For a long time now we have been wanting to honor those extraordinary individuals who have gone way above and beyond in establishing and promoting letterboxing, first mostly in our neck of the woods, and now in many different parts of North America as well! We talked it over with quite a few fellow letterboxers, came up with some guidelines to acknowledge the high standards these people have set (see message #53078 on the talk list for more information on what we are looking for in presenting this award box), and finally are ready to announce our first set of honorees! So, without further ado, our little "Oscar" this year goes to...

For 2005:

Well, 2005 was the year we were pleased to honor our first "LA-LA" (lifetime achievement letterboxing award) "pioneers", Jay Drew and Carolyn Stearns of CT, each of whom put in a good five years commitment to letterboxing, planting over 400 and 200 boxes respectively, helping to make East Lyme and Mansfield, CT among the first "mini-Dartmoors" in the US, and beginning the spread of our hobby outwards in various other directions, as we attempted to follow in their footsteps. This year, therefore, we will be celebrating the continuation of that tradition as other folks picked up the "super planter" banner and carried it along for another 5 years, not only in CT and RI, but in other parts of the LbNA letterboxing world as well

First up, we want to note the rapid rise of letterboxing on the west coast, beginning in 2001 with what we refer as the "First Big West Coast Wave". Now, if we call Jay and Caroline the "godfather" and "godmother" of east coast letterboxing, then surely Don and Gwen of CA, making their letterboxing debut in late 2000, could be considered letterboxing's "west coast godparents". By the time we visited southern California in early 2002, about half the boxes we found there had been planted by Don and Gwen! They have continued on by now to have planted some 200 boxes throughout the west, and can also be fantastic hosts, as we discovered on our visit with them to the high desert country around Kernville, where they were to host a river-running letterbox gathering soon thereafter. Many thanks to them for their hospitality and their part in helping to get west coast letterboxing off to a good rolling start!

Hitting the west coast further north somewhat before that time was a "rogue wave" in the form of early letterboxing pioneer Der Mad Stamper, transplanting from Kansas to the Columbia River Gorge with cool boxes like "Multnomah Falls" and others, which we were pleased to find on our first quick tryout of letterboxing in the Pacific Northwest in the spring of 2002. He disappeared for a while, and then resurfaced, so we weren't quite sure how to count him in, but we did want to put him up for an "Oscar" for all his early work in helping to set the stage for our fine little hobby, and for now, several years later, once again picking up that "boogie board"! Coming along a year or two later, on what we call that second big wave of west coast letterboxing, were Amanda from Seattle, Princess Lea of CA, Ryan of CA, and Funhog of OR, all of whom seem to have begun their letterboxing sprees sometime in 2001, and passed the P100 mark sometime ago. In addition to creating letterboxing "hot spots" on their home turf and helping to turn the Pacific Northwest into America's second major "Dartmoor", these folks each seemed to have a tendency to "seed" areas with boxes during their travels, literally to the four corners of the country, if not the world! So, at a time when letterboxes were still few and far between in most parts of the country, coming across an Amanda box in NC, a Funhog box in NM, a Ryan box in TN or a Princess Lea box in VT was always a real treat for us. Thanks to all these folks for helping spread the contagious joy of finding small boxes in unusual places all across the country!

Meanwhile, around that same time in 2001 back in New England, Connecticut was embarking on its own "second big letterboxing wave". Building on the earlier efforts of Jay and Carolyn, several "new" CT prolific planters began to swell the ranks in late 2000 and 2001, including Bill Haalck, Butterfly, and Chuck & Molly of later "Monster Mash" fame! Bill Haalck found his niche planting boxes along rail trails converted to bike paths, and we are pleased to say we have found most of his well over 100 boxes on more miles of rail trails than we ever even imagined existed! Butterfly found her niche as our "esteemed elder", logging in hundreds of CT hiking miles while planting whole bunches of flowers, herbs and tree leaves as birthday bonuses for her many letterboxing friends. And Chuck, who never used to go hiking anywhere without his dog Molly before she died in June 2006, covered the "Quiet Corner" of northeastern CT with his famous "In Search of...." creatures and many other interesting letterbox creations that literally kept us hopping around that part of our neighboring state for several years!

