On Sun, 7 Apr 2002 09:46:35 -0400, Christopher Brooks wrote: :(That last sentence looks a little ungrammatical, but it comes :from the heart.) Boy, I'm glad that I've learned to be semi-discreet in my offlist utterances, because I've recently developed the unnerving habit of sending private replies to the list as a whole. :-) ================================== I'm going to be taking a brief sabbatical from the list. I have a long overdue issue of Tributaries to get out the door. Since I'm unemployed at the moment and the landlord is showing the house three times a week, now is the time to make lemonade from lemons. As a rule I avoid plugging Tributaries on this list, since I request a modest fee from Trib subscribers to help underwrite the costs of researching, producing and distributing it. RootsWeb, which hosts this mailing list, was, in contrast, founded on the premise of free access, which I wholeheartedly support. I was a proud and enthusiastic RootsWeb contributor during the time when RootsWeb was attempting to survive on its own. (It's since been acquired by the publicly-traded corporate behemoth Ancestry.com.) If you're new to the list, please understand that you do NOT have to send money or subscribe to Tributaries to avail yourself of my help or that of anyone else who's subscribed here. The publication is independent of this list, and will stay that way. Non-subscribers do not receive second-class treatment or less assistance via this list in any way, and never will. But many folks who subscribe here have only a modest interest in the Brooks surname -- perhaps because a solitary Brooks spouse married into their Veeblefester line 4 or 5 generations back -- and will be quite satisfied with finding their Brooks ancestral line, and then moving on. For them, the list is enough, and that's eminently sensible. On the other hand, for those who have a strong Brooks connection, or who want to read more of my scribblings or more in depth about these families as a whole, there's Tributaries. You can read more about it, and download the sole issue to date as a sample, at http://www.tributaries.org You also may want to bookmark this web page for several reasons. (1) It replaces my previous Trib page on RootsWeb's Freepages server. The address will not change, even when cable modem service arrives here next month and I change ISPs again. You can always reach me through the web page's Email Me link. (2) The "publication" page now at this address will soon be replaced by a generic home page, and supplemented by data pages and links as I begin to upload portions of my data to the web. The first five generations of William Brooks of Springfield -- the feature subject of the upcoming issue, along with the Baptist Timothys (father and son) of early West Jersey Province -- will be uploaded first, to accompany release of the issue. Within a year or two this site will house a Brooks Families of New England mega-site which any one of you can search at your convenience 24/7. Today the boys (hardly boys -- one's 30 and one's 27), their ladies, and baby Isaiah are coming over for a Sunday family dinner. We've scheduled it precisely at the time when the landlord has scheduled another showing of the house, so that the intruders will be properly disconcerted. :-) Brooks uber alles! I guess that's my statement that family rates ahead of greed on the Values Scale of life. Tonight I'll plow through as much as I can in the Inbox. As of tomorrow morning I'm going into semi-seclusion for two weeks. I'll be holding queries and the like until my return, although I'll continue to monitor the list for administrative and subscription issues and problems and get involved as needed. As the monkey said after losing his tail to a passing freight on the railroad track, "It won't be much longer." :-) Chris