I understand in particular that some RSS readers, such as NetNewsWire, can auto-archive HTML of posts they've read. If you have such archives for Making Light, we'd be hugely obliged.
Yes, we're down; the whole server has crashed. Our ISP is trying to recover the data but they're not optimistic. And yes, usually we back up more frequently, but for the last couple of months backups have been failing, which probably we should have taken as a clue.
We've known for a long time that we need to find someone we can pay to renovate Making Light to be more managable and less server-intensive. We started with Movable Type when it was easy to use, and it's become progressively more complicated and difficult for non-technical users. I suspect, although I may be wrong, that we need to move to WordPress. But most to the point, we need to find someone we can get to figure it out, recommend a strategy, and implement it, and while we can't pay a lot of money, we can pay.
UPDATE: In the interim, we'd like to redirect the Making Light comment community over to Abi Sutherland's blog, Evilrooster Crows. She'll have a post up there shortly. In the interest of having one place to discuss these technical issues, I'm closing comments here and asking that folks post over there. Apologies for any inconvenience.