ANNO AETATIS SVAE LIII

T I B I * S A L V T E M

offers thee greetings!

OMNE TVLIT PVNCTVM
QVAE MISCVIT VTILE DVLCI
to paraphrase Horatius:
She who combines the Useful with
the Beautiful wins all the points!
         -Horace

I was born fifteen days before the Kalends of November at Newport, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. That would be about five years and twenty-seven centuries after the traditional founding of Rome, so you know that I'm at least younger than Rome! My childhood and younger years were spent in Maryland; B.A., Political Science (Towson U., 1976), minoring in the physical sciences; previously employed in DP technical support for sixteen years. I've travelled in the British Isles, Israel, Malta, and Sicily, but Arizona has been my home since 1994. It is well-said in Latin, Ubi bene ibi patria ..."where it is good, there is my homeland." My names come from an Empress and a Goddess!

My dearest companions in life have been Laura and Joan, for whom the word "soulmates" is but inadequate. After four years hiatus as homemaker and apprentice webmistress, I returned to public service in the Recorder's Office of Pinal County, where I worked for three and a half years. Laura's cardiac and respiratory ailments were steadily worsening as 2001 came to a close, so our household relocated to Yuma. Our Laura had seven excellent months filled with friends and cherished activities before crossing death's threshold on July 31, 2002. We miss her deeply. A powerful consolation is her enduring presence in the extensive legacy of her words and art on these pages. Joan has additionally been a faithfully recorder of the substance of our lives since 1996 in her online journals. She's a veritable Mnemosyne, mother to our Muses.

My interests include classical music; theories of personality, gender and intelligence; culture, art, languages, and history, particularly of the ancient Mediterranean world. As a member of Gens Iulia, I enjoy the opportunity to foster in a small way the appreciation and rebirth of the best of Classical civilization. I very much enjoy sharing tea and pleasant conversation with friends. In 1998, I founded Colloquy, the first internet-based intellectual society, and am pleased to see it continue and blossom.

My life has been, above all, a journey of heart and mind through many worlds of human experience... In the Myers-Briggs schema of personality, for what it's worth, I show consistently as an INFP type. Perhaps the real value of it is in demonstrating the necessary and vital diversity of people. If we have any common ground, it might be found in the sense of awe, for beliefs and tastes differ widely and perhaps have little to do with the realities of the cosmos. That sense of awe I describe as Paramythia, literally a consolation transcending belief or doubt.

I am a politically eclectic woman who suspects that the pendulum of human experience will in time settle upon a blend of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy and a much less extreme distribution of wealth. I know not whether it will come though evolution or dramatic changes as technology itself shapes this world ever more toward homegeneity. Doubtless the ideological map of the present time will change so much as to render today's passionately-held sentiments comprehensible only to scholars of a later age. I remain a skeptic imbued with a certain reverence. I prefer the beautiful gods and goddesses of Antiquity. Our ancestral deities had no need to defile their loftiness through begging poor humans to believe ... nor through compelling them to force that belief upon those not hearing the same call.

Music: my composition, Carmen Galliambica

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