As many people learned during the late April storms,
it is easy to take many things in our modern lives for granted– until
we no longer have them. Electricity, refrigeration, hot showers,
in-door plumbing, and even passable roads all silently and steadfastly,
although it turns out tenuously, wait on us in our lives of convenience
and immediacy.

    While we survived the storm intact and largely
uninterrupted, last week the Sentry learned this lesson the hard way.

    Modern computers are truly marvels of human
ingenuity. Like many technological devices that inhabit our world, it
is not necessary to know how a computer works in order to know how to
work it. We stuff them with photos without bothering to understand what
“.jpg” stands for; we keep up with friends and shop for shoes thinking
that the internet is a miniaturized system of pneumatic tubes and we
sleep soundly with the belief that “saving” a “document” is some sort
of incontrovertible truth up there with death and taxes as if that
humming is the sound of fairy stenographers working away with chisels
and stone.

    We believe this right up to the point when our
computer fails and someone far more knowledgeable in things
technological takes on the role of grim-faced surgeon tells us its
gone, all gone.

    Last Thursday, the Sentry’s primary computer, my
computer, suffered a catastrophic failure, that rendered several years
worth– hundreds of issues and photographs and thousands of stories,
letters, events, emails, addresses and other items related to past,
present and future issues of the paper– irretrievable. While it seems
our worst fears of a total loss may not have been realized, by press
time we have not been able to catalog what is saved and what is not.

    This admission begs the question, “was there no
back-up?” Unfortunately, the information on this computer had not been
backed up in more than a year.

    As a result, readers and contributors may notice an
abbreviated selection of “Things to Do” for the week. For those who
contributed and counted on their events being publicized in the Sentry,
I deeply apologize that in all likelihood, the information you provided
was a casualty of our computer failure.

    If you submitted publicity for an event that is
coming up or contributed news you expected to see in the Sentry, please
assume we no longer have that information and please resend it to
editor@inthesentry.com. We would be contacting you, if we knew who you
were or had your email address. If your event was to take place before
May 18, I can only offer apologies.



–Ward Peck