OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY

IAXS (International Association of Xena Studies) has its first year anniversary May 31, 1997! Party hardy. It has been a fun year. From a fuzzy little idea to heck of a big website and a whole lot of work every month, WHOOSH has become the jewel in the crown of IAXS. To commemorate this great event, I hope to have a verbose account of IAXS' first year in next month's WHOOSH!

HOW MY THOUGHTS STRANGELY WANDER TO PERDICAS

I received some e-mail recently and I thought I would share my thoughts about it. I was sent the following:

"FYI: The name 'Perdicus' is actually a misspelling. 'Perdicas' is how it's been spelled by TV GUIDE and 'Perdiccas' is how the history books render it."

My response:

Actually, neither is a misspelling.

The Perdicas spelling was used in SINS OF THE PAST (#01) and BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS (#12). The Perdicus spelling was used in RETURN OF CALLISTO (#29).

From a canon point of view the proper spelling is Perdicus because that is what Steven L. Sears has deemed it to be. As Supervising Producer he makes those types of decisions. I use the spelling Perdicas because it was the original spelling in the show and I am an eccentric.

TV Guide is not an authority.

The name used by the historical character, which is not the character on XWP, was been transliterated. The Greek alphabet is not a Latin based writing system. To be represented in our alphabet it has to be imperfectly written. Historically, there have been many systems of transliteration in competition. Currently there is a generally accepted transcription system but that has only been used in the latter 20th century and even then it is still optional. That is why one sees variant forms of Greek names. Also, you can find variant spellings within the original language and original writing system itself ... many of these myths were written down in various stages of evolution of the written form of the Greek language and neighboring languages.

WITHER XMR?

XMR (Xena Media Review) still exists. It is merely on hiatus. I mention XMR in "IAXS and WHOOSH: the First Year and Beyond" so I will mention it here too. XMR is in the process of some re- organization. We are converting it to a web-list-server and juggling some editorial staff around. Be patient....it shall be back with a vengeance. Which brings me to TWXN (This Week in Xena News), which is the advance sheet for XMR. I am trying to decide whether to play catch up with TWXN or just ignore the three months it has been on hiatus and just start anew. When I make my decision, YOU will be the first to know!

Kym Masera Taborn
Editor-in-Chief, WHOOSH!
Chairman of the Board,
International Association of Xena Studies

April 30, 1997



NOTE TO IAXS MEMBERS: The e-mail edition of Whoosh #8 will be released whenever I get around to it!!! Bwahahahhaha.