Notwithstanding the fine sentiment expressed above, this page is not going to grow astronomically in quantum-physics amounts of time. This will not be any hurry-up job. And why not?
      Well, I'm actually a fairly reticent creature, not fond of the limelight and hoopla brought on by public exposure ... to the extent it "takes." Much was the contemplation, the procrastination; long was the time thereof, required for me to arrive at the decision to post this site at all. But now the deed is done: here you can find the latest offerings for your mental dining pleasure.
      So come join me in the spare armchair over here in the corner in front of the crackling fire, candlelight reflecting softly from the walls, while we spin our webs of philosophy ... intrigue with BEing, living, and DOing, in that order ... investigation of the fascinating, the heartwarming, the opportune, the benevolent and inspiring ... in short, the art of really living -- of tranquility in a turbulent time, of peace amid preachy perplexities, of serenity despite serious setbacks on all sides.
      Let us repair then to our corner -- our philosophical hideaway -- comfortably ensconced in the friendly, well-upholstered rocking-chairs of our minds and hearts, together to indulge our yearnings for the beautiful, the helpful, the fun. Here's a cup of Oolong tea for you, and another one for me. (I keep a very special peppermint patch in the garden for a certain cousin of mine who happens to prefer a tisane made therefrom to my fancy Oolong.) Might even be able to find some German, English or French tea biscuits to go with it! Let's just set our teapot aside on this little table over here, for seconds (how is it that there are so many second helpings in a teapot, yet only one first?). Here's a comforter to place upon your lap so you don't get chilled -- even with the fire, the winds that blow around can be chilly indeed!

      Now, what's on our menu?

Your reticent, humble author: a quiet nook where you can get to know a bit more about me: What I'm up to, what I look like, a few of the contents of my head and heart ...

An activity I'm always learning, at least a little: HTML

My Philosophy Clothed in Words, Ideas and Images: A few of my writings ... thoughts, stories ...
      My first two novels are now available. I publish them myself

Practical Philosophy: Theosophy and the Temple of the People: My Spiritual Home. A picture or ten, thoughts, articles ... -- Warning: This page has well over 10 full-size images -- it may take a while on a slower connection ... or you can turn off your browser's image displaying -- or, for more info and less pizzazz, you can go straight to the Temple's own home page.

Can Your Computer Sing a Song? MIDI song files; a classical music MIDI "storehouse" online, my own efforts ...

Manfred's Picture Page Manfred Gronau, a dear friend from Germany, recently took these pix.

My second home page, currently featuring a choral concert

My third home page, currently featuring a 700+ MB online picture collection

And now a few words about e-mailing me ...

      Unfortunately, this is the Television Age. There appear to be a good many less-than-reputable "companies" out there who can't tell the difference between an e-mail box and a television set -- who insist on filling your e-mail box and mine with tons of unwanted, unrequested junk. Nowadays, we seem to have appropriated a trade-marked brand name of perfectly good canned lunch meat, insulting it by turning it into a noun/verb to describe this practice and the junk it delivers: spam.
      Also unfortunately, it appears that those who insist on sending spam to everyone they can identify -- we call them "spammers" these days -- also insist on harvesting e-mail addresses by sending "bots" or "spiders" (actually, automated navigation tools with a "purpose" in their creators' minds) out into the web, reviewing all sorts of web sites for evidence of usable targets. As if that weren't bad enough, they then proceed to sell this information to many of their brethren.
      Thus, I have now changed my main e-mail address to one that offers spam filtering with some "teeth." Although this strategy may not quite totally eliminate the problem, it will at least seriously reduce it. You may want to check it out here for your own needs in this regard.
      As an e-mail box, SpamCop meets my criteria for excellence: it's cheap ($30 per year), offers high-quality webmail facilities, supports standard POP3 access for your own choice of e-mail client software, and is able to check and empty several (as of today, that's ten) spam-infested e-mail boxes you may have elsewhere. Incoming messages are screened against known spam sources and, if they appear to be spam, they're quarantined pending your review; all other messages are placed in your SpamCop e-mail box. In fact, I have even more recently discovered one other huge advantage for many: their service also detects and deletes virus-laden messages -- and then tells you so.
      There's one other big plus: Remember Bigfoot -- supposedly the "last e-mail address you will ever need"? I had it for a time. They were big in glitz and promises and short on delivery, especially in the support/customer service areas. They were ad-supported until they found that people didn't need to visit the web site enough times to make it an attractive ad medium, so they tried charging. I paid the charge -- once. They promised improved responses for those who did. After several failures in that area, I elected never again to pay them. No matter -- the "service" continued for over a year after my paid time ran out, notwithstanding that I had requested termination less than six months of the year into my paid time.
      SpamCop reverses most of that: no glitz and little in promises or personal service (hey, what can you expect for 8 cents a day?). But it's well documented, well thought out, well implemented, it offers user-driven support (as a forum or, more exactly, a set of fora), and it works -- and appears to be about the best anyone can do in today's political climate about the spam problem in the first place. Like Bigfoot, you can "take it with you"; unlike Bigfoot, it (a) provides an actual e-mail box with standard POP3 access, and (b) can monitor several addresses at once.
      SpamCop offers easy methods of reporting any spam that does make it through for future filtration improvement, as well as getting the offending account "off the air" in many cases. For exceptional situations it offers user-configurable blacklist and whitelist services (exclude-any and let-em-through-anyway e-mail addresses). I've even seen a copy of a courteous message sent out in case a message is quarantined that allows the sender to pop it loose pending the recipient's approval -- IF it is a real, live human, thus in effect whitelisting themselves until and unless I (the recipient) object. Therefore, I've set my SpamCop account up as my main e-mail address, and changed my web site to my own domain name and parked it off in its own little world.
      Because SpamCop's filtering is good enough that only a very few spams make it through, I need not summarily delete everything I receive there -- which means your message has an excellent chance of making it through to my attention. In October, 2004, Spamcop advised me that due to the increasing aggressiveness of spammers, they're having to implement address validation. One major consequence of this is that e-mails BLIND-carbon-copied to me have much LESS chance of reaching my eyes; another is that any e-mail bearing my address in any place it should be -- e.g., the carbon-copy field or the TO: field -- will much MORE likely reach me, unless it's from a known spammer.
      Also, just in the last month or two of 2004, the volume of spam has DOUBLED in my in boxes (it has since declined dramatically, as the changes I made at that time have had their effect). Addressing this issue gave me occasion to note the distribution of spams I receive as a function of which e-mail address I use. There is one obscure little e-mail account associated with a web site I manage. As webmaster, I had published its address clickably. I have almost never gotten any legitimate e-mail to that address, and have certainly NEVER used it for ANY commercial activity at all. Yet that one e-mail address is attracting some 40% of the spams that I get -- out of FIVE addresses I have set up to get monitored through SpamCop! Therefore, I've had to make my personal addresses unclickable in this web site too. Sigh.
      So how do you get hold of me? I've prepared a central contacts page to answer that question for all sites that may have a need for it.

      If you've read this far, you probably are as interested in the subject as I am. Thanks for sharing.