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06/29/2003 Archived Entry: "The dog ate my SSN research"

THIS IS GOING TO SOUND LIKE THE LAMEST EXCUSE FOR ANYTHING. But the dog ate my e-mail.

Truth. The most rambunctious and athletic of my pack jumped up on the desk yesterday when I stepped outside for a moment. Dunno exactly what she did (my guess is she stood on the DEL key for a lonnnnng time). But when I came back in, my inbox was empty and 2,000 messages were nowhere to be found. Not even in the trash.

Well, you gotta admit, it's more original than claiming I didn't answer your mail because I had a hard drive crash.

The good thing was I was nearly caught up on answering e-messages. The bad thing is that the deleted messages contained, among other stuff, every bit of information from the brave souls who agreed to share their experiences in living SSN-free. I was -- and am -- planning to write an article on how to live without a social security number. So you folks who shared, count on me to contact you again in the next few weeks. Sigh. (Fortunately the outbox survived, so I've got everybody's e-ddress, along with quoted passages from the original mails.)

Anyhoo, I might as well take this opportunity to say how the article's coming along. "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln ..." it's doing extraordinarily, surprisingly well. When I put out the call for info a couple of months ago, so much truly solid, useful data poured in, explaining the different ways people work, drive, raiase their children, and do other normal, everyday activities without an SSN, that I quickly realized we had the makin's of not one article, but two or three. Possibly even a short book. AND I felt greatly heartened and privileged to be allowed a glimpse into the lives of a few people who march to freedom's drummer.

So while it's going to take a while, for various reasons, this is a live project -- thanks to some really gutsy and generous people.

Posted by Claire @ 04:03 PM CST
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