Hello- As ordered by his emminence the Chief Pinhead, I will use a little bandwidth to introduce myself.  I am a wannabe preservationist, don't have the math skills to be an architect, the hand-eye coordination to be a craftsman or the love of the indoors to be an historian...So I ended up as an humble civil servant with the job title (don't be too hard on me) as an archeologist.  I love looking at buildings and think they are a marvelous icon of cultural diversity.  I think I appreciate craftsmanship in construction.  Mostly in being assigned to work on historic building design reviews in a previous job ( I couldn't convince my employer that they should get an historic architect, and it was either scab or resign, I am not proud of this) I learned that architectural preservationists seem to be more activist and practical in their outlook than characterizes practicing archeologists (yes I know stereotypes are dangerous, not politically correct, and in the end unfair).  I think this is because doing the wrong thing with a building is eventually going to have visible consequences, whereas doing the wrong thing in excavating an archeological site is unlikely to ever be detected.   This in turn I think produces a more outspoken band of citizen activists than characterizes the avocational archeological community.  It may be my outsiders perspective, but despite losses I think more good old architecture gets saved than good old ruins.     
        So I looked to preservation-L for some moral guidance  (ha ha) normally lurking there.  I look to B-P for more of the same after the unfortunate debate over the conventions of serious conversation.  As a one time Union negotiator I realize that the successful negotiations for my brothers and sisters were always the ones where the Union had the better sense of the silly than the Management.  So Chief Pinhead can I now ease my conscience and lurk for awhile?  Someday I would like to meet this guy Ken Follet in person and see if he is as entertaining and tireless in the cause of historic preservation as he has been in cyberspace. 
Ready for the archeologist jokes (My brother is an attorney so I know them all).
Mark Henderson
Ely, Nevada  (Come and see what is left of our mainstreet since Mickey D's came to the by-pass 3.5 years ago, a familiar story).