A follow-up to a rant of mine a while ago concerning the government software efforts to scan the private email and web activities of citizens. Actually in place years ago, so called 'Carnivore' artificial intelligence software looked for word and phrases, combinations that "they" deemed criminal-like. This effort was given legs by 9-11. Who could disagree when we had the terrorists to fight? Ashcroft was certainly not worried about stepping on civil rights. Well, people did and do disagree! The bureaucrats have at least been alerted that we want privacy on the internet, and they have softened the software. They say.

I promise I won't go on about PC, politically correct, attitudes, because it is so easy to get outraged at the examples. We collectively have turned or are turning into a bland intolerant bunch of ninnies with no sense of humor, in the name of being sensitive and tolerant. If you want to laugh and/or cry, check out Tongue Tied , a blog.

Here is an example from that site about my old adopted home town:

The Robert E. Lee Council of the Boy Scouts of America in Richmond, Va. voted this weekend to change its name later this year for reasons that should by now be obvious to all, reports WRVA radio. . . . .

I thought I had seen the last of the stupid "Best viewed with Netscape" or similar banners that used to be the hallmark of the bottom of web pages back in the ancient internet days a few years ago. Of course web designers still have to worry about such things, trapping browser types behind the scenes or working out incompatibilities. We know that the web was not lucky enough to have settled on pdf, which would have made content identical on any platform, but instead is saddled with html's less predictable format, even though xml, java, php and the like make things snazzier. On top of this, only maybe 20% use older browsers now, making things more standardized.

My point is that the user, bless his soul, does not have to be warned of these things. What is he going to do? Turn back in shame, or trade up on demand? What was the point of these notices? If he or his company has for some reasonable or non reasonable excuse, stuck with Netscape 3.0 or IE3 or something believe me, he already KNOWS from experience that things are not going to look exactly perfect all the time.

Well, a college student in Virginia, for a class assignment, re-did the concert band web site I started years ago, and abandoned when I moved up north. They must have taught him from an old textbook, because right there on the first page, distracting from the otherwise fine design job he did, is:

Site requires Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 7, Opera 7, or Mozilla 1.3
If you do not have one of these browsers, click here.

I discovered Zeal.com. This is very much like dmoz Open Directory, as it is a human selected and maintained directory for the Web. It is kin to open source programming, since the power is with the masses, not corporate search engines or commercial interests. Unlike Open Directory, which has a hierarchy of specialized editors who must review and categorize everything for you, with Zeal you can become a contributor and start participating right away. You do have to register and learn the guidelines to get started. After this you earn points for good submissions and category selections, which are reviewed by more advanced "Zealots". You are given progressively more authority as you do good work. I think the presence of these types of diretories , feeding results to search engines, helps democratize the web and perhaps will keep the paid marketing forces from taking over.
Zeal.com - Share your knowledge. Set the standard.

Here is a great idea - maybe it will be the way it shakes out in some areas. I just heard of a guy who, while waiting for cable modem or DSL to be available to him, and then getting shocked by the monthly gouge, set up a better idea. He was lucky to have a neighbor who was already leasing a T-1 line (expensive but fast) for a home business, and he had a wireless network for his home office. He and several other neighbors were able to get this 802.11b wireless signal and they could access the web over his line. They contributed to the line charges. Home spun mini ISP?

For those who haven't tried this technology for yourself, it's amazing really. A $50 card in a laptop, or a PC wireless adapter would be all you need to receive. The sender needs an access point which is the base. Even if you have DSL or cable internet service, you could get the next door neighbor to help you pay for it by sharing the connection by wireless. There are antenna and signal issues, but you're all right within a reasonable area.

This stuff is easy! You can just get in the range of a network, say in the parking lot of a business or in a starbucks so equipped, as long as the network hasn't been clamped tight with security (and most have not) you can just jump on and get your e-mail, surf the web, IM, whatever. I just read an article that Home Depot had to shut down their network for a time after somebody tapped into their wireless network from the parking lot. In a city hotel lobby, I found I could 'see' 4 separate networks - I had no idea where they came from. Only one of these did not allow me to log right on the web. And not because I tried anything techie - just clicked on it.