And now for a mid-west "LA-LA" debut, we're adding on someone else that we thought was up for Lil' Oscar next year, but turns out that he started in late 2001 as well, and planted so many boxes in Ohio (over 100 even way back then), in a healthy little bit of planting competition with geoflyfisher, that there was one point in late 2002 when we actually thought Ohio was going to overtake CT for having the highest number of planted boxes in the country! We're talking, of course, about that quiet, humble "super planter" Franzsolo, whom I was so glad to have met on my Ohio trip out to visit with Scoutdogs in June 2003.

These, then, are some of the folks that we feel deserve our special thanks and "lil' Oscars" for all their extra hard groundwork and long-term commitment to letterboxing. Several other people starting out in our hobby at about that same time or earlier may also soon be reaching that high base criterion of 100 or more traditionally planted boxes to go along with 5 years in the hobby and a combined minimum PFX500, so we'd like to give them "Oscar nods" now, too. These include Josef of E. Hartford, who recently went on a grand spree planting "Peace" in many languages before heading off on a teacher exchange program in England for the year; Dan & Melissa of CT, whose "Iditarod" series and other boxes we have enjoyed over the years; Bluebird of CT, who has co-hosted several CT gatherings in the past couple of years and loves those CT bonuses and mysteries; the lazyletterboxer of MA, the only person to date to say that she didn't want the "Lil' Oscar", but we've decided to keep her listed here for her planting efforts and fun parties anyway; and Warrior Woman of MA/RI with that vibrant enthusiasm she exhibited at her "Peace on Earth" gathering and on so many other occasions! We'd also like to mention here some of the even earlier letterboxers who were instrumental in starting the seeding process in their respective parts of the country when few other boxes were around, folks like Tom Cooch of VT, continuing the Davises' startup in some far northeastern reaches of the US; Mountain Scorpia, doing "early-season" planting in Florida and the mountains of NC; JeLyBean, initiating some ground-breaking, high-quality mystery work in upstate NY before moving to CO to continue that trend at an even higher level; Martian Maggot, SeeJoy, Floating Feather, and the Perfect Circle Letterboxing Guild, fashioning some fun early PA/NJ boxes back in the day; BOXDN of LA, minting many new quarters in the antediluvial New Orleans area; Lonemasswolf and YIMS, inspiring us as the first people we heard of to meet on a letterboxing date that led to marriage; Two Gray Squirrels, covering the greater DC area of MD, VA, and WV, and many other such folks who have contributed to our hobby at different times and levels. _

Finally, our "Oscar" list would not be complete without mention of two legendary figures, who, although perhaps neither has gone out to find enough of other people's boxes to reach PFX500, have probably had a more profound subliminal impact on letterboxing than just about anyone else in the hobby. We're talking, of course, about the inscrutable mapsurfer and the incomparable legerdemaine. Not only did these two phenomenal planters from PA and ME respectively give us some of our most memorable finds (well over 100 combined), but they made 2001 the year that for us will always stand out as the epitome of the very best that letterboxing once had to offer. ("le mot juste dans le milieu juste", as legerdemaine once said, and the stamp was then just the icing on the cake!) No amount of boxes we have found since that time has ever been able to equal the pleasure we got back then from a long weekend hunt for a single mapsurfer mystery or a single branch on a magnificent mountain mandala that may no longer even exist except in a few people's memory banks. Much of the precise verbal, physical, and situational magic disappeared for us when the "focus" (Russian for "legerdemain") shifted primarily towards stamp art quality, with "urbans", "drive-bys", "postals", and the wholesale passing out of "secrets", such as what number led to what spot, which to us seemed tantamount to giving away the answers to a test beforehand, so we have mostly just ignored those "latter day manifestations", which would most likely have spoiled our earlier wonderful memories anyway. Some of those trends - both the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly - have sent ripples and waves throughout the letterboxing community. However, no matter how many imitators have tried to jump on and catch those initial big waves, very few have managed to come anywhere close to creating total letterboxing experiences with the calculated finesse of a legerdemaine or the self-absorbed mystery of a mapsurfer. Our thanks, cheers, and Oscar nods to them both!

Now, unless we hear of any changes or additions that need to be made, we're calling it a wrap for this year! Next year we hope to be back with our report of letterboxing's continued expansion by adding in the efforts of the 2002 crop of "super planters" from all "across the fruited plain"!

For 2007:

So glad in a way that things conspired to set us back a bit in writing up this year's "LA-LA" report, so that perhaps we might all have a chance to think about the various directions that letterboxing has taken on this continent of ours, and tie it in with some North American values and history - just in time for Thanksgiving! Some new letterboxers may not even know much at all about North American letterboxing history, or why the people we honor with this "LA-LA" award are so special, so a few paragraphs of "recap" before announcing this year's honorees may actually be in order.

