Hello, all. In the midst of economic crisis, a leukemia-stricken father, switching schools, and dealing with a totaled car--among other things--I have once again been largely absent from the deviantART sphere. And I am sorry to say that I actually will probably have to take my leave of ~da-mentors altogether. But that's not so much because I'm giving up on it; it's really just that there are changes in my life coming up that will absolutely not be conducive to taking care of the club. I'm planning on putting in my papers to go on mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon church) soon, and that will require me to be nearly completely devoid of the Internet for about a year and a half. Obviously, that is far too long to simply leave the club hanging. If there is anyone who has the time and interest to take over better than I've been able to do of late and will be able to do in the future, drop me a line at my personal account, and I'll be happy to discuss the matter with you. If I think anyone is genuinely interested in making the club work, I'll hand over the password, and hopefully things will get flowing smoothly again.

It's been a good learning experience for me, and I hope I've been able to do some kind of good for others, despite my apparent inability to properly balance the needs of the club with the needs of my personal life. I sincerely wish everyone well. I'll stay part of things as much as I can. I've always thought this club was a good idea.

I also want to talk about something that was brought to my attention by one ~RiseofDarkFire. Apparently, there has been some password-stealing going on around deviantART. I didn't really know much about it, so I'll quote RiseOfDarkFire:

"Essentially, it's the stealing of passwords. On dA, this is done by sending comments with fake links that lead to phisher-controlled sites (they look like the dA logged-out page) that steal your password and make your account send the comments to everyone on your watchers list; I have a more thorough explanation in my journal (the link in my signature)."

Here's the link to her journal: [link]

I urge everyone to be aware of this danger. At this time, I'll withhold my rather strong opinion about thieves in general and simply hope that everyone is trying to take care of themselves despite the dishonesty of others.

In privacy as well as in everything else, I hope you are all doing well, and if so, continue to do well, and if not, that you will be well soon. As I said, I'll keep in touch with things as much as I can. Drop me a line for anything.

With regards,

~Hitotsuboshi