As my mother in law ("Ma" aka Bette ) slips more and more in her ability to do things, we struggle each day to decide how to react to her problems. In her eighties, she is old beyond her years it seems to me. She can keep up with conversations to a great degree, and does pick up a lot about current events from the radio and TV, and calls and gets phone calls from a few friends and relatives regularly. She was on the verge of not being able to live in the house independently when we got here a few years ago. Now she is almost totally dependent, 'though. she is still the master of the house, and we are still just visitors. She does dress and care for herself still, and even though she gets confused and disoriented at times, does know basically what is going on, especially since Martha keeps her on track, lovingly doing things on demand to keep things as they were for as long and as much as possible. Even though she has almost no eyesight, she does daily duties as long as it is within her familiar territory and there are no surprises.

She would be shocked, I'm sure, by her previous self, if she realized how many of the hundreds of things she has totally forgotten about. Things that just a few years back had to be "just so", and done every day at the same time without fail, like adjusting the blinds, dusting her knick-knack mice and collectable door knobs. On top of this there are some things she does which I think she has forgotten why she does them. For instance she collects twigs in the yard, breaks them up and puts them in the wastebasket in the kitchen, to be taken out later. She remembers Wednesday is trash day, and helps take the trash and recycling to the street. Her one dedication is that she endlessly broadcasts birdseed in the yard, Johnny Appleseed style, going through 20 pound bags of birdseed sometimes twice a week. It is something to fill some time, she enjoys it and thinks it is vital, so who could stop her?

She is frail but smart enough to move appropriately slowly with baby-steps to avoid falls. She has had some depression, and we think some mini-strokes, but is usually stable and still functions fairly predictably. That is why it surprises us when she parts with reality sometimes. She sees imagined creatures in the yard, particularly at night. She sometimes insists that we look to see if we see them too. What do you say? When we say we can't see them, or say they must have just gone, she thinks we are mocking her or implying she is crazy. So we just try very hard ignore it and avoid the question so as not to hurt her feelings. "See them running right there?" she says, pointing with her crooked finger to moving targets out the door - making Z-like traces that would describe faster movement than any possible real creature could move. Of course there is nothing there.

She sadly also thinks - no, she "knows" - that the neighbors are watching her every day (of course they are not). Especially the neighbor boy (who we know is in college now and moved away several years ago). He is watching her even to the extent that he often is jumping back and forth from their roof to ours (30+ feet) to get a better look - in the dark, at night. We think there must be floaters in her eyes that are the starting point of these illusions, mis-interpreted by her mind so she takes them as reality.

Even in normal situations she can see very little - maybe just a little fuzzy dime sized area - and anything to her left seems to be invisible. It's hard to tell what she sees or doesn't because she doesn't admit readily that she can't see, or that she has a problem. She has improved a little on this, though, asking for help sometimes.

A specialist diagnosed her with a rare disease called Anton's Syndrome that seems to involve a degeneration of the blood vessels in the brain around the optic nerve in a very peculiar way. According to an article I found the internet, one frequent part of Anton's syndrome is deniability. For instance they told of one totally blind person who for years still believed strongly she could see. One way that this manifests itself in "Ma" is she trusts her failed eyes and perception totally when she should know that she can't see very well anymore. If it were I who couldn't see well or had reduced vision, I would trust the word of someone who could see to help me, not stubbornly insist that my perception was fine. Not so with this syndrome.


For instance she could be sitting at the little breakfast bar taking her pills. She knows which pill is which because they are in specific bottles and in the same place where Martha puts them for her. She will forget perhaps that she had picked up one bottle and moved it about 6 inches to the left. At that point she might be convinced that somebody took it from her because she can't see it. "Martha", she might say, "Have you been hiding my pills again? I wish you wouldn't touch my pills". or something like that. Even when we push her hand over to the bottle and she discovers it, it still doesn't seem to register in her mind that her head and eyes have been lying to her. Nothing is learned from this. She could not see it, therefore it was not there - - end of subject. She goes on as if nothing had happened.

In some ways I can understand this. If you saw something with your own eyes - an alien or something - you would probably be a believer since your senses have been truthful to you all your life. Why should you all of a sudden believe somebody else over your own perception? On the other hand, it is very hard for me to understand because I try to rely on science and logic, and you would think in such a fix my pragmatism would overcome an impossible event, but who knows. Very interesting.

Feul cell computer power! I have been reading about fuel cells for two years, and the prototypes and tests go on and on. All of a sudden there is this use on a smaller scale that really seems interesting and promising. 10 Hrs on a little methanol cartridge.

