Sad news from Oakland, New Jersey. Yesterday morning we had a house
fire which gutted one of the bedrooms in our house. Unfortunately the
room was filled with many of the documents I've been actively working
on these past few years. The fire was caused by an electrical short
which ignited bedding. I was in that bed when the fire started, and
was lucky to have escaped without much injury except smoke inhalation,
due to my foolish and doomed attempt to try to rescue some of the
Yahgan materials. Hot air slamming the door behind me kept (I almost
didn't make it out) kept the rest of the house from going up until the
fire control people could arrive. It was incredible how fast all this
took place. Within seconds after closing the door knob was too hot to
handle.

On the positive side I still have digital scans of some of the
documentation, as well as paper copies of many other items, including
most of the dictionary. But my entire stress study, as well as my
copies of the print and manuscript versions of the grammars, biblical
texts, and just about every handwritten note I'd ever made on the
language- up in smoke. Lots else went up besides- many books, notes
on other subjects of interest to me, about 95 percent of my wardrobe.

Insurance should pay to repair the damage and replace many of the lost
items, but who can say whether I'll ever be able to reconstitute much
of my personal notes, either due to lack of time or memory.

I'm not giving up on work on Yahgan, but this experience is making me
start to take stock on my priorities- clearly the professional
linguistic community hasn't been very supportive- communications with
most list members here of that description has been effectively zero
despite my having occasionally written them- for those few of you who
HAVE maintained feedback, thank you. The Chilean government has also
not seemed terribly interested in saving the language.

Time is running out folks.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics@...