The vicious work of a hacker or several hackers rendered Rifftides and all of the other artsjournal.com blogs inaccessible to most of you for the past four 
days. If you called up our web address, you were probably greeted with a red box containing a warning that if you continued, your computer would blow up, you would break out in a rash, your crops would fail and your dog would die. Or something like that. We were victims of a malware (malicious software) seige that took days to break.
ArtsJounal commander-in-chief Doug McLennan worked with Google in the laborious process of cleaning up the mess and getting us back in business. Go here to read Doug’s account of the ordeal, its cause, how it was solved and the web’s continuing malware danger. His piece appeared before the damage from the attack was repaired. It has a footnote announcing our return to action.
Man, nothing happened to my 4-year old MacBook. But I’m of course very glad you’re back with all that jazz.
By the way: Happy birthday to the Duke of Ellington! (This was on April 29.) We are celebrating the 1st of May as our Labor Day, here in Germany,
And so, what could be better than to open a bottle of beer and swing forward with you, Doug, and the Duke, and all the wonderful folks who have left their mostly thoughtful, and heartfelt comments at your site up to this day.
May “Rifftides” groove on, and un-hacked for at least 10+ years from now. All best for the future.
Nice to be able to get back in again without seeing any scary warning notices. I doff my hat to Mr. McLennan for his patience and perseverance in getting Arts Journal up and running again.
I hope there will never be a repeat of this nightmare in future.
All the very best.