Fuel Cells in a Laptop?

I went to a new industry conference in Boston last month, Search Engine Strategies 2003. It was for my new techie specialty, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Quite an interesting and vibrant bunch of people were there. The reason for this blog is because while I was there, I ran into a luminary of computer lore that brought back memories. This bearded and familiar man said hello to me in passing and I kept thinking I knew him. A little later, I heard somebody mention Dan Bricklin's name. Flash! The light went on and I realised he was THE Dan Bricklin who started it all on personal computer software by creating VisiCalc in 1979!

By creating a useful application with his partner Bob Frankston, it gave "real" people reasons to buy expensive computers, not just the hobbyists and nerds. I remember his name and reputation from Byte magazine and all that back in the early days of computing that actually seem like last week to me. Here is Dan's blog: http://danbricklin.com/log/ if you want to read an interesting story or two. Dan has not been idle since those days, either, it seems, Having been a consultant to Lotus, with their 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the next runner to pick up the "visible calculator" baton. Then he was a pioneer in the pen tablet arena, which never took off, and created industry software, like Demo-it, and founded Slate and Trellis, among other things.

Here is a scan of a VisiCalc 5 1/4" disk sleeve I saved from those days. This may have been from the IBM version that we felt would not make it because it required a hard disk, which people would find too expensive.

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Here are a couple of flags that have croped up in our area in the last week: The huge house flag in Rockville, The tree in Manchester.

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Regardless of whether you think we should have arrived at the brink of war, it seems to me that this pre-war thing didn't shake out the way I was taught in the old cowboy movies and TV.

Remember the scene from the 60's: the bad guy and his cronies are holding a group of good guys and maybe a good girl or two at six-gun point in the front room of a log cabin in which they were previously at a table being forced to sign over the deed to the ranch.

Then a little diversion happens and a good guy grabs the gun. Everybody stands still like in a choir practice. The guy holding the wobbly gun barely looks serious, like he wouldn't or doesn't know how to shoot it, but the very fact that HE HAS THE GUN, the bad guys know it's over; they give up and the sheriff takes them to jail.

Now I know these were silly times in terms of drama, but even if you fast forward to realistic movies and TV and even on the street today, you see ad different scene. When our hero has the 357 pointed in the drug dealer's ear or conversely the crook pulls an oozie on the cop. When faced with what even clueless people would deem is overwhelming force, it should be over. The hero doesn't take out his finger nail clippers (that he has cleverly slipped by the weapons inspectors at the airport) and try to combat the 357 magnum, NO he gives up.

I mean, we expected Sadam and his gang to come out with their hands up, like the rustlers. They know the 'force' is not with them. I guess it is due to that old culture difference that he didn't understand it when we said, "Drop it! We got you covered. Come out with yer hands up, pardner!"

Well,we all have had the laughs at the mistakes made by so-called computer-illiterate or just plain stupid computer users allegedly calling in to tech support. Using the mouse as a foot pedal, the cd tray as a drink holder, holding a page to the screen to fax it, etc. Well Yuk yuk . . . . there is another side to this.

I have been on both sides, and believe me, the support end is not without fault. The help desk has a duty, it seems to me, to offer solutions that at least make sense. The good ones also get a sense of the level of expertise or the caller, and tailor the response accordingly. For instance if the user calls in about an advanced topic, like registry keys or security rights, they don't start with explaining where the start button is. In many cases the help desk simply doesn't listen or try to understand the real problem, so can not resolve it.

Here is the example that got me going on this.

I needed a remote control utility. I downloaded several shareware trial programs, and intended to buy the one that worked the best.

The best one disqualified itself. It had a window on starting that said "You have 30 days left in the trial period" ,"You have 29 days left in the trial period", "You have 28 . . ." I used it for a week, then suddenly it jumped to 9 days, and would not let me continue without "registration" i.e. paying. I sent them an e-mail as follows:

Subject: radmin evaluation
Sirs:
Just thought you should know I am moving on to another product because of the nonsense of your registration.
I have V2.1 for win9x on trial period, I have used it one week, but it won't let me continue. It comes up with:
Server side reports:
Your 30-day evaluation period will expire in 9 days.
Remember to register before then.

