About the BaronSamedi.org Site

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BaronSamedi.org is brought to you by Cameron R. Craig. It covers all ventures described within it, and is under my ownership. Please refer to the copyright section for such information of ownership, copyright, and trademark.

The HTML code was written in KWrite on a RedHat Linux 7.1 workstation. The distribution is KRUD (Kevin's RedHat Über Distribution) and can be obtained from http://www.tummy.com/krud/. I highly recommend it, it is a great Linux distribution and is always up to date.

The graphics were done using GIMP 1.2 (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). The logo design is by Brennan Tuttle, a professional graphic designer and illustrator. Soon the logo will change slightly as the logo project turned into a sort of collaborative effort with me converting the logo into a block print and then having that scanned. To learn more about my block printing, take a look at the block printing section. The font used for the title bar is a freeware truetype font called "BodoniMutant," and the bombs on the index page is from a WWII era homefront propaganda poster encouraging people to save their waste fats so that they can be used to make bombs. The poster is public domain and can be seen at the website for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), you will have to do a search for it to see it, since their backpages are made on the fly and it cannot be bookmarked. Run a standard Search for "Waste Fats" and it should come up in the search results. You are looking for a poster that says "Save Waste Fats for Explosives."

The site is running on an Apache webserver through http://www.cron.com/ which is run by Martin and Lisabeth Cron. They run a backend functionality business mostly using Microsoft products (Database functionality, Visual Basic backend applications, etc.). Take a look at their site if you are in need of these services, they are great at what they do and they are very customer service oriented. The server that Apache is running on is also running on a KRUD release RedHat machine.

The name Baron Samedi has two meanings, the first being the meaning that many know, the other one personal.

Baron Samedi is the Vodou Lwe of the Dead. He is generally depicted as a skeleton with a top hat, a cigar, a bottle of rum, and often a walking stick. He is the most common Vodou spirit to be posessed by, and those that are posessed by him are noticable in that they dance a lot and drink a lot. He is a very important spirit because without his help you cannot safely reach the spirit world. He escorts you past Legba (sometimes Ellegua) who guards the crossroads and Baron Samedi is very similar to the ferryman that takes the dead across the River Styx. Baron Samedi represents rebirth as well, much like in Christian mythology the dead are reborn after death in everlasting life.

For me, Baron Samedi also has another meaning. In the winter of 1997 my (now ex) girlfriend got a baby rabbit from her mother for Christmas. It was a black Holland Lop with grey paws. It was not long after we got the rabbit that our relationship went sour and we broke up. She left town to move to Los Angeles to become a movie star (she never quite made it, but she is happily married in Iowa), and I was left with the bunny. We named the bunny Baron Samedi because animals play in the manner that they have to act in order to survive. For a cat that means jumping on mice and toys in order to practice killing; for a rabbit it means running really fast, jumping, and turning around really fast. It was as though he was doing an energetic dance. He would run from one end of the room to the other, jump straight up, spin in the air, and run to the other side of the room. Sometimes he would just spin around in place. We joked that he must be posessed by Baron Samedi, and that became his name.

Sadly, in the fall of 2000, Baron Samedi, only three years old, came down with some sort of cerebral parasite. He was unable to walk straight, and he couldn't reach his food dish or his water bottle. I had to feed him nothing but lettuce in order for him to get the food and water that he needed. I tried several antiparasite drugs on him, but to no avail. I was forced into a decision that I did not want to make and that was to have him put to sleep. I stayed with him while it happened, and I had him cremated. I still have the ashes, and I have plans to make a burial cairn for him in the style of the great Celtic chiefs if the British Isles.

Thank you for looking at my site, and thank you for the interest.

Cameron R. Craig