A 1997 Christmas Greeting, from the FREAK

"Here I sit..."
My Christmas Eve in Colorado, 1997
By Edie Lewis

It's 8:30pm, and here I sit, alone, Christmas Eve, STUCK in a blizzard snow storm, writing to all of you from a local diner restaurant in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. The only thing making it worth it is sorting through the hundreds of Holiday emails from all of you.

I gave a private lesson today to a wonderful budding Salsa couple in Fort Collins, where there are no Salsa clubs nor Starbucks Coffee stores. I had a great time though. There is nothing more delightful than teaching a couple their first baby basic Salsa steps - and by the end of the session, seeing them dance together to the rhythm, holding each other in closed position, doing right turns, left turns, cross-body leads, and dipping! WOW! I was very impressed with what they quickly picked up.

It is both "odd" and "delightful" to hear the tropical rhythms of Salsa music piping out from a home, in the middle of a snowstorm in such an isolated midwestern town.

While driving home, the blizzard started getting worse. The usual 75 mile-per-hour speed limit between Denver and Ft. Collins was now a halting 12 miles-per-hour. I freaked out when just two cars ahead of me, a woman slammed on her breaks and did a double 360 spin with her vehicle in the middle of freeway traffic. It was a miracle she didn't hit anyone, and just continued driving on after that. I quickly realized that I was driving on BLACK ICE, mixed with fresh snowfall - one of the most dangerous driving conditions in the midwest. My heart was racing a million miles an hour. Immediately, like an addict on drugs, I popped in my favorite Salsa tape, turned it up, and my heart slowly resumed to its normal pace. I took a big, deep breath, and the sweet medicine of Hector Lavoe, Larry Harlow, and Eddie Palmieri quickly calmed my nerves. At that point I decided it would be best to just pull over at the next diner, have dinner, and write for a while. Fortunately, the restaurant had an outlet for my laptop so I can work while the traffic and snow dies down.

You can imagine what goes through a "Type A's" mind while doing no more than 12 miles per hour for two hours in the middle of a snowstorm...

First and foremost, I tried to figure out a way of sending a "Happy Holidays" email to everyone that has ever written me. I looked at my email log (yes, I had my laptop open on the driver's side WHILE DRIVING - don't tell my mother this...), and realized that over 5,000 "different" people from all over the world have sent me a personal e-mail message since Salsaweb Magazine got started back in May, 1997.

This is what I calculated:
Per our ISP stats, on the average, Salsaweb magazine gets over 8500 "different" visitors every month, with an average of 2500 "new" visitors per month. This equates to an average readership of over 10,000 per month. Our ISP stats indicate that overall, the various pages of Salsaweb are downloaded over 120,000 times per month by repeat and new visitors.

I have received approximately 50 emails per day since April of this year (1997). Some days more, some days less, but the average is around one every thirty minutes. This is calculated to over 12,000 emails to date. I could not believe it until I thought about it for a while.

What does this mean? It means that if I sent over 5,000 Happy Holiday emails TONIGHT to everyone that has ever sent me email, my ISP would probably break down!

This is also part of the reason why I am so short in some of my responses to you when I do respond, and sometimes why I don't respond - simply because I get so much mail, which at times, can be a bit overwhelming.

If you sent me an email that I haven't responded to yet, please never take offense. I read EVERY piece that comes in. Your letters of appreciation and kind words are always cherished, and hold a special place in my heart. Thank you. Sometimes your appreciation letters are the only things that keep me going.

I want to thank all of you for supporting Salsaweb Magazine this year and spreading the word to other Salseros all over the world. If you want a link to your site, or know of any club information in cities not currently listed in our Cityguides, please let us know.

Salsaweb Magazine is written by Salseros, for Salseros. We take pride in what we do, and provide you this service from the bottom of our hearts. We work on the pages of Salsaweb on our free time, on evenings and weekends - this is not what we do for a living - yet. My goal is to someday be able to quit my day job and do nothing but Salsaweb for a living. Tough road, but it just may be possible some day.

We all want Salsaweb Magazine to grow because of the positive influence it has on not only the budding and matured Salsero, but for the incredible musicians who write and create this delicious music.

So, with that said, we would like to wish everyone a GRAND Holiday and Happy New Year from myself, and the staff at Salsaweb Magazine. And again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, for your support, letters of appreciation, and wonderful comments and questions.
"Keep 'em coming!"
Happy Holidays! Feliz Navidad!

Love,
Edie Lewis
The Salsa FREAK