Then it locks me out. What's with that? do I have 9 more days or not?
rgb
The ignorant response from them?
Hello
This means that server trial perion will ent in 9 days. You should register it. (sic)
Best Regards
Denis Senin
Famatech Support
Duh? I won't even list the many problems with this reply, including the typos.

I saw a list on a blog somewhere that started me on this list of phrases. I tried to give them category or list name or something like "Rules" or " Familiar signs we didn't need to see" but they don't seem to have a natural name, so I'll just let them speak for themselves. The assignment for the peanut gallery is to help me with the list name and send me more to add to the list.
===========================================
Please leave area as clean as you found it when entering.
No animals were harmed in the production of this page.
Hold your applause until all have been announced.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Satisfaction guaranteed; return for full refund.
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
Nutritional need is not established in humans.
Product is sold by weight and not by volume.
Placing bag over head may cause suffocation.
If condition persists, consult your physician
Contents may have settled during shipment.
Do not fold, staple, spindle or mutilate.
Prices subject to change without notice.
Freshest if used before date specified.
Valid only at participating locations
If swallowed, do not induce vomiting.
Wash hands before returning to work.
Do not remove under penalty of law.
Bridge freezes before road surface.
No user-serviceable parts inside.
Push cap down and turn to open.
You need not be present to win..
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
You’ve been a great audience.
Part of a daily balanced diet.
Void where prohibited by law..
Apply only to affected areas.
Other restrictions may apply.
Close cover before striking.
Smoking or non-smoking?
No purchase is necessary.
Shake well before using.
Sign on the dotted line.
Consume in moderation.
Don't try this at home.
Tear along dotted line.
Pull down and tear up.
Your mileage may vary.
For internal use only.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Use only as directed.
Don’t feed the bears.
Press 1 for English.
Slippery when wet.
Scenic area ahead.
Limited Warranty.
Results may vary.
As seen on TV..
Post no bills.
Please flush.
Wet Paint.
Recycle
Quiet.

I heard a funny ad on the radio a couple of times. Radio Shack didn't mean it to be funny, but it is so much a sign of the times that it is funny to my way of thinking. They are shouting and making a big deal that they won't be asking for your name and address at the counter any more! This is their ad campaign? They openly state that it's something people hate, and they are great because they are stopping. Duh? They have been doing it for 10 years, and they only figured this out now?

Sort of like Microsoft announcing last year that the XP version of their Office products would not have that annoying stupid animated Clippie "help" feature that everybody hated. This was the focus of the whole introduction of the new product! They won't annoy you by default this year. (Of course you can choose to turn on that "feature" if you just have to be annoyed)

I have heard the motto,"Hit me real hard, since it will feel so much better when you stop". But I never expected companies would think that we will love them for stopping a bad practice that they shouldn't have done in the first place. Crazy times!

What's next. Dupont developing a public relations ploy that says,"We made Napalm and land mines in the past, but now we don't - aren't we great?"

Come to think of it, this "rehabilitation is great" theme has been shoved in our face by celebrities for years. If a big star has a hiatus in the career-itis, we just have to love them if they were at the Betty Ford clinic, or "had a cocaine problem, went to rehab, and now are better than ever. Certainly more worthy than the boring star who kept clean and sober for all that time.

This information is true. I used to lie all the time. Half the stuff I wrote was false, but I am not going to lie at all this year, so trust me!

I just heard that the weather was going to be "bad" tomorrow. Who said so? I really think we should get away from calling weather bad when it's severe, or not to our convenience, don't you? Of course if it's a tornado, or if it damages homes or people, that's another thing. But is it bad when It is just windy or snowing, or rainy or whatever? Some of my most intensely enjoyable times are when there is "bad" weather.

Others can have their "nice summer day for a picnic" or something as "good" weather, and I agree, but weather gets better than that for me. Some of these brutal humid hot days of Virginia summers where you had to cease all activity were not my idea of perfection, I can say that.

Picture with me a strangely gusty and dark afternoon, whatever the season, when you can hear and feel the wind blowing right through you. Just look at the low charcoal and silver clouds moving like layers at different speeds overhead, and the trees whipping and swooshing erratically. Your senses are on edge, feeling like there is something special going on --- and there is. Somehow images of Hardy's heath, or some Dracula movie, or some memory of wild dreams flash in your mind, and it is just exhilarating! Takes my breath away.

