Hi, BGIDers

My apologies for being out-of-the-loop for a while (I'm slowly getting through all the emails that backed up in my inbox.) As you've probably heard through the grapevine, I've been dealing with some personal issues that reduced the amount of time I could put into the site.

Not wanting to drag my personal life too much into the more serious BGID discussions, I still feel compelled to give you the basics (if for no other reason, so that I can refer people to this post in my email responses rather than tell the story over-and-over again.)

On February 2nd, my mother Ruby took a spill down some icy steps outside her home in Chesterfield while trying to refill a bird feeder, fracturing her right hip. At 61, she still thinks she can do a lot more than she should be doing (and the same can be said about my father, Jack Sr., at the age of 63, as well.) She was released from the hospital last Wednesday after surgery to put a plate and screws in her hip (the doctors called it an "open retraction and internal fixation.")

While she's at home now, she isn't really very mobile, so I've dropping by help her and Jack Sr. out on my way home from work (I don't live very far from where I grew up), and that's what's been cutting into my curatoring time here at BGID. So bear with me if I'm still a little slow in recruiting new materials for the site for the next few weeks while Mom recovers (and thanks for your emails of concern.)

Your curator,

Jack Perdue