Most of us letterboxers over here, except perhaps for the "newest generation", probably realize by now that when letterboxing in its post-Smithsonian adaptation jumped the pond from England almost 10 years ago now, it underwent some remarkable changes as North Americans sought to make it "their own". With breakthroughs as revolutionary in their own small way as the Boston Tea Party or repealing the Stamp Act, our North American letterboxing "forefathers" and "foremothers", bright folks with foresight like Eric and Susan Davis of VT, sought to keep our hobby "inclusive" and open to all with free public on-line access to clues, "so that any child could go to a computer to get a clue to take an adult out on an adventure", to echo one of our favorite of Susan's sentiments.

This was a far cry from the old British model of making folks scavenge 100 boxes out on moor-plugged "egg hunts" before being allowed to purchase official clue pamphlets, or even from that early American "PhD-proposed model" which would have allowed individual "entrepreneurs" to plump their egos or bank accounts by compiling other people's clues and creative efforts into their own private files, had that model not been boo-ed out of the arena at that time (c.2002) as being considered tacky and undemocratic!

Yes, North American-style letterboxing did indeed come to quickly distinguish itself from its English parent in several distinct ways. While the British model, besides the first couple of time-honored "moorish clod hops", had had people for decades scrounging and serving up large quantities of pre-processed stamps in pubs, prisons, piles of rock and plugs of poop-covered peat (speaking like an upstart American "rebel" just breaking away from the parental nest, of course!;-), the early LbNA model came to focus almost immediately on sharing our natural wonders, combined with the ethics of good stewardship of the land, and leading folks on healthy creative outdoor adventure trips, from pristine pine forests to lofty mountain tops. It seems no accident, given our North American heritage, that the first post-Smithsonian letterbox was placed by members of the Sewanee Orienteering Club, "winging it" by planting a little tiny bought stamp near the top of Max Patch Mountain, a lovely Southern Bald that I'd visited in fog, rain, snow, sleet, and sunshine while hiking five times from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail in the 1980's and 90's, but which is now forever linked in my mind with a gorgeous spacious skies spring letterboxing day full of birds on the wing! Nor does it seem an accident that, just days later, another letterbox was placed by the Davises near a special spiritual rock by a rippling stream at the foot of the Green Mountains in Vermont! So, as I sometimes like to say, sort of like with the early pilgrims, it seems that letterboxing on this continent began with "a wing and a prayer", and took off from there!

And take off it did, thanks in large part to some of the "LA-LA" recipients we noted in the past and many others. They have led us from the Native American paths and piney woods of the original "letterboxing colonies" to the palms of Southern California and the firs of the Pacific Northwest! Even as I was finishing up my last Appalachian Trail trek, and doing my last 100 backpacking miles (out of over 26,000 total!) for a single letterbox up in Maine, there were already dozens of boxes scattered along the AT! And there were other boxes, thanks to folks like Jay Drew and Don & Gwen, near the Continental Divide and Pacific Crest Trails, bringing me back great memories of my four long treks from Mexico to Canada along those marvelous mountain trails, too! Ah, those were the days when what mattered was the quality of the experience, not the quality of the stamp - bought, primitive, American folkloric, whatever - just to have something extra to look for on our adventures was more than enough! Indeed, if North American letterboxing back then had been just about the stamp and not about the hunt, merely following the models of scavenging and accumulating huge quantities of stamp images in the current British manner, many of us over here in those days would probably never even have gotten interested in it in the first place! (not that we're turning up our noses at the Brits, many fine folks I'm sure, but we had our own wild and colorful letterboxing style to develop over here, and we certainly had much vaster, more varied lands to cover!)

Fortunately, in 2002, we also still had the right breed of letterboxing pioneers and explorers over here to help cover these lands. It would be awhile yet before North American letterboxing's deck would be swamped with "SWOH" promoters, i.e. newer folks who have encouraged others to produce and pass around vast quantities of "Stamps Without Hikes or Hunts". These newer folks, perhaps in ignorance of North American letterboxing traditions or perhaps out of excessive "stamp enthusiasm" or maybe just plain laziness, have in recent years managed to turn the fine adventure hobby developed here before their time into a poor imitation of British-style "stamp collecting", with huge quantities of personal travelers, scavenging contests, drive-by parties, indoor gaming, pub crawls, postals, virtuals, cooties, and other such imports and innovations that were never really intended to be part of letterboxing as conceived of by its North American founders.

