Ima Lyttle Derrybarr (Milk Wagons) is the Caldecott Award-winning author of 23 children’s books, mostly about farm life and lost rural values. Her work has been translated into 11 languages and feature films have been made of three:  Ruthie Lipps Get Kissed, FFA Boy Goes AWOL and Mr. Pigg & Ms. Henn.  She serves on the U.S. Council of Kiddeez Kare, the U.N. Charter Commission on Animal Rites and the Education Department Newzletter staff.  She has lived in Lesser Egg, Long Island, for 47 years.

Pontoon J. Doakes (Handee Sportz Tipz) is often dubbed “the dean of small-town sports announcers” for his 50-year career as a gypsy commentator in the midwest and south.  He has accumulated a vast trunkload of anecdotes and infinite numbers of little fake-gold statuettes from Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, Chamber of Commerce, Moose, Elks and Eagles clubs (not forgetting Masons, Knights of Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Eastern Star, D.A. R., B.A.R., F.D.R. and G.A.R. clubs) in every town with fewer than 10,000 lost souls.  His autobiography is I Calls Em as I Sees Em (Wiltmore Press, 1979), made into a feature film by EduDrama Productions in 1981, starring Rod Steeger as Doakes and Irma Doodlegaard as his loyal wife Fanny.

Professor Loose (Frosty Mug Lecture Series, #002), rides back into the Journal on the crest of acclaim that greeted his first Frosty Mug lecture (#001, Issue 8). A hard man to track down as he jets about the country performing clandestine work, taking unspecified "training," and hotel-hopping, the Prof nonetheless squeezed in a few email exchanges with the editors, bestowing the second title in our casual catalog of speculative ruminations.

William J. Schafer (Spudnut), founding co-editor of jpt, lends a hand to this beleaguered issue by reprinting an ole tale from days of yore.  His accomplishments are too many for succinct redaction, so we will maintain strict radio silence on his scar-spangled curriculum vitae.

Ichthyobus Schlime (Columbia River salmon case) is jpt's premier contact for northwestern outdoor news, who for the usual sound reasons declines to attribute his or her legal name. Only if threatened would we ever betray his trust. --Uh, or hers.

Pantufle F. Skeezwick (Kew-Tee-Vee) is a longtime correspondent to the Voice of America in Pandora, Rutabaga, Outer Knostaljia and other insignificant countries too small to be visible on GoogleEarth.  She has worked in modern media since the cathode ray tube was discovered by Rudy Vallee in 1927, with a long list of major contributions to important reference works like the Encyclopaedium Enema, the National Geogriffy Dictionary of Desidirata, the Wordrunner’s Chrestomathy and the Webster-Johnson Horde O’Synonyms.

Sylvester E. Slyputz (American Musical Theatre) is the author of The Encyclopedium Theatricum Musicum (Bogwartz, 2003), Tales of Lower Broadway (U. of Calcutta Press, 1998) and My Life as a Can-Rusher (Doubledarn, 1988).  He lives reclusively in the Islets of Langerhans for three months of the year.

Glenda White (Why I go to the P.O. and Washing Machine Madness) returns to her ongoing work on a long history of clothing difficulties and other ways to Embarrass Yourself Internationally, a vast compendium of which she is still compiling.  Keep your eyes open for this masterwork on Kolossal Kalamities of Konduct that define her life, a trove of traveler's tickling tales far funnier than those of Marco Polo or C. Columbus.