Editorial

[Dear readers, this is an ongoing effort to bring Zones together.]

* Original reply to posted message to zone one:

Warren> Hi ward, Still waiting..
Last week you said you'd look it over and get back to me, (I thought then for the issue last week); now this week is almost gone and still no IC item for the IC Corner... Did you forget? <g>
(I have that problem myself, hee-heh)

From: Ward Dossche <wd@skynet.be>
To: Warren Bonner <wdbonner@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Still waiting...

Warren,

You might announce that due to my forgetfulness I will now have to commit ritual suicide and make certain an mpg-file exists of it on the internet.

<sigh> Indeed, overlooked and overworked. The moment a lot of stuff rolls in an the entry scrolls out of sight one tends to forget.

I'll get to it "now".

Ward
====Message sometime later====

From: Ward Dossche <wd@skynet.be>

Hello Ward,
Thanks for using Fidonews to get the word out to the masses in the inactive regions, and the "PING" proposal to the flag system. I do appreciate your taking time from your very busy schedule to make an attempt to let other folks, besides your present home land, know a little about Ward the man himself. I quote from your letter to me to be accurate, although took the liberty to interject to make it a conversational format. <With a slight edit here and there for clarity>.

Ward> People in Belgium usually are rather reserved. When I lived in the US, in Montana, I learned the values of another kind of hospitality.

Warren> I had no IDEA you had lived in the USA. In fact I thought you were probably German born and English was a second language being that you `spoke' in short terse sentences that seemed arrogant to Westerners at times. <g>

Ward> Way out in the plains, (of Montana), with no-one around nor in eyesight, we didn't even bother to lock-up the place when we left because people's attitude was "What if someone comes by, is in desperate need of something and finds the door locked?".

Warren> That is the way it was in Texas where I was born on an eighteen square mile ranch owned by my grandfather and his six sons; and when the hoof & mouth cattle disease in '29 struck, over 7000 cattle in our County were piled and burned by government people. The ranch was lost as the land could not have hoofed animals on it for five years quarantine. My father homesteaded 360 acres in Nolan County, and started a dairy farm where I grew up.

Ward> I don't keep the front-door open 24/24 but when the weather's good most of the time it's open and we've had these experiences when kids, none of our own, came into the house, opened the fridge, got something cool to drink and left again to resume playing. My mother was horrified when she learned we allowed this but up till this day I enjoy it ... the kids know we've got Coke/Pepsi and the neighbours only tap-water, so you can easily guess where their preference goes.

Warren> Yep! We raised six children, and some of their friends at times to allow the friends to finish school year. I swear they each had three to five friends raiding the refrig after school every day! Jan purchased three 24 can cases twice a week just for sodas, and lots of Koolaid! I would round the corner coming home from my businesses and twenty kids would be on the front lawn, five days a week. Forty years later my oldest son is CEO executive vice president Siemens Solar USA. HQ'd Camarillo, Ca. (Between Oxnard & Ventura on coast).

Ward> I work for Belgacom, that's the Belgian dominant telephone company. Phone companies are major energy consumers and I'm to look into a plan about alternative energy-sources meaning wind, tidal, earth-movement and solar.

Warren> In my working years I had owned three companies, two retail and service, one cable company. My son spends half his life in a 747 going to Germany, India, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, not to mention WDC meetings with environmental and energy people. I will give him your email address, perhaps you can meet on one of his trips to Siemens home office in Germany.

Ward> I'm not in that category yet but they're already there regularly with specific financial request. Daughter-1 needs music instruments and the cheapest practice-flute costs 6-700$ (she's 13 OK!). A concert-instrument goes into the several thousands so I explained her I'm investing in her future when talking that kind of money. I don't expect her to drop-out now, not after 6 years of "voluntary" study. BTW, she's got 4 flutes.

My soccer-son needs 2 sets of equipment a year, plus the gas for the trips to practice, the games, consumption in the clubhouse, insurance and hospital. He's been injured so often that I've told him the only place he hadn't been stitched yet was his dick. :-)

Warren> I can see that! There is no higher calling in my book. For most children are a great reward and make the old heart swell with pride.

Ward> Indeed! My folks never attended any of the things I did and some of them were pretty good. So maybe I'm overcompensating, but if I am, I'm enjoying every single minute of it.

Warren> I'm 75 and in pretty good health. How old are you?

