My place has been broken into.

The local police have speculated that the person who did the stealing knew
exactly what he or she wanted, went straight for it, and made off in a hurry:
probably when I was out jogging.

We have had a security problem at my building, and I have been trying, without
success so far, to get the responsible party to fix it.

It will probably get fixed, now that it is too late.

My wallet was stolen, with cash and all other contents, and someone used or at
the very least tried to use my debit card. Today being Sunday, I cannot learn
any more about this until Monday. Access to my bank account had already been
blocked by the time I knew I needed to report this loss. I've a feeling this
will prove to be a "good news and bad news" situation, as to my card having
already been deactivated. Good, at least, that access to the account was
blocked. Probably bad news in all other regards.

Nothing of this nature has ever happened to me before, and I really don't know
the ropes. But it could not possibly have happened at a worse time from a
financial point of view, and I am going to need to learn the ropes in a huge
hurry.

If anyone doesn't just believe, but definitely knows for a fact of an operation
that helps musicians in the case of an unanticipated calamity and might also
consider a music organization such as ours, or if anyone even knows for sure of
a charitable organization that can help with life's rough spots which otherwise
fall through the cracks (a charity of the "Miscellaneous" category), please
e-mail us by way of

FredRemainsLost At Yahoo Dot Com

What I mean by this is that there are organizations that provide short-term help
if one is dislocated from home by, say, a fire or a flood, but this situation I
am facing clearly does not fall into that degree of severity. It is,
nonetheless, a very real, immediate problem that must be dealt with.

Since it is highly unlikely I will be sending a follow-up to this rambling
message, written when not in my totally best frame of mind, I will take the
liberty of posting here the direct Web address for our main contact page.

http://www.geocities.com/uridfm/contact.htm

That Web page includes at least two e-mail addresses for me, clearly marked
(under my personal name and under "Webmaster"), plus my postal address.

It is a long and perfectly dull story, but I should also add that I do not
currently have telephone service. I do all my communicating by way of the
Internet, postal mail, and in person: mostly the Internet.

We have posted news before of musical instruments being stolen, some of which
have even been recovered. But you can't imagine how much I hate bringing this
up, in my own case, having spent a lifetime, as my father once said of my
mother, trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. But I have never faced a
situation at all like this. (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, where I have
lived, are not exactly high-crime states - except for since Noon yesterday.) I
am really quite clueless, and it is not likely I will get an idea about what
further quick, short-term options there may be unless I ask. The people at the
police and the lost/stolen bank-card office could tell me no more.

If you have really concrete ideas and e-mail addresses to go along with them,
please let me know.

You have my apologies that this message runs on so. With any luck, there will
never be another occasion.

Alan