Day before yesterday, I received an email from my arranger friend Andrew
Park, saying "Hi Matthew, Whatever happen to the MMD? It's been offline
for almost a week."  I had also   I also had noticed a few days earlier
that the MMD was down for maintenance, but assumed it was back up by
now.  But it is still down.  Horrors!
 
Just in the past week, I have had the need to consult the MMD archives
for several items.   But no archives.  A lost treasure of mechanical music
information!  Is it gone forever?
 
I'm sure Robbie Rhodes is enjoying his little vacation, but it looks from
the "down for maintenance"  message that Jody is not enjoying any such
vacation.
 
Editing and issuing the MMD is a day in and day out, never-ending job that
falls solely on the shoulders of two people,   And it is a job--a
service--that we can all too easily take for granted, until we don’t
have it.  This raises the question, What will happen to the MMD when
Jody and Robbie get too old to carry on?  Is there a young, knowledgeable
person (I'm not young at 82 years old) standing in the wings?  I hope
that the end has not come and that Jody will be able to fix whatever
problems have caused the MMD outage.
 
Matthew Caulfield
Irondequoit, NY

 [ Matthew, we're glad to be back online.  I'm sorry that you and others
 [ were inconvenienced while we we offline.  I do worry about what
 [ might happen to the MMD if something happens to Robbie or me.  Robbie is
 [ listed in my will to receive control of the MMD if something happens to
 [ me, but that doesn't solve the problem permanently.  Robbie is 10 years
 [ older than me and probably doesn't need the technical hassles in
 [ addition to doing the editing.
 [
 [ So that is an invitation for a discussion.  How do we arrange for the
 [ MMD to survive us ?    --Jody