FROM THE EDITOR'S ARMCHAIR

Now that I am really and truly retired, I have been looking for ways to keep mentally active. Books are good, but reading flows inward and stimulates only part of the mind. To provide balance, I have turned to a more modern invention, the computer and all its offshoots. What is touted as user-friendly has turned out, as it nearly always does, to be user-infuriating instead, thereby providing plenty of stimulus for a softening brain. .

That is why, instead of asking one of my friends to design a website for me, I have agonized for many hours over a book for dummies, trying to learn how to do it myself.  I hope to improve what you see before you as I read more chapters.

If creating my website has been time-consuming, I can foresee that keeping it going will be a full-time operation. I now understand why my computer-expert friends don’t maintain active sites – they have to work for a living.

While the site is not intended to be wholly private, it is designed with a specific group of family and friends in mind, as shown under Name List. Those listed may be referred to from time to time, by first name only. I do not intend to provide sufficient direct information about any individual, including myself, to permit immediate identification by web-prowlers. Two reasons for this are:
▪    I am afraid someone may finance a committee to attack my Korean War ribbon in spite of my heroic uniformed service in Washington, D.C.
▪    Among my more extended circle of acquaintances, I personally know two young women whose stalkers were persistent enough to be arrested, charged, and in one case jailed. The web was not involved, but why take chances?

Commentary will include thoughts of my own on assorted subjects, generally derived from what I am reading in books, in magazines, and on the web. I undertake this with a certain diffidence because of my widely varied audience. Joe, Nancy and Charles already know practically everything. Shelby knows far more than any of us about stem cell research but may never have heard of a Swift boat. Other readers, while possessing wide-ranging interests, may be familiar with neither.

My own range of knowledge, like the CPA exam, is wide but shallow, and I make no pretence of being an expert in any field, nor for that matter of producing flawless English prose. Also, my Perelmanesque sense of so-called humor may baffle some people. Let those who cast the first stone create their own website de cero.

Because of the variety of my readers, any political views expressed will be bland and neutral.

While I don’t expect it, I will be happy to receive, and try to reply to, any email sent to JEBtalkmail@aol.com.  However, I reserve the right to be totally idiosyncratic about what, if anything, goes on the Letters to the Editor page.  Items which are unfortunate enough to be printed may be shortened, rephrased, or otherwise mutilated.  My spam blocker automatically rejects any correspondence containing the words "garbage", "stupid", or "weird".

I apologize for the self-stroking involved in devoting a page to my own Health, but I want everybody to know how sick I am – as if the opinions to be expressed in this website won’t be proof enough.  And people do ask me about it.

My thanks to Sherry, who gave me her old computer, which she must have had at least three months and which has all the requisite bells and whistles. And to Shelby, who is responsible for my broadband installation and who gives me guidance in my many areas of computer ignorance.

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