Give me a winter morning after a fresh snow, where the snow covers absolutely everything in sight, down to the twigs on the trees. It is so cold that the snow squeaks as you step on it. The snow has long since stopped falling, and you keep looking to see if anything will move, but it doesn't. Just everything is crystalline and spotless. It is so still that you think you could hear a snowflake fall. Just standing there at that moment, breathing it in, feeling like you are a part of it, just is a spiritual high beyond words.

It is odd how we people run from rain showers like it was acid falling or something. Of course we all have ingrained in us the civilized shell that wants to keep dry our precious clothing, purses and wallets, hair etc, etc. I am that way too when you have to look presentable or keep healthy. But I so often find myself in a different camp. I try to back up a little and enjoy the rain.

Two extremes of rain especially thrill me. One is when rain is so gentle and fine you can hardly see it. It's stronger than a mist, since it clearly is directional - the drops are intent on getting to the ground like thousands of little spiders descending on threads. That sprizzy rain, particularly when it is warm, just is one of those things in nature that makes me feel pleasure, how else can I explain it?

The opposite also grabs my attention. Think of a roaring, driving rain coming down in pounding, relentless blinding fashion, obscuring everything around you. If you are in the car, you pull over, knowing it is hopeless to proceed. If you are on a screened porch, you scoot back as far as you can, watching the torrents, knowing it can't last much longer, wondering how it kept it up this long. The power for a fleeting second reminds you of standing very close to the edge of Niagara river, just before the falls, peering into the strangely transparent green steel deep water moving at overpowering speed over the edge. I can almost recreate the feeling from memory. But although Everly Brothers tried to convince me otherwise years ago, you have to be there, you can't bring it totally back in a dream. All of these natural highs I'm describing here are special. The feeling of being overpowered by the beauty or the power is a key to it. I know I should be able to tie religion into this some way, but it is beyond my understanding to do that.

"Mondegreen"
Here is a topic I robbed from an e-mail from my sister Leah a couple of years ago. She was quoting an article by Jon Carroll, SF Chronicle columnist. It is a useful and fun concept. Send me an e-mail with mondegreens of your own. rgb@who.net

It seems that a writer named Sylvia Wright coined the word mondegreen. It is defined as a mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric. However, an example defines it better: Have you heard an innocent child sing the Christmas Carol “Silent Night”, and sing of that man, Round John Virgin?

I was reminded of this when I sent my brother Scott the words to the old song Grass shack in Kealakekua Hawaii and he confessed his reaction to the line "I want to go back to my fish and poi". "I always thought this was "I wanna go back to my fishin' poi" and I imagined a fishin' poi to be some cool grass roofed deck where folks would stand and fish from", he said.

Wright coined the word mondegreen as the result a similar experience. As a child she heard the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and had believed that one stanza went like this: Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands Oh where hae you been? They hae slay the Earl of Murray, And Lady Mondegreen.

Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright. A tragic hero and heroine dying together. It was poetic. She realized some years later that what they had actually done was slay the Earl of Murray and lay him on the green, Wright was so upset that she dedicated the confusion to Lady Mondegreen.

A few more examples are in order:

"Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" (Known to the rest of us as that fine old hymn "Gladly The Cross I'd Bear").

"There's a bathroom on the right," a mishearing of "There's a bad moon on the rise" from the old Creedence Clearwater song "Bad Moon Rising."

"Excuse me while I kiss this guy," actually "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" from the Jimi Hendrix song "Purple Haze." Mr. Hendrix was himself aware that he had been Mondegreened, and would occasionally, in performance, actually kiss a guy after saying that line.

The oldie song "Groovin" has a Mondegreen. In that song, the Rascals were singing "You and me endlessly," but many people heard "You and me and Leslie,"

The pledge of allegiance is a hotbed of Mondegreens. How about "I pledge a lesion to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for Richard Stans, one naked, under god, individual, with liver tea and just this for all."

World War II was fought between the Zees and the Not Zees.

You won’t be surprised to hear that both Coke and Pepsi came in "cheerleader size." Sometimes called "two liter size."

You might be driving a "Jeep Parakeet," or a "Jeep Cherokee."

A rumor has it that a couple of lawyers in town just sat around on the weekend and “drank themselves to Bolivia”.

If you move breakable things up high when children are around, you are moving them "out of arm's sway."

