Hi--I am the one who asked your list administrator to say a few words on replying to the list--it was not my intention to start a whole discussion about it and I do apologize. I am an administrator for another list and am aware that all the messages are archived on the rootsweb.com servers so we are wasting a lot of space when we repeat the same things over and over again. The key is to just cut and paste a little from the message to which you are replying and not hit the return re-posting every message that has already been sent a couple of times. All messages we post to this and any rootsweb.com listserv are archived on the rootsweb.com servers. The messages for this list are to be found at: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/VABEDFOR This provides our messages in chronological order so if you are having trouble or have lost the thread of the discussion you can just go to the above URL and read to your heart's content. If you are trying to pick up the threads of an old message string and cannot remember when the postings occurred go to: http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl and select VABEDFOR -- this will take you to the Bedford messages and you can enter search terms. For example--if other folks have posted info on accomodations for the Fair in past years you can use keywords such as "accomodations fair" [without the quoatation marks] and select the year you want and it will search those words in that year in all messages posted. If you are receiving the messages in digest--please do NOT hit reply to post to a message--this generates a subject of the the Digest Number and date, not the subject of whatever you are replying to. Retype the subject because those of us who are not in the digest mode to receive messages get a meaningless subject; I try to eliminate messages I have no interest in by looking at the subject as I am sure you do also. Thanks for listening. Happy posting judith knight