However, 2002 was a year when there were still real "adventurers" on the North American letterboxing scene, and these folks who started out then are those we wish to honor here now. These are not, as "newbies" might expect, the people who post the most to blogs and talk lists, add on the most icons, or put on the best parties, but rather those who have done the real foundation work of North American-style letterboxing by planting over 100 traditional boxes and sticking with the hobby for over 5 years, and these are all people deserving of our recognition. They are our "Lewis and Clarks", our "Sacagaweas", our "Pathfinders", and our fabulous "CT Colonial Crew"! So, can you guess who they are?

Well, "Lewis and Clark" are, of course, those two preeminent traveling brothers from Texas, Silver Eagle and Baby Bear, who did indeed begin charting unfamiliar letterboxing territories back in 2002, when there were still so few boxes in certain parts of America that they were literally planting boxes for each other on their earliest letterboxing adventure trips! They also literally planted boxes along the Lewis and Clark Trail, and I still remember how exciting it was to find their pairs of boxes on my way out to do trail work along the Continental Divide in 2003, when there was still not much else out there. Since then, I've found Baby Bear boxes from Nebraska to New Mexico, while Silver Eagle has been spreading his wings from coast to coast, and still holds our bet for first person likely to have a box planted in every state - and he's getting mighty close to doing just that! We still like to joke about their "Texas-size boxes" (microbox film canisters), which we, too, have found to be quite practical for planting on our travels or even in our own "Lil' Rhody", but mostly we just admire their "Texas-sized spirits" for planting so many boxes all around the country, showing us so many different places, and helping make Texas, and the Houston area especially, a major letterboxing destination!

As for whom we call the "Sacagawea Sisters", that honor just has to go to another set of siblings, A-Bear and dvn2r ckr, who, like Sacagawea, have led us down many paths between Idaho and the Columbia River! A-Bear, along with her husband J-Bear, made their home the "Star" of our Idaho trip a few years back, as we explored their plants from the Boise "banana belt" to the high peaks of the Sawtooths, while dvn2r ckr, after throwing a "mystery guest gathering" just as we flew into Sea-Tac, had us scrambling, among other things, to trace the actual historical route of outlaw Tracy on his trajectory through the state of Washington (now how "American" is that!), before changing her name to daelphinus, and moving to somewhere near that "other Washington"(DC). We still like to think of them both as quite the "adventure seekers", though, and are thankful for the many boxes they set out, even when other letterboxers were few and far between!

Letterboxers were still rather few and far between in the Midwest at this time, too, but one in particular was breathing new fire into the hobby, and that is, of course, "The Dragon"! A math teacher in Wisconsin, not only did he adopt many of the earlier "orphaned" boxes in his state, but he used letterboxing as a wonderful tool for his students and others to explore their environments, inspiring upcoming generations of letterboxers with his remarkable store of hidden "dragon treasures", which we, too, hope someday to have an opportunity to sample!

Now, for our "Pathfinder" we really didn't need another honorary name, because she already has one very well suited to her, and that is, of course, Scout of Endwell, NY. Like a character out of a James Fennimore Cooper novel, she and her family, husband Eagle Eye and daughter Magnolia Bud, have tracked many of the forests near their home turf, along the Finger Lakes Trail, and from their other travels, leaving behind many "mementos" to mark the miles, as well as contributing much towards making the greater Binghamton area another major letterboxing destination that is quite manageable, even for those of us not at all "urbanly inclined"! We'd also like to give "Oscar nods" to a couple of other "scouts": Scoutdogs, who built on the letterboxing foundation that Franzsolo had started a bit earlier in the Cincinnati area, and extended it graciously to her home turf in Indiana, which had previously been rather lacking in tupperware; and Silent Doug, who basically got things rolling in the Poconos of PA, and whose name, even today, is synonymous with early PA plants, since later boxers of the area still refer to his old blue-rimmed boxes as "Douggerware", even though he himself has long since moved away to CT, the "land of letterboxing plenty"!

