More Growing Pains: Readers may have noticed that the site was down one day last month. I was informed by our technical crew that due to updates that are not upwardly compatible, we have to switch over to some new software and applications. When this change is put into force, the site will be shut down for a short time and I will try to give readers advance notice. The ironic part is that this recent shutdown was due to the interaction between components that were no longer compatible and the problem was not noticed right away.  We apologize for any inconvenience and readers are reminded that any major issue will be reported on the Pigtails Facebook page.

Trouble with Broken Links: One of the complaints by search engines about our site is that with all the broken links, it registers as a “junk” site and is not routinely indexed.  Apart from errors updating from .com addresses to .org address, there were still over 150 links to review. I can announce that they have been cleared up. Unfortunately, it was impractical to find suitable replacements, so most were just deactivated. In some cases, sites were access protected due to content and privacy concerns. Therefore, readers are requested to recommend new links that should be added to existing posts.

Patience Pays Off: For months now, Bing (a leading search engine) had not “crawled” the Pigtails site so that those using that engine would not be able to find legitimate references to this site.  I was just informed that Bing has finally done so. The feeling was that they were censoring us but trying to pass it off as a bureaucratic delay.

Breaking a New Record?  According to a television program that Christian saw, a Picasso painting called The Little Girl with a Basket of Flowers will be sold at auction. The painting has been hanging in a private home for 50 years and speculation is that it could beat the record for a Picasso which currently stands at $1.7 million. Ed: This is embarrassing! I guess I misunderstood the meaning of the figure; perhaps it was the amount the painting sold for decades ago. An associate thought the amount was too low and so did some digging. Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger sold for $179 million. An article on the Young Girl with a Flower Basket sale online says the painting is estimated to sell for $90–120 million. There are more details on the auction to take place in May in Christian’s comment below as well as a link to a larger version of the image.

A Crushing Blow for the Crush: An associate recently informed me of a news item (not sure how current) about a 9-year-old boy told that he might face sexual harassment charges by school authorities if he passed any more love notes. An examination of the notes reveals that they are what one would expect from a boy this age and are in no way sexually explicit. The notes came to the school’s attention after the boy had been teased by classmates for writing them. A sound bite from the mother shows just how ironic and absurd this has been, “My 9-year-old doesn’t even know what sexual harassment means.”