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  Who am I?

These days online, I'm less willing to put personal information online. The days of the early net and web were exciting and you felt free of any threats. It was a small community in vast spaces, much like the frontier days of the American West. Back then the West was populated by a diverse group of people who had to adhere to an etiquette that prevented self destructive behaviors from arising. Such as SPAM and other nasty stuff. You could trust who was online. Most people involved in the net were smart enough to know that behavior that would hurt others would come back to hurt them. They were also a different group, mostly from an academic or engineering background. They were highly motivated to build the online world and make it a good and useful place. There were not many ordinary people who just used the online world to fulfil their desires without being a stakeholder. Much like when "civilization" came to the American west, the new people brought with them the prejudices and vices of the city. Most of all the early netizens understood the frontier principle of reciprocity that of "not letting your cow into my garden, and my not letting my cow into your garden" to put it politely.

About Me

I was born in the mid 1960s at the Columbia Hospital for Women, in Georgetown, D.C., a wonderful institution that in the year 2002 was threatened with having to close its doors and did finally close its doors forever shortly afterward. Georgetown is a part of the District of Columbia, usually referred to as Washington, D.C., but Georgetown is a town within the district, just as the part with all the monuments and the White House is the Washington part. Confusing isn't it?

I was raised in Arlington, Virginia and have lived here most of my adult life. I did live in Delaware (much closer to the seashore!) for two years in the mid 1980s. It was a pleasant place to live and I enjoyed my stay (mmm, I can still taste eclairs fresh Fleischman's bakery in Dover, bought by the dozen box, made from Hartly eggs and Lewes double cream).


Here you have a Bohemian looking self-portrait of Steve Knoblock as the "photographist." Made with an inexpensive Olympus D340R digital camera, hand held exposure and a little manipulating in Photoshop Elements.

The Rediscovery of My Virginia Roots

It was with some irony I discovered my roots right here in Northern Virginia. My family moved here from the mid-west just before Arlington came into existence (it was part of Alexandria County then) in the 1920s. However, while trying to discover the identity of a relative depicted in an old carte de visite (a type of photograph from the 1860s) I stumbled across a surname unknown to me. It had been staring me in the face from the signature line of the carte but I could not make out the letters. By investigating the photographer, my great great granduncle, I learned the surname was Gunnell. I began investigating this line of my ancestry, which remained a bit of a mystery.

Wanting to know more, I went to the Arlington County Public Library's Virginia Room to see if I could find anything on this unusual surname. I discovered that the Gunnell family settled in Fairfax County in the mid to late 1600s and were a "second tier" family socially to the circle that Washingtons and others revolved in. The Gunnells owned more than 900 acres of land in Arlington and Fairfax counties (wish the family had those lands now! You can check out my site on Northern Neck Land Grants) So here our family was blithely living and shopping and scooting around on our own ancestral lands without even being aware of it.

All that's nice to know and surprising, but the most important thing was discovering that I am descended from a patriot who participated in the Revolutionary War: Jonathan Gunnell. His story is interesting from a social history perspective and has not really been told. His life mirrors the changes taking place as our country shed its colonial identity and attempted to deal with the meaning of liberty, the curse of slavery and economic expansion.

Jonathan joined up when General Nathaniel Greene came through Virginia on his way to the Carolinas to fight "The War in the Southern Dept." as it was called by "Lighthorse" Lee (Robert E. Lee's father). Greene was met with indifference in Virginia when he asked for men and materials to bolster his army going south. Jonathan Gunnell was one of the few who answered that call to arms. Many people do not know that most of the population during the revolution was either neutral or opposed to the war with England. It was an act of faith that people like Jonathan joined in the revolution and the making of a new nation founded on principles of liberty. He didn't know if he would be victorious and he didn't necessarily have the support of all the people as in other U.S. wars. Yet he persevered.

Jonathan served in one of the U.S. Dragoons on Light Horse, part of the cavalry formed by the elder Lee. Lee said of the young men raised in Virginia's horse country that there were no finer riders and they were the equal or better of any English cavalry, partly because boys were raised riding horses. He was severely wounded at Cowpens apparently by a sword blow striking down his head, arm and hand. Despite this injury he completed his full term of service, fighting in many other battles, at times alongside the unit commanded by Lee and other units (his was commanded by William Washington).

