Bob Flaws
Blue Poppy Press
A Division of Blue Poppy Enterprises, Inc.
5441 Western Ave., #2, Boulder, CO 80301 USA
Tel. 303 447 8372; Fax: 303 246 83622; email: bobflawsftarthlink.net; www.bluepoppy.com
Dec. 4, 2000
Lloyd W, Ament
Basman Smith, LLP
111 Richmond St. West, Ste. 1400
Toronto, Ontario
M5H 2G4
Dear Mr. Ament,
Pursuant to your letter of Nov. 30, 2000, we have tied to contact Miriam Lee to help clarify some of your client Dechen PaIden's complaints about Master Tong's Acupuncture. Unfortunately, the phone number we have for Ms. Lee has been disconnected and we cannot find a telephone listing for the new address she gave us in July or August of this year. At the moment, we are trying to contact Ms. Lee through mutual acquaintances. Her November royalty check was only recently mailod and has not returned to us as undeliverable.
That being said, when Ms. Lee approached us asking us to publish Master Tong's Acupuncture in 1992, she assured us that she did have permission to publish this material. As you will see on the bibliographic page of our edition of this book, Ms. Lee is listed as the copyright owner of record which she represented to us as being the case. At that time, our assumption was that Dechen Palden (Decker Palden on the manuscript Ms. Lee furnished us) was a student of Miriam's who had helped her translate the book. From working on another book with Ms. Lee, we knew that she had a group oaf native English speaking students who helped her with her writing. Therefore, we went ahead in good faith based on Ms, Lee's representations to us. As a devout Christian, we have aver had any reason to question Ms. Lee's truthfulness, integrity, or sincerity. Your letter is the first tune we have ever heard about Dechen Palden's 1973 or 1988 English language versions of this material. Hopefully, we will be able to get in touch with Ms. Lee to ask her side of the story. Unfortunately, we have heard Ms. Lee bas cancer and we are hoping the, she is, in fact still alive:
Having worked on this project myself, I remember Vast the book we published was a new creation based on three sources of information: 1) a Chinese language book titled, Tong Shi Zhen Jiu ZhengJing Qt Xue Xue (A Study ofMaster Tong's Acupuncture moxibustion Regular Channel [&J Fxtraordinary Points), written by Tong Jing chang and Yuan Guo ben and published in Taipei, Taiwan; 2) a blue covered, typewritten, xeroxed, and spiral bound book published and distributed by Miriam with both Miriam and "Decker" Paldan's name on the cover); and 12 20 hours of audiotapes of Miriam's teachings on Dr. Tong's points. Therefore, it is our assertion that the book we published was a "new work" as explained in our Preface.
In any case, we are actively looking into Dr. Palden's allegations. As soon as we can clarify Ms. Lee's story side of the story, we will be back in touch. In the meantime, please be advised that we are very interested in correcting any factual mistakes in either the Preface or the text of this book, no matter «iio points those out. Therefore, we would be very happy to receive any corrections (with specific verbiage) Dr. Paldcn would like to see made in our Preface or in the text of this book. In principle, we are quite willing to consider the use of errata slips in copies of the book remaining in inventory as well as publishing an errata statement on our Blue Poppy Press Web site. However, as I'm sure you can understand, we first need to ascertain if Dechen PaIden's assertions are correct.
Yours,
P.S. I doubt that Miriam Lee would have used the name Miriam when she was in Taiwan or in any dealings with native Chinese speakers. It seems reasonable that she would have used her Chinese name, not her English name. Therefore, we wonder whether Dr. Palden asked Dr. Tong's students about the correctly named individual.