, that no thanks would really be adequate.
Looking ahead, we've stripped Short Tales down a little. We thought the association could spend more money on promotion, development, and outreach if it spent less on this periodical. So we're going with lighter paper, less white space, simpler format. We hope that this doesn't compromise our usefulness.
Take a look at what we have for you: thought provoking articles by accomplished shepherds, Gene Schriefer and our own Brian Magee; some useful veterinary thoughts from Grace Hatton (who procured the other two articles on top of writing the "Sick Sheep" paper); a challenging and thoughtful letter from Grant Blackburn, the new chief shepherd of the FBA.
This newsletter is for you! Read these pages. Respond to them. Write letters and articles. We're at an important juncture in the development of our breed. Let's talk things over and move ahead together.
Editing this newsletter is tough. I need your help. The best way you can help is to send your articles to me by e-mail. My address is rock_house@compuserve.com. Please, NO FANCY FORMATTING. Nearly every word processor will let you export a file into straight ASCII format. When material comes to me with bullets and number lists and bold face type and so on, I just have to remove all those things before I can edit the text for inclusion in the newsletter. It slows me up terribly. Also when you send material let the "subject line" of your e-mail start with ST so I know that the material is for Short Tales.
If you have to send hard copy through snail mail, send it to: Short Tales, Rock House Farm, 8391 Langhorne Road, Scottsville VA 24590.
We're also interested in art. Gray-scale or black and white is best, though we can convert colored files. The most useful formats are BMP, TIF, GIF, and JPEG. 300 pixels or dots per inch make the best printed copy on my 600 dpi printer. Please see the ad pages at the back for information on classified and display ads and rates. Got any ideas for a new logo? Let's see them.
We have great sheep. Let's tell the world.
hok
rock_house@compuserve.com
PS for web edition: If you want your ads posted in the web version of Short Tales, I need them digitized. There's a scanner in my future, but until I get it (and some web page software) this is going to be pretty primitive.