Here are more from song lyrics: Remember on the East Side and the West Side when me and Mamie O'Rourke "risked our lives in traffic"? Remember that moment in "I'm in the Mood for Love" when the singer reveals his favorite nickname for his beloved? I'm in the mood for love, Simply because you're near me, Funny Butt, when you're near me ...

There was the Bob Dylan song with the refrain: "Dead ants are my friends, they're blowin' in the wind." There was the great Crystal Gayle song "Doughnuts Make Your Brown Eyes Blue." Some heard Jose Feliciano's famous recording of "Feliz Navidad" as "Police naughty dog".

A popular Spanish song, "One Ton Tomato."

Paul McCartney Mondegreens: The lines of French in "Michelle" were heard as "Michelle, ma bell, Sunday monkey won't play piano song, play piano song." "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" lyrics "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" could be "the girl with colitis goes by."

And of course the old Christmas carol, "sleep in heavenly peas."

Jose' can you see?

RGB

The LEGO company has offices in Connecticut, and recently there were statements that they are moving away soon. However in the interim they have a fascinating display of lego things in downtown Hartford. The figures are on the vaulted walkway bridge area from the downtown , over some roads, to the riverfront, leading to the Adrian's Landing area. Hartford is in the middle of a huge city improvement project beside the river, massive construction and plans for all sorts of things. It has been quite a success so far, and has private and public funding.

Anyhow, we took some pictures of some of these, and had some fun. Click this link to see a couple of pages of images. Don't miss the dogs and Martha's lego clone.

Here's an example of a lego lady who failed the audition to On-Q

I am going to see Meredith tomorrow, figuring it will be the last time in a while I will see her, and of course I don't want Grandma to go off without my making contact, hoping she will make the trip smoothly.

Leah mentioned her letters home to mom, and how they reflected a chatty side, not delving into real life. My letters in the same way were superficial, but I can't believe I wrote so many. The ones from college were more like little duty reports, but the ones from Vietnam were interesting, and reflected the really interesting circumstances that I found myself. I suppose we all get more invigorated and interested when the things going on around us are stimulating. I wonder why I often find myself shunning everyday situations that have unpredictable or exciting sides to them, rather than seeking them out, since it gives me such pleasure when I get there?

1940 was a little before my time in LeRoy, New York, and a little before my time anywhere, but here are two images from the archives:

Heim & McHardy Service Station, 55 Main St. Est. 1931

LeRoy Hardware Co. 12 Main St. Est. 1870

In fiddling with this Talcottville web site and getting interested in the people and history of the town, many interesting things have popped up. One of note is the story of Samuel Huntington, the first president of the United States.


Yes, you heard me. the first president of the United States. Let me tell you . . . .The rest . . . of the story.

Blackie Huntington , who lived in Talcottville in the 1930's I think, was a contractor, a house builder and apparently an all around "I can do it" guy who could do anything he set out to. He built several sturdy and lasting houses in the area that I know of. Anyhow, Blackie had two daughters, one is 79 year old Jean Monaghan, whom we know, and her late sister, who is the mother of Jennifer, a lawyer friend here in town. So much for the present.

Up the family tree, Blackie's father or grandfather,(not sure) was the brother of my subject character, Samuel Huntingon, of Windham CT., the first president . yadda yadda yadda. Samuel Huntington had no children, but he had many siblings.most of them had children. I bet the genealogy books are quite thick.

Samuel Huntington was a politician and an aristocrat, but he had come from modest beginnings on a rural farm as a boy. He was Governor of Connecticut something like 10 times, and was involved in the early colonial efforts to get free of English rule, back when the Boston Tea Party was going on an all that. On July 4, 1776, he was one of Connecticut's signers of the Declaration of Independence. The esteem with which he was held by Congress was evidenced by his election in 1779 to the first of two terms as president of the Continental Congress.

He proponents argue:.
1. He negotiated the signing of The Articles of Confederation,
2. While he was president of the Continental Congress in 1781, the Articles of Confederation went into effect
3. This was the first official time the words "these United States" appears in print.

Therefore, he was, technically, the first president of The United States.

Do you buy that?

Gordon got married July 20.
Gordon seems to be turning things around (I say tentatively and hopefully).
It's tough, but they both are working hard to make things work.
Sherry is great and has two cute boys that get along amazingly well with Gordon, too.
After 1200 or so miles, we're back home.
And miles to go before we sleep.