It was an important moment in my life to discover I was descended from a participant in the revolutionary war who had an exemplary war record. It was important to feel connected to a place that I felt completely disconnected from in many ways. Moreover, I discovered a model of courage and someone willing do the right thing before others are willing to do it. Jonathan likely came from a slave holding family, certainly the Gunnells in Virginia owned slaves, yet he moved to an area of Pennsylvania known as a conduit for slaves heading north to Canada and rife with abolition activity, a place very unfamiliar to a man who grew up in the very English counties of Northern Virginia. He left behind his extended family and any land and slave holdings he may have been entitled to. His line was one of the few (perhaps the only one) that made this radical break with their ancestry. He did not inherit any of the Gunnell property, land or slaves. He chose to live in a society where his neighbors were mostly German immigrants as can be seen in the witnesses to his legal papers; his daughter married a Swiss or German man. An Englishman from the most English part of the colonies lived in a world unknown to others, of Christmas trees, German newspapers and many accents as waves of immigration passed through Pennsylvania. The dissolution of the Anglican Church meant he was forced to choose a new religion. He chose a very strict Baptist church, the Sewickly where he is buried today in Westmoreland County, Penn.

Learning about my ancestry took a great burden off from my mind. Although I grew up in Virginia, I never felt connected to it. My grandmother's family, the Barnum family, was a socially liberal and progressive one, having its start in New England prior to the War of 1812 and migrating west as opportunity expanded along with the United States. They were part of Cleveland's early days and followed the railroad construction south into southern Illinois. They joined the Union Army for the Civil War. My grandmother's dream of being an architect was frustrated and she became a young women as women gained the vote.

Like many who would eventually come to live in Northern Virginia, my family was a fish out of water. It is not surprising that I felt this way, in this seemingly northernmost of southern cities. I was a little unsure I wanted to find roots here in Virginia. Redneck's and slavery were not exactly the stuff of which our family wanted in a background. The cause of the American Revolution became very important to me as I went through elementary school. I identified strongly with it, and saw it as a continuing, living revolution. I felt left out that I had no roots here and that I had no connection to the revolution that I loved.

Discovering that I was descended from a participant in the revolutionary war was more than I could have asked for, more than I could have dreamed, important to my sense of identity. This is what family history means to me.

Computers

My interest in computers started early. When I was six years old my brother brought home some IBM punch cards, which he gave to me to play with. I loved those punch cards with their mysterious holes. I tried to figure them out, but did not get very far. I kept them for many years. I had a keen interest in the moon missions. I sat on the floor next to my miniature Cape Canaveral with talking mission control headphones, glued to the television every night on the way to the moon, anxiously waiting for the Apollo capsule to reach its destination, hanging onto every word of the news commentary. When the moment came, I sat transfixed in front of the color television watching that fuzzy monochromatic image of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, on live television.

I developed an interest in science through this interest as well as an interest in science fiction from all the toys I had (Maj. Matt Mason, etc.) Eventually the calculating machines that could fit in your hand predicted by science fiction became a reality. I desperately wanted a pocket calculator back when they cost hundreds, finally getting a Commodore from Sears for about $10 when the price finally dropped. I wanted a LED watch. In my teenage years, true to my geek nature, I lusted after the MITS Altair advertised in the back pages of Scientific American but was more than I could ever afford being just a kid.

I started programming in BASIC when my brother got a TRS-80 LI 4K (Yes, that is FOUR Kilobytes of RAM!). I finally got my first computer when a teenager by saving up for and purchasing a TRS-80 16K Level II Basic system. Programming BASIC and assembly language (on the Microsoft Editor Assembler---I knew they were going on to great things because their software came in shrink wrapped boxes instead of the little stoner-inspired zip-loc baggies the rest of it came in) I learned everything you ever needed to know about programming on that machine by making games in BASIC and "music" programs in assembly language. (love the Z80! That LDIR really moved the bytes!). I added extensions to BASIC and created drivers for music out the cassette deck, I even tried doing digital image processing, but that was not a success on a 128 pixel wide display without a scanner or any way to get a digitized image into the thing. Those with Apples had an easier time with graphics, but they were unaffordable at the time (about $1200 base price).

That's enough for now.