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I miss Brother Daut and his Small Town Texas Masons Magazine.
. Blake, I think people like you (and me) need to think about how to make "institutions" like myfreemasonry survive any problem with the founder (illness, death, financial crisis, personal crisis etc) but the idea of the committee makes me cringe - being a one man show gives flexibility and full control... but a sudden death came make an "institution" like STTM and myfreemasonry just disappear...
I have a close to full set of the STTM - i wonder what will happen to http://oldcorky.com/ ... it's still up and resisted to 2017-07-26. I'm watching it and if it goes down - am considering a tribute site. It was registered in Corky's name which suggested in July next year, when it expires and if it is linked to a credit card in Corky's name, it will no longer be a live site.... maybe we could put the STTM here - Corky was not just and American but a TEXAN (lol, those who knew him will smile) and having his mag hosted here would be fitting - and quite simple because the copyright status is clear - there is none - Corky was always clear on that,.. I knew him well and know he would be delighted to see the STTM editions hosted by you...
That's true. I'm saddened to see so many quality masonic websites close up shop. I would estimate that in the last 5 years, 95% of Masonic "discussion" forums have gone offline. Many masonic websites (the old school ones with tons of content) haven't been updated in 5-10 years. Sometimes people get burned out, lose their masonic fire and then there's always health issues/death. I had a Co-Admin for years and even though we still keep in contact, he's moved to another state, has a family, career, etc. He was a huge asset and a nice backup if something happened to me. There are maybe 1-2 Brothers who I would feel comfortable as a co-admin. It's one thing to pay hosting fees, it's another to keep things progressing and updated. Sites like this die quickly without financial support and user generated content aka posts. We're financially sound thanks to our new membership upgrades, app revenue and most recently serving advertisements to non-registered users. We're not banking, but from a financial standpoint the site would purr along just fine.
It's a sad reality that his site will probably be taken offline. A couple of months ago I tried to download all of his publications but anything older than September 2011 had broken links. Thanks to your post I searched and was able to find an alternative site which had the correct links! I now have January 2009-June 2016, which I assume are all of his publications minus the months he was ill. I would definitely be open to hosting his work so that Brethren could enjoy it for years to come.