And speaking of CT, that marvelous state with over 800 miles of blue-blazed forest trails and even more blue-rimmed boxes to go along with all the other colors of trails available even back then in "pre-lock-and-lock times", well... CT was just about to embark on its "third big wave", and had a great crew ready to negotiate the oncoming groundswells! Fortunately, too, these folks were rather well spaced out across the state, so they were able to create nicely interlocking little "spheres of influence" that complemented the earlier letterboxing centers of Mansfield, East Lyme, etc. established by our previous LA-LA recipients. (Please see the 2005 and 2006 listings if you still don't know their names.) This is why we call them the "Colonial Crew", not because they're really into early American history, but because they helped "colonize" the rest of the state!

Of all the folks who started out in 2002, RTRW of West Hartford was the first I remember to spearhead an effort to plant so many boxes at one time that Hartford County would take the lead over the other CT counties, and so many postings occurred on one day that they actually "crashed" the system! RTRW has also been generous in allowing us and others to plant her carvings - as well as carving our "sig stamp" of the past few years! - so examples of her work can be seen not only near her "homebases" in CT, NH, and KS, but in quite a few other places across the country besides!

Other folks carving out their CT niches include: Music Woman, who covered the Manchester area with Disney Villains and other characters, and gave us ample opportunities for picnicking around the state; Sadie and Russ, who led us back to the crags of the New Haven region, and sometimes kept us smiling with cryptic surprises, identities, and such; and Rubaduc, who has kept us hiking all over CT, from the Appalachian Trail to Box Mountain, on her hikes of typically 3 miles or more (although she did recently resort to planting a whole bunch of drive-bys in CT after taking a tumble down a mountain herself!)

We'd also like to give "Oscar nods" to a few other folks who started around this same time in CT, created some nice little letterboxing "colonies", but have now mostly disappeared from the letterboxing scene. These include Alan (Letterboxer 2002), who largely covered the Norwalk and Milford areas of CT's southwestern coastline, and was the first of the "CT crowd" to go to Dartmoor in 2003 and tell us what things were like over there; The Engraver, who helped cover the formerly sparsely planted parts of western CT around Torrington with her original designs, joined in this effort by her daughter Corinna and sister Patriotic Girl of Winsted; am & pm (before the more recent additions of tm and sm), who helped give the greater southeastern CT area some "class" with a fine smattering of Shakespearean mysteries, among other things; and Irishtinker, the NeeDeeps and Teach & Preach, all of whom kept CT's northeastern corner humming for several years before things began to quiet down up there in the "Quiet Corner"... and that's how it goes. What we used to call "mini Dartmoors" (but which we don't wish for anyone to confuse with "scavenging"!) rise and fall as new ones come to take their places. And so it is that we try to chronicle them here, along with the people who created them in keeping with the North American spirit of adventure, lest we forget... And now, months later after just returning from the 10th birthday celebration called "BABE" (Birth of American Boxing)) for that very first post-Smithsonian letterbox planted on Max Patch on April 26, 1998, it turns out that we have one more quiet person to take her place here as a LA-LA honoree: that's Quiet Place of Bristol, TN. I should have guessed, because when I drove down through that area on my way to Texas and back in 2005, I remember finding a couple dozen VA/TN borderline letterboxes, and probably half of them were hers! At the time, though, they seemed so "localized" that I hadn't really given any thought to them as having created a following, so I was pleased to learn that letterboxing efforts by Quiet Place have continued and expanded in both type and territory.

Yes, we really are thrilled that so many people have decided to continue in the original style of our wonderful North American letterboxing heritage, even while others have jumped on the bandwagon presented by the later fast-count log-in "stamp enthusiasts". We hope to be honoring more "giants of the North American letterboxing tradition" in years to come, so if there is anyone else who fits the high standards we have set for this "lifetime achievement award", but whose region or starting date we're not familiar with, please feel free to let us know! Meanwhile, hearty congrats to these 2007 LA-LA honorees!

For 2008/9:

Well, another year has nearly gone by, so, now it's time for us to take note of the special people who have done more than their part in influencing the course of North American letterboxing, starting back in 2003. Yes, indeed - in our view, 2003 was such a watershed year for letterboxing on this continent that our hobby could never again be quite the same! Yet it was not so much that letterboxing itself had changed, just that many of the people now involved in it had. By the end of 2003, gone already were some of the pioneers who had begun the dream of spreading letterboxing "from sea to shining sea", sharing glad tidings of the hunt from mountain tops and beauty spots across the continent. In their place, just as in the history of North America, where the early rugged explorers and solitary adventurers were followed by groups of settlers, townsfolk and city folk more attracted to the easier living, fun and entertainment aspects, so, too, did North American letterboxing now turn more towards the urban, social, artistic and public arenas. In fact, in comparing our letterboxing history to American history, I jokingly call 2003 "the year the circus came to town"!

