"A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows."
~~ St. Francis of Assisi

Hi all,

Happy 21st anniversary!  On July 19th, 1998, the John/Andrew Bucket Brigade began!  A lot has changed since then but we're still here!  Thanks for being a part of JABB!

God bless,
Jenni


So two years ago in honor of the occasion, I wrote up "Nineteen Hopefully Interesting Facts about JABB's Nineteen Years."  You can read it in JABB 494.  I figured I'd go ahead and update it and add on so here goes...
Twenty One (Hopefully) Interesting Facts and Musings about JABB's Twenty One Years

1.  My JABB files now take up 1.66 GB of space.  That's still not counting any back-up files or the files saved in the cloud. 

2.  That 1.66 GB is made up of 45,200 files.
 
3.  Unfortunately, the online tool I previously used to get the word count for JABB's entire web site seems to have disappeared.  When I found one that counts word on only one site, "The Carpenter," the longest page on the JABB site, brought about an error message because it exceeded the program's ability to count.  :-)

4.  The main part of the JABB web site consists of 6,361 files... and counting!  That doesn't include the Photo Gallery, Dyeland Map, or Episode Guide.  Maybe next time I'll get a count on all of those!

5.  The JABB Encyclopedia is the largest file at nearly 17 megabytes.  "The Carpenter" is the next largest at just shy of 10 megabytes.

6.  At the time of this writing, this is how long it's been since JABB began:


7.  And this is how long it's been since the first post was made to the JABB YahooGroup:


8.  Thanks to the wonder that is http://www.wordle.net, this is what "The Carpenter" looks like as a word cloud:


9.  And here's "Abide With Me," one of the longest, Andrew-centric stories:


10.  Just one more...  I just think these are so cool.  Here's "Chrysalis":


11.  Last time I mentioned how integral rawhide has become to JABB... it keeps my dogs occupied so I can write.  Well, I now know that's about $564 worth of rawhide every year...  Yikes.  But JABB is worth it!  And the dogs' contentment is, too, of course!

12.  Speaking of my dogs, the Dyelander pets' names contain references to my dogs.  JenniAnn's dog, Fawn, is named for my Danika whose middle name is Fawn.  Ivy has a dog named Leo which is a name I ended up using for my coonhound.  Andrew also has a coonhound named Ichabod... which is the real Leo's middle name.  Technically, Leo is named Duke Leo Ichabod because he was named Duke at the pound and Duke was my dad's childhood dog.  So I wanted to keep the name in there but not actually use it.  As a result, Leo sounds like an English monarch.

13.  A lot of trial and error went into creating Joshua's autograph.  I'm quite fond of the end result which contains the initials JD for Joshua Davidson, JC for Jesus Christ, and a cross.  The only reason the J is so pointed at the bottom is because my J's are very rounded and I didn't want it to look like my handwriting. 
 

14.  On rare occasion, Andrew's signature pops up.  This is based off the shot of Andrew's letter to the Mason family in "Sign of the Dove."  I don't know how many times I had to write it before I got a decent copy.  Probably a lot!


15.  "Jack" is a pseudonym that Joshua sometimes uses.  He explained to Kemara that it was an homage to C.S. Lewis who also went by Jack but that Cephas/Peter thought it was too plain-sounding so Joshua told him to think of it as an acronym for "Jesus/Joshua, Almighty Christ and King."  But... there's another element to it, too.  In high school, myself and my friends were obsessed with the movie "Newsies" and gave ourselves Newsie-nicknames.  I can't remember what any of them were but since we dreamed this all up in a convent, we decided Jesus should have a Newsie name, too.  Since Jack Kelly was the leader of the Newsies, we decided Jesus could use Jack if He wanted to. 

16.  Speaking of weird ideas one comes up with when entrenched in Catholicism...  Tradition holds that St. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross.  So for several years, the image below freaked me out and at least once gave me a nightmare.  So it doesn't pop up very often on the JABB site even though, objectively, it's one of the cooler images of our Andrew.


17.  While we're on the subject of photos that freak me out... here's this:


No, it's not the gun although that's not pleasant.  It's the fact that when you watch this scene, Andrew glides into the frame in a manner that I've only ever seen done by Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's Brad Stoker's Dracula.  It's so freaky!  I still don't understand why they did that.  It made Andrew scary!  And, thus, this is probably the one and only time you will see this image on the JABB site (outside of the Photo Gallery). 

18.  Oftentimes when I have to name a character, I'll think of what sort of meaning suits them and sometimes take into account culture.  And now you can see the work that goes into that!  I'll try to keep this updated: http://www.onthisside.net/DyelandNameMeanings.pdf
Please let me know if you notice anyone's missing!

19.  And then I wanted a Wordle of those names so...


20.  I really and truly have no idea when JABB will end.  For right now, I'm still happy writing it so it'll continue!

21.  God loves you!  Again... not a fact exclusive to JABB.  But since TBAA started this whole thing, it seems only right to end on the show's most important and truest message!


This newsletter is dedicated to John Dye for inspiring twenty one years of jokes, stories, lists, and more!  Thanks, John!

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(Photo Credits: The photographs used on this page are from Touched by an Angel and owned by CBS Productions, Caroline Productions, and Moon Water Productions.  They are not being used to seek profit.)