In case, you haven't visited the archives lately, all of the original
issues from Issue 1 until Issue 191 have been loaded into the Archives.
It is now complete from December 1987 until [through] June 2013.

Why am I announcing it and who am I ?

I am Patricia Paley, the long time spouse of Chris Lewis, and we were
the originators of the Ferret Mailing List. Many of you may have seen
my name as part of the celebration article on the 25th anniversary by
the SmallAnimal Channel.com in December of 2012. During the first 7
years in which Chris handled the Ferret Mailing List, I was silent and
invisible as I had equally major responsibilities as the newsletter
editor/membership director/fundraising head/executive for our local
environmental group in Toronto, Save the Rouge Valley System. And as
many of our original members know, I became a mom to a new-born child
as well as keeping our 3 ferrets happy. So I do have a history with
FML even though most of you will not recognize my name.

Early this spring, I volunteered my services towards helping Bill and
one of the ideas that he really liked was that I would reformat the
missing issues so that they could be added to the archives. Even though
Bill sent me 17 pages of detailed instructions, I was not deterred and
over a week in each of May and June, I followed the details and
converted the almost 200 issues. And Bill has gotten them all uploaded
so that the archives are now complete.

Please enjoy. It was a trip down memory lane reliving many of your
stories from the early days of the Ferret Mailing List.

Patricia Paley

[Moderator's note: Thanks, Partrica. I think it's very amusing and
fit that the FML has pretty much come full circle with one of the
founders pitching in to get that early bunch of acrhives in -- most
from the very same bunch which were created on your watch.

There were different technical standards back then so those early
digests were in a very different format, plus many posts had a
problem or two (like no subject or funny dates) so it was a big
accomplishment to get them converted. There was a reason I was going
so slowly doing those :-)

So thanks again, Patricia, and thanks to all of you who keep the FML
going after over 25 years! BIG]

[Posted in FML 7862]