And what a circus it turned out to be, with fantastic stamps and exciting events taking "center stage" and "trapped P-Z cut artists" sending their creations flying clear across the country! One of our first inklings that something like this was happening in our hobby was when we heard that hitchhikers were going to be tossed into a "grab basket" for everyone to stamp into them at a "Dead Gerbil Gathering" in CT in May of 2003. We were so appalled at the thought of hitchers, our dear little wild surprise friends, suddenly being "caged" and treated in this demeaning fashion that we actually decided to avoid that gathering entirely, and bemoaned the fact that letterboxing seemed to be taking a back seat to "stamp collecting"! It didn't take long, however, for almost everybody still then in or entering the hobby to jump on the "stamp collecting bandwagon", and even we had to admit that attending an occasional "stamp party" could be fun! (as long as we tried to make sure that 95% of our finds still came from real letterbox hunts on "non-gathering days", for even the newest "rube" in the hobby, if asked to this day what it means to go letterboxing, knows instinctively that it doesn't mean sitting around a table swapping stamps, carving, eating popcorn and cotton candy or just watching the entertainment!:-)

Anyway, 2003 marked the beginning of North America letterboxing's remarkable turn away from quietly exploring nature's bounty towards becoming more of an urban or social event. So, who could be better to take the role of "Ringmaster" than our own "Phineas Boch", creator of the traveling stamp circus, i.e. Scarab of the Doubtful Guests! Urban and urbane, public yet somewhat mysterious, stamp carving-oriented yet appreciating a stealthy hunt, Scarab serves as a good representative of the new letterboxing trend emerging in 2003. After his NPR interview right in downtown DC, urban boxing became quite popular for awhile, and Scarab hosted several "icebreakers" in the area, as well as planting boxes from Florida to Cape Cod. I first met Scarab and his lovely wife Night Owl at the Riverbend Gathering in VA in late May of 2003, and was immediately impressed with their enthusiasm, friendliness and graciousness. After staying over in their "Hobbit Hole", I remember heading over to Hemlock Overlook with them for their 100th find, so I was thinking that they had just started letterboxing earlier that same year, but now as I recall they had actually planted some boxes in their back yard the previous fall, so technically they could belong in last year's "Oscar nod" line-up, along with other "contemporaries", like VA's Knights of Columbo, NH's uneksia, CA's Doublesaj & Old Blue, MI's Springchick and perhaps others with whose work we're not so familiar. However, since the "Doubtful Guests" fit so well into this year's theme, having sent the "traveling circus" to so many different parts of the country that might not otherwise have had exposure to such a variety of "artistic endeavors", and being "tops" in the hospitality department, I hope they won't mind getting named as this year's "big top" LA-LA "Ringmasters"!

Now, I vaguely remember Scarab saying that he didn't like clowns, so he wouldn't be wanting any of them in his traveling circus. However, what every circus surely must have is a "barker", and who could possibly be more suited for that role than Mark Pepe! Like the Doubtful Guests, Mark also apparently started letterboxing in 2002, but his first plant wasn't until July of 2003, and we didn't know if he had yet reached the 100 traditional plants required for full LA-LA recognition, but we decided to give him an "EXTRA EXTRA" big nod in this year's "letterboxing circus" anyway! We first heard of Mark as a "newbie", spilling the beans on a mapsurfer mystery right after the "Dead Gerbil Gathering" in May of 2003, so we invited him over for a traditional New England Saturday supper, suggesting "putting a zip on it" regarding mysteries and giving him lots of other information about things like Dartmoor's upcoming 150th birthday, our previous letterboxing cruise, and my extensive backpacking history, all of which, of course, back then he had scarcely an inkling! He responded by calling us "letterboxing gurus", and asking us that very same evening if, with his reporting background, we would be willing to be the first people to do a letterboxing interview for him. Well, naturally we were touched by his enthusiasm, but demurred, saying that we were just the folks who liked to find the most letterboxes, not ones who required publicity, but that we'd consider being third in line, after earlier important letterboxing influences that we suggested like mapsurfer and Jay Drew, and thus was born at our home on that very same evening - July 26th, 2003 - the original line-up for Mark's "Interview Series"!!! These and subsequent interviews came out on Mark's blog over the ensuing months, and can still be seen there now 5 years later (including even a question relating to the "Message in a Bottle" from our 2002 letterboxing cruise!), so it certainly has been very interesting to see how Mark has built himself up over these last few years from such humble beginnings and has gone on to become a major voice for newbies himself, as well as quite the press agent and social organizer for whatever production, cause or personality he is currently promoting, thus making his mark with his far-reaching "bark"!