Ward> I'm 50. My dad's 80, my mam passed away in 1995 and since then my dad's got a new girlfriend, a 67 year old chick. He's never been that active, well groomed, taken care of as now. So, Warren, even at 75 life is not past you, it is in front facing you.

Ward> I'm committed to doing something about P4 though I haven't got the slightest idea where I'll find the time. I'm attempting to regenerate the fidonet.org-domain but that's not a bed of roses either.

Warren> I am happy to hear that from you. Delegate some of the work to volunteers. It wont be an easy task for anyone. P4/5 should be done one step at a time and that approved before the next step. There will likely be too much vying for different agendas all at the same time to do it any other way and get it done in this lifetime. I have one or two ideas on that if you ever want them.

Ward> Please! But do consider this also: I'm always claiming the North-Americans (and I need to exclude most of the Cannoocks) have no view nor perception of Fido outside the NA-continent. We can talk about cultural diversity but I'm up against something completely different:

* Lately major wars have been going on in Europe in countries where Fido is active. I did get these conflicts copied on my plate where individual sysops of all warring sides are bringing the conflicts into their Fido-operation;

* I was called to rule on the name of a net in R38 which carried the name "Macedonia". The Greek government claims that Macedonia is part of the historic great empire founded by Alexander The Great way before Christ and that an ex-Yugoslavian province has no right to the name. The countries turned it into a major hostile conflict with military activity and full scale war was narrowly avoided. At the same time though I was bombarded with formal complaints by Greek sysops about the same thing, namely that an R38net cannot have the word "Macedonia" in its name. Silly for you and others maybe but for them it is very fundamentalistic;

* In R40 (Israel) it is impossible for Palestinian sysops to join Fido. Palestinian points on Israeli nodes are very scarce too;

* R33 (Italy) has been crushed thrice by the Italian police upon suspicion of being a Maffia-operation. Finally I went to the Italian Embassy in Brussels and told the ambassador if this didn't stop I would take the state of Italy to the International Court of Human Rights as ZC and highest authority of Fidonet in Europe. Since then R33-sysops were left in peace but the region suffered so dearly it never recovered;

* In another mid-east country the royal family consists of a number of individuals without a job. One of them has been appointed as overseer of Bulletin Boards. He came-out with a ruling that all operators of BBSs (that includes Fido-nodes) needed to register with him and obtain a license to operate a Fido-node failing which their health-insurance would be revoked.

Warren> You are a remarkable transformer yourself. I had a very different picture of you Ward, I am sorry to say. And a fine caring family man was not part of that picture. One hears too much slanted truths and some downright lies over the years. Most do not know the man you have revealed to me today. I know that some will be very disappointed in their editor's presentation of this communication. But like Janis said a day or so ago to Michiel V., the Z2 folks should submit articles and the editor would publish their take on things too. <paraphrased>

Ward> We all have this problem that we communicate a lot but there's not much communication.

Go to Yahoo and search for "Ward Dossche" ... you'll find me as a Holocaust researcher, as someone who's worked for the UN, I've been executive director of Greenpeace, I studied piano and life is much to short to do all the things I want to.

This summer I'm renting a yacht and the family and myself are going on a sailing-vacation to Ireland.

Warren> I can now see 90% of it is your lack of time to be charming of word. You just spit it out like you believe it to be and that is that in very few words; although you have written more lately than I have personally seen in years.

Ward> That is correct. I need to say things in one single "go" and move on as there's too much territory which needs to be covered in a short time. I realize this creates an awkward impression at times but people have to accept this.

The problem of electronic mail is that one writes something in a certain state-of-mind while other people will read it in another state of mind and get the complete wrong impression.

Warren> If you could find it in your schedule to just make an acknowledgement to everyone that we were all in error on some things, it would not only be the truth, but you would go up in popularity in my opinion as everyone can appreciate an extended hand of a friend.

Ward> Where would you like to see something like that posted?

Warren> Right below this paragraph would be nice. I am pleased to have had this opportunity to know you better Ward. I apologize for anything I have said that was hurtful in anyway. I hope you will feel the same, and we will both feel better as will everyone else involved in the the TJ-TM thing.

Ward> Indeed. We all err and not in the least myself. Sometimes a little bit more effort could create less misunderstanding. I try to do that although I notice that no matter how one may try at certain moments the barrier still remains.

Ward> We are separated by exactly that which unites us: Technology and language. Let's make the best of it and please come and see me for a couple of minutes next year when I'm passing through LA.

\/\/ard