Hi Here's a thought. But, as usual, it's a bit long-winded and possibly at times a little overweening. But who cares? I've found a platform. You can push me off or just walk by. (It's still shorter than a Rootsweb Review). The choice is yours. I feel sure there must be some out there who think "why doesn't he go away and write a column for the Irish Ancestor, or something". Well, I know they wouldn't have me, for a start - and anyway, I'm happy here. I don't know about you, but this splendid List is SO consuming. I know, for instance, that I can wake up and sit in the kitchen finding my head for an hour or so in the morning; I can then cart a coffee upstairs to my ever more sublime office and call up the ISP for e-mail. Almost invariably there is something, but even on quiet days the leaden heartbreak of abandonment no longer assails me. I just know you're there. I'll bet you all remember the strangled message of despair to the List back in - was it June? - when one regular caller (speaking for us all) asked, with an audible croak, if somebody had "unsubscribed" her…. Quietly, almost surreptitiously, out of the sweltering depths of AridZona came the cool reply of reassurance from Admin: easy - everyone's hunkered down from the heat. And the world came back from a bag of shattered dreams as (even in the torrid rains of July in England) everyone calmed down and settled in front of their scrapbooks for the time being. My postlady has accused me of gross, uncaring disloyalty and even snubs me occasionally - just because I no longer crash down the driveway like a maddened bull mastiff to relieve her of armfuls of map tubes, BMD copies and books, CDs and similar gene trinkets. My delightfully tolerant wife, Wendy (not of known German descent) humours my little pastime with the crushing smile of the woman scorned. Friends race to the other side of the street at my approach because, they say, my eyes glaze over when the topic fails to touch upon roots and ancestry and like obsessions. I now find there are even more things in life to forget, or overlook. No-one is more acutely aware than I of the fact that there was a Johan Georg ALTHEIMER (Hs. & V. etc) in the Board of Trade lists in 1709. Don't misunderstand, I'm not mocking that condition of senility - it ravaged the last five years of my father's life, but nobody laughed louder about it than he. The whole point of the genealogical exercise is lost to some degree, I suppose, now that my children and grandchildren no longer get their birthday greetings on time - although I am still the one most relatives refer to when a critical date is needed. Let's face it. I have lived and breathed Palatine since I was a whimper in a diaper (nappy doesn't have the same lyrical touch). Me Daddy talked of nothing else. I was taking copious notes from the age of 3 - once I'd got (gotten?) the pencil the right way round. I was hauled off to Rathkeale a decade later but failed the comprehension test with dismal colours. Even the flying trip to Drogheda to meet my Bovenizer cousins raised little more than a wisp of curiosity. It's taken me 50 years to patch up that significant gap. I've already talked of the seven ages of Piper, but my adolescent years remained largely unencumbered with the taradiddle of family trees; I just got down to the serious business of name propagation in my own preferred way. Am I wandering off the real subject of this message? I don't think so - it is just my tortuous way of getting back to the matter that's been swirling around in my head all weekend (after I'd finished unloading the copious IP mailbox - my bill for printer toner has shot up since I found the List). Ah, yes. The List. Liz put forward the tentative notion of a Palatine Web Site. It's a brilliant idea - and the sheer simplicity of the solution (to avoid toe-crushing) seems to be this: the very strong community that has forged itself through the List over the past 18 months or so could never be seriously threatened. Whatever happens on the sidelines, the List is our permanent bonding medium. It would never be redundant. I see it as the back-office of life, if that doesn't sound too pompous, or silly. The Web site could be our showpiece - our shop-window on the Palatine world…NOCOST.COM on a sliding undercarriage. Gone the insular, parochial, slow-coach route of the single-surname search. We now have enough original Palatine contributors to re-create Rathkeale through the Internet. And, of course, Kilfinane, Brock, Camden Valley and so forth, not to overlook - as always seemed to be the case in the past - our Antipodean cousins. (Incidentally, one very fine lady in NZ recently did me a look-up in Griffith's Valuation and yielded FIVE putative ancestors in Co. Limerick. Now that's cool.). We already have Ruckles, Sparlings, Teskeys, Fitzells, Starks, Switzers, Imphys, Corneils and TWISSS - plus scores of others. The Web Site could be our Castlematrix courtyard - with the List as our meeting-house under the pear tree and the IPA as the blessed Divinity, with the authority and influential contacts which we, as individuals, lack. NO SORE TOES. And Chris as Burgomeister. On the joyful route to 2009 (the Diaspora reversed) we can bring everyone even closer together - whether with a gene to share or just an interest. There must be Schnitzerlings and Doups somewhere out there just fighting to get back in … as I did. I visualize a Web site that is fast and efficient. One that works (there aren't many). Ken has offered his expertise, Susan has pushed forward her chair, whilst the treasured Liz has the IGP in Clare (whatever that is…in truth I ought to know - here's why): In another life I work from home as a translator in IT and telecoms - I can arrange my day as I choose, which is why it might sometimes seem that I have too much time on my hands. Not so. Something has to pay for the beans and the brandy (which, you might be fascinated to learn, I am no longer allowed to touch; no, not the beans - but that's another story, I'll tell you in June 2009 if you're keen to know). Anyway (and here's another confession) the reason I don't leap forward as a volunteer webmaster, or whatever, is that whilst I can tell you all about the "plesiochronous digital hierarchy" and satellite communications and the acronym for ISDN in French or Spanish, I am an absolute donkey when it comes to the practical application of all that garnered wisdom. My fingers turn to plum jam if I'm expected to do anything more on a keyboard than just type words. I can tell you how to splice optical fibres (and fibers), how to patch up telephone exchanges (or central offices) and I can help you lay out your entire LAN, if you wish (even in Russian, if necessary - although not German). But I can bring a scanner to a sullen standstill at the bat of an eye. I have probably fouled up more websites worldwide through my own incompetent downloads than there are Fs in Palatine. Ken will vouch for the fact that even with the finest software on my system I still can't read Excel files. I am simply not safe near a computer when I'm invited to stray outside the mailroom. So, there you have it. If you value your pics and maps, post them to Liz for the Website - not me. I can do the other valeting and footslogging jobs, with pleasure and not a little devotion. I am the antithesis of a nerd. Back to the topic I chose to invoke at the outset. The site could have tabs or windows for our many individual family trees - a veritable pool of all the data we've collected on our own for the benefit of others; a tighter merge-sorted list of Rotterdam departures and London arrivals; negotiated links to the best sites of direct Palatine relevance (the Townlands data base, on-screen maps, memorabilia and photographs - not everyone can get to the Museum in Ireland and some people are understandably reluctant to donate their treasures - together with plans and invitations for the 2009 junket), etc. Bye bye Cyndi's List. Meanwhile, backstage we could babble away as usual and encourage more names to come out of the undergrowth. It would be an absolute scream if we could re-assemble all the key families of, say, the remaining 791 in Dublin and 'disposed into the country' in February 1710, as Tenison Groves reminded us. Whoops - there you go, you see. In my excitement, I mistyped Tenison as tension (which is something we don't encounter on the List, by the way. No pressure. No sweat, but still dynamic). We might even find out what happened to the absconders, the poor returned Catholics, those who loitered in London, the settlers in the New Territories and so on. Well, that's all. Should do for a month, I think. Must go now - there are chores awaiting this liberated man (a steaming bowl of dishes, cardboard washing to bring in from the sun, plumber to pay, the cat to iron and so forth). Bye bye Who else? PS Yes to List. Yes to Web site. Yes to IPA. That IS all. Terry.