Merry Christmas. May you and yours have good health and spirit through a wonderful New Year and chunk of the Millennium.

In September of 98 my sister had a kidney and pancreas transplant. This year the number of pills she takes is down from the initial 40 to 15 per day. One anti-rejection pill brings on pudginess, and she hopes it and its effects can be reduced in the future. In July she went to Ohio were my Uncle Herman and Aunt Dorothy made her feel at home, even while my uncle broke his foot during her first week.

The summer for me was spent sweating through fix-up jobs I had put off for years. Removed, resanded, replaced redwood deck and re-roofed its under-layment to, hopefully, stop a nagging leak. Repaired, repainted and, hopefully, stopped the leaks rains were bringing from a staircase into the house. Stained many of the house’s thirsty shingles and wood structures around the house. Re-roofed another place and that reminded me how hot even Northern Californian days can be. Luckily, I still like the wood butchering stuff and find it refreshing when often laid next to presumed grown up, real world work.

Some of that real world work includes writing a book about my admired political mentor and his wife, Ed and Joyce Koupal, and the work they lead us to do with People’s Lobby. Excerpts from the book and some of the People’s Lobby story can be found at: www.peopleslobby.tripod.com/ (Although, this may need another week to fix hosting problems.)

If you or friends are not on the Internet and thinking about being on line in this millennium, I hope you’ll help one of my businesses grow by trying my online service. With another handful of Excelonline customers I will also have a Superstore where people will be able to buy goods from computers to baby toys at 30-50% discount. Great 24/7 Excelonline service at $19.95 and two free months. Go to www.excelonline.com to see the special. If you know anyone who’d like to try this or our other services, please contact me and I can also give them rep support. Phone, pager, Internet info can also be gained at www.excel.com.

Everyone tells me vacations are better than work and this year those were simple breaks. One included a trip to fast growing Mesquite, Arizona (outside Las Vegas) for another Peace Corps reunion, where in addition to tracking down former CIA agents, the pros from Dover and Chicago tried to perform a swingectomy on my golf game. Then last week I took a trip I have missed for too long back to the Castle. If you’ve spent more than a hour with my meager personality you’ve probably heard me talk of the castle where Michael, Glen et all taught me fairy tale recycling and castle building... If you want to see some of the Castle go to:

www.lightside.net/~dennish/Rubelia/BigTopView.html

www.spies.com/~weasel/castle/castle.html

For me, "Curly's" status stemmed from his grand white-gray horse. For Mom and her grown-up friends, there were less noble, more mundane reasons. Sometimes it was because Mom needed nickels for the movies or for the big dance band shows that she and her friends loved to attend.

Three times a week the clap of Curly's horse would echo down East 25th's then brick cobbled streets between Superior and St. Clair in Cleveland. Ricocheting with the echo of the hoofs was a worn, singsong voice calling "Paperrags... Paperrags... Paperrags..."

Translated, it meant Curly was buying papers and rags for a couple pennies. But Curly's “Paperrags” was much more than a penny-ante business.

On Wednesday, Curley's wagon of papers and rags carried boxes of vegetables; on Friday fish; on Saturday pots and pans clanged against each other as they hung from the string tied across the back. For the women of the neighborhood, those days were, as Mom says, "Coffee klatches, without the coffee. The women came out with their discards. While Curly bought their discards the women would talk of their needs, look over the wagon and buy, if they could, what Curley’s wagon offered. Curly would take their old paper, rags, shoes, and tools. Then maybe 6-7 blocks down he’d sell it to someone else.

"Curly was wonderful. He never asked for anything. If you didn't have the money and needed something, he gave it anyway and would say 'You pay when you can'. And he'd remember what you said you needed, and bring it when he found it.

"The Filipivics had an outhouse and Curley would save the wrapping papers from the apples and oranges he bought from the farmers market. Curly made a little box with a hole in it, flattened the wrapping papers out in it, and the Filipivics had their toilet paper."

From Santa to Curly to today’s on-line shopping, Mom would shake her head in wonderment saying. “Yo-menna, yo-menna.”

May you have everything you need from Santa -- on or off-line.

And the appreciation and pleasure that getting it from Curly would bring.

Dwayne