And speaking of barking, it's probably no accident that so many barking dog stamps have ended up circulating around the dog park just up the road from the front yard of that ebullient CT "barker", so possibly his first proclamation for this year's LA-LA letterboxing after-party would be, "Ladies and Gentlemen, this way to the Dog Show!", especially since our first two LA-LA "letterboxing circus acts" this year revolve around dogs in CT! First up, of course, would have to be that "three dog team" dressed in the color of the season (usually orange or red) that comes out at the first crack of the whip of that well-heeled, high-stepping huntress named Flutterby, as she puts them through their paces (and we have heard that they do not perform well unless they are first on stage, so most everyone in the area has learned to hold back until they are through with their act!;-) As a "stay at home doggie mom", she may not stray far from her home in Lebanon, CT, but she has certainly filled that area with a multiplicity of boxes, including "costuming items" from yellow roses to little straw hats, and has even recycled many of her postal letterboxes back into the woods of CT! The next doggie act involves a much smaller dog called Mona, who belongs to another recently prolific CT planter named Hez. Hez, Grumpy and Mona can sometimes be seen along the traprock ridges of Central CT, so I picture their act with Mona the Chihuahua riding bareback on a razorback hog, jumping through hoops along high castellated ridges, or circling through the neighborhoods of Middlefield, CT and beyond!

Other possible "tongue-in-cheek" LA-LA circus acts (honorees) or sideshows (nods) being celebrated here this season or the next might include Bell Lady of CT, clad in "spiritual armor", balancing fruit on her head, ringing bells and singing a medley of light musical arias (based on a few of her boxes that we remember!); DONUTZ716 of CT as a veiled Gypsy fortuneteller gazing into her crystal ball to tell us about past lives and future adventures; Talking Turtle and Rabbit Relations of NY, juggling ABC's, books, and Girl Scout cookies along the Hudson River; phynstar of NY, riding a unicycle with a tall pile of plates stacked on her head like the cat in the hat; Sprite and Highlander of NY, doing a combination fairy flight, sword dance, and shuffle off to Buffalo; Maiden of OR, extracting a seemingly endless supply of tools and a bevy of butterflies from one tiny box; Camp Fire Lady of WA, training some of those wild PNW animals to jump through multiple circles of fire; birder of OR, summoning dozens of multi-colored birds with hauntingly beautiful melodies; Azroadie of AZ, horseback riding around the ring swirling a flashy rope and exhorting us to visit the great desert parks and explore old route 66; CW Sunseeker, flying on that trapeze with the greatest of ease between sunny spots from Hawaii to Utah; Blackvelvetrav of ID going round the ring leaping lightly from back to back of black stallions; the Crayola Posse of PA with their trained black pirate cat Burbanto, sending us round and round captivated on the colorful carousel of time; drgdlg of SC, tightrope-walking like the Flying Wallendas dressed as pirates over waterfalls such as Tallulah Gorge; noydb of NC, slowly stalking the ring like a Zen-like lion tamer; the Wolf Family of NC, running wild with cool wolf presentations; and Wisconsin Hiker & Martini Man of WI, dancing with their delightful "three bears hiking act" on Bear Mt. in western CT, among many others!

I'm sure there are quite a few more of these "multi-talented performers" that started up around this same time (2003-2004), but since it's getting way too hard for us to remember who started exactly when and how many boxes they may have planted in so many different parts of the country, all we can do for now is name a few more of those with many plants and finds that we think may fall into this time period, and then add others as they come to our attention or reach the LA-LA target goals, folks like: Queen B of CT; J Peter of CT; Choi of MA; chunna of MA; CCLB of MA; Archimedes' Screw of MA; phyto of ME; giddy of ME; Norasta of ON; Jiggs of ON; Fungus Woman of IL; Leapin' Lizards of WI; SHH of WA; Lee and Nancy of CA; Grumpy Grinch of CA; Kristal & Ron of AZ; Team King of TX; Dewberry of TX; happydays of OK; Penguin Patrol of OK; Mandy of CO; Esmerelda of CO; Kirbert of FL; Cherokee Rose of GA; Eli and Aubrey of GA; Hawkeye of GA; sewsobizzy of VA; and Indigo Vulture of PA!

