I've included the venerable Grand Dame in so many of my columns that I feel it almost necessary to put the real person on paper. My cousins knew her as Grossmutter (Grandmother). Cousins once removed referred to her respectfully as Die Ahne (The Ancestor), addressing her as Thee and Thou. Since I was city raised, if not city bred I therefore was taught to use the term Grossmama (Grandmama).

Grandmama was the mother of my mother. She was born in 1863 in Neibheim, a small village in Germany.During her life time she survived three wars, a couple of plagues, revolutions, famine, the coming and going of the Third Reich, one husband and two of her children.

During my childhood, I recall her spending two weeks each year in the city with my parents. During the last visit she spent with us, she insisted on attending Midnight Mass. A bit in a hurry she missed a step and tumbled down the entire flight of stairs. My parents looked down at her horrified. She just grumbled and said: "Well, just don't stand there, help me get up." My stepfather helped her up and we continued on our way to Midnight Mass. It was seven city blocks and the night wind was bitter cold. When Grandmama tumbled down the stairs, she was eighty years of age. She also was a devout Catholic. Nothing short of death kept her from her appointed rounds. For Grandmama attending Midnight Mass was written in stone. She used the time spent with us to teach me, what she thought were skills every girl needed to learn. She taught me how to knit, how to sew, how, to crochet and how to darn. She was not successful in teaching me those other housewively chores like dusting, washing dishes and keeping things in proper places. Six weeks of the summer were spent on the family farm. Grandmama had managed to keep that land against all the odds. When her husband died, she was left with seven children, and a mortgage on the land. She always reminded me of the fact that the Jewish firm that held the mortgage took the last cow out of the barn. The horses had gone as well. That left no draft animals to bring in the harvest and no income from the milk. She dealt with that as well as she could. The oldest son took care of the land. I can still see him in my mind's eye, standing tall in the fields of wheat, cutting the grain with the scythe row by row, sometimes working from dawn to dusk. Her five daughters found employment in wealthy households, sending their wages home. The youngest son sought his fortune in Berlin. The Third Reich educated him, gave him the opportunity to earn an engineering degree, made him an officer in the army of the third Reich, and sent him to his death on the snowfields of Russia. The adopted sons of the first-born son died there as well.

As long as I remember, the Grand Dame always taught. On the farm she taught me how to catch flies and how to mix them with stingnettle and cut them up to use as food for the goslings. She taught me how to gather Reissig, the brushwood and dead twigs for kindling for the stove.

She taught me philosophy as well.

"Mit Gewalt hebt man den Ochs rum ...(With force you can lift an ox around, but with gentle persuasion you can make him follow you.)" I valued that lesson more than any of the others. I survived using persuasion rather than force. "Wenn man A sagt, muss man auch B sagen." Roughly translated that meant; Always finish what you start; Be honest at any cost; Carry out what you promise and never promise what you can't carry out; Waste no time, no thing, no life, that you may never regret having been wasteful during the times of great need.

I saw the Grand Dame for the last time in the summer of 46. The war was over but the killing wasn't and the uncertainty about those who were considered missing in action was more than she could bear. She did not say good bye. She said that she was ready to die. She said she buried two children and was unwilling to see others go to their grave. She died in the first month of 1947. People die, she taught me once; Love goes on forever. She was buried in the village, but her memory and one picture of her accompanied me to my new life a continent away. It will always be said of her that she was faithful to her beliefs, that she practiced what she taught and that the values she had been taught, were handed on by her to the generations that followed. I hope that I will hand on those values to the generations that come after me.

I suppose I need to say one thing here. I can feel Clarence's eyes focusing on me, wondering what all this has to do with ICON and Computers. It's like this; Grandmother failed to teach me to discard something that still works just because it is only a short time away from being unserviceable, as in no-replacement-parts-are-available-anymore. Grandmama mourned the demise of the ink pen in favor of the typewriter. She would not have approved of the demise of the typewriter in favor of the computer. After all, the typewriter was in excellent condition. Grandmama and I are going to struggle to fully accept the concept of upgrading. I had made the transition from Windows 95 to 98. How do I explain that the transition from 98 to XP is a logical thing to do? I suppose I can always bring up the idea of Waste not-Want not. Time is of the essence here. XP and the new Office 2003 and whatever goes along with that, will save so much time. Time is what I need more than anything else; I could use another lifetime just to catch up and finish what I started. Let's face it, to finish all the things I'd like to start, I'd need at least two more lifetimes. And so far we don't have computers that can grant us two more lifetimes. Clarence, old friend, I promise to be more on track next time. Next time it'll all be just about computers. And may this New Year be a good year for us all.