[Dana Acker]

Hi,

I tried this earlier, but came up with a message field that only allowed 1000 characters, so I'm not sure my meaning for contacting you was clear.

Also I don't know who I'm addressing. When I was active on the forum Alex was the Admin, but I no longer know his involvement. I had not heard anything about Alex until I recently bought some supplies from his Knifekits.com. When I saw that he was the owner, it inspired me to find the forums again.

When I retreated from the forum and the knife world in general, it was because of emergency health issues with my wife, including but not limited to brain surgery and open heart surgery, plus myriad complications resulting from both. Medical bills were very high, and it became apparent that what money I was bringing in by making and selling knives was nothing compared to what I needed to bring in to cover them, and continue her care.

Hence I changed professions and became a full time commercial winemaker and distiller. Being agricultural in nature, my new profession was extremely time consuming. 10 hour days were normal, and at harvest 18 hour days were not uncommon. I soon found that all my time was consumed between work and trips to the hospital in another town to see my wife. I've never stopped lamenting my withdrawal from both the craft and the forum, and, I'm not proud I just disappeared. I was drowning, and the last thing I had time for was being online. I am sorry for that.

In May I retired. Consequently I cleaned up and reopened my shop and began making knives again. I returned to the forum (The Outpost) to find it all but abandoned. When I logged in and posted, I was surprised to see "moderator" beside my name. I realize my abdication has lost me the right to expect to just step back into a moderator's role.

I didn't want you or anyone else to think that I was trying to hi-jack the forum or try to exhibit leadership without TKN's approval or knowledge. I was just hoping to reconnect with some old friends and see what people today might have thought about the whole Neo-Tribal thing.

If you want me to get lost, just say so; I completely understand. But if it isn't a problem, I'd like to continue posting and see if I can generate some old and new interest in a once thriving forum.

Are there any of the old Neo-Tribal archives still about, the posts before the Outpost existed?

Thank you,

Dana Acker