Of all the "letterbox circus acts" starting around this time, however, we would have to say that our own personal favorite has been that prolific and comedic wordsmith from Allentown, PA, who juggles everything from postage stamps to road signs, simulates alien invasions, impersonates eeevil characters, etc. and that's Lightnin' Bug! Although many of his boxes could certainly be called "commoditized", merely substituting a bit of local PA Dutch color for a more generic alternative (say, a "grundsau" for a dog, or "Yocco's hot dogs in place of McDonald's hamburgers!;-), he has sometimes been known to blend traces of old-style letterboxing, history, mystery, cool places and wordplay with a repetitive alchemy of elements to create boxes like "$tock$ and Con$" that to us represent the "new commoditized gold standard" that "circus-style letterboxing" can occasionally reach, which is really probably just mostly about adding a certain level of entertainment value to the old-time letterboxing mix, NOT about sacrificing the hunt in favor of the stamp!

We also love the way that, despite that recent trend towards "publicity" and "guaranteed finds" that started around 2003 /2004 when some of the newer folks decided to start listing their finds publicly, a few of the mid-Atlantic folks and others are now getting back to putting at least some of the old fun and mystique back into our hobby by leaving finders' names on those new-type log-ins "undisclosed"! (Way to go, guys!) In fact, many newer letterboxers in this country may still be unaware that "log-ins" (and Atlas Quest) did not even exist in North American letterboxing for its first half dozen years, i.e. over half its lifetime! When such a thing was first proposed, it was actually considered by many to be rather silly, totally unnecessary, and quite contrary to the LbNA spirit. Back then a huge part of the fun and surprise was NOT knowing who might have visited any particular letterbox (or even if the box was still there!) until folks actually went out there and checked for themselves, so many of us "older-timers" bemoan the fact that the "log-in" feature got added so much later in our letterboxing history as a "spoiler" on LbNA as well.

Of course, there are probably now many new folks who would insist that they simply couldn't "manage their finds" without those "log-ins", but that seems a rather lame excuse to us, since we have successfully managed to keep track of our now over 20,000 finds (no virtuals, no postals, no LTC's and <5% SWOH!) for years before those log-ins ever existed (and only once accidentally revisited one box on a 5-mile hike we'd forgotten from back in 2002!) So, that really only leaves one reason we can think of for why people would want to log-in their names for the boxes they've found, rather than leaving that as a surprise for others to discover later in the actual process of letterboxing! (especially considering the current availability of that option to list as finder "undisclosed" - for those who don't keep their own private spread sheets or absolutely require a last found date - but then, of course, we'd miss out on some of the chuckles we've been having lately when we see what some of the more recent so-called "big-name letterboxers" are actually listing as "finds" - sometimes half or more of them just being SWOH or stamps from gatherings!;-)

Anyway, we still remember how our new "barker" and others had tried to get us to list our letterboxing finds publicly (and give away some of the mysteries!) just around the time some of the "circus, circus", big top stamp circles started to evolve, but we are just glad that we have been able to stick to our original way of playing the game, keeping others guessing about exactly which boxes we may have visited so that they would actually have to go out letterboxing themselves to find out! How often we have heard from folks how delighted they were to unexpectedly see our stamp in some way-out-of-the-way place, and we certainly wouldn't be willing to trade that original surprise element of North American letterboxing for all the "little stars" or "public plumage" in the world! So, of course, we are delighted to find out that there are now at least a few newer folks starting to understand this fun "quiet surprise" aspect of our hobby that was almost getting lost! However, as long as there are letterboxers like many of these folks we've mentioned here over the years, and newer ones coming up through the ranks, still planting such wonderful boxes and playing the game so exuberantly and so well, however they choose to do it, we feel that North American letterboxing has NOT gone "completely to the dogs", and may be in good hands yet for many years to come!

Congratulations and Cheers, Class of 2008/9! Just let us know when you actually reach 5 years in, 100+plants, and PFX500+ and we'll hope to be getting you to stamp into that "LA-LA" logbook whenever and wherever we may see you!

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