Our email newsletter, Notes on the Weekend (NOW) goes out every Thursday. As soon as it goes, I get all the automated replies telling me who’s on vacation, who’s out of the office this week, etc.

This week, I got a bunch of identical messages from UVM accounts. I suspect that the university just canceled email accounts for a bunch of their alumni. Whatever the reason, all of the automated replies contained the same clever little poem:

My account was here, but now is not.
Your message, lost, the words forgot.
To contact me now,
I hope you know how,
Otherwise, contact me you will not.

Translation: This account has been closed and all mail is being rejected.

I was bummed to see that we lost a couple dozen newsletter subscribers, but this made me smile.

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Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at...