I MADE MY FIRST WEBSITE IN 2002, in a Web design class at Los Medanos Community College with Curtis Corlew in Pittsburg. We used Dreamweaver software but since the cost of the software then was some $300 plus, I did not buy it for home use, but opened a Yahoo account and uploaded my website in class. Yahoo! I now had an Internet presence: www.peterbray.org!

The Website Bug had bitten me hard and deep and I wanted to do it again, but other things intervened. So by 2010 or so I bought a MacBook Pro laptop because it had Apple’s iWeb software and I was dying to do another website. I did one for Janice’s glass fusion and beading: www.Jannysglassfusionandbeads.com … and one for my Handyman services: www.Handymanservicespeterbray.com. Ronna Leon was then our poet laureate in Benicia and asked me, “What are YOU going to do for the First Tuesday Poetry Group?” I thought hard and responded, “I’ll build us a website” — and I did: www.Beniciafirsttuesdaypoetrygroup.com.

Hey, this was a kick in the pants! So I made myself and Jan three more: www.peterbray.org/pedro and www.JaniceJaffeBrayCaregiver.com and www.sillyjerkatthebackoftheroom.com. Woo-hoo!

But the forewarning I was given came true: Apple was discontinuing its support of iWeb software, and so was Yahoo. Major bummer! I could still make websites because the software onboard my computer was fine, but Yahoo would NOT upload them. So I asked around and was told that Mozilla and Fetch software could be downloaded for free and used to upload websites. I tried it. It was like eating pizza through a straw, or traveling through Death Valley in an ice storm. So I moaned and whined to a friend of mine and he suggested GoDaddy.com.

Yahoo! It worked!

I’m now doing two more sites using GoDaddy templates, and uploading is a definite piece of cake. You push a selected button and shazam, up they go: www.BeniciaLiteraryArts3.org and www.Beniciafirsttuesdaypoets.com.

Check ’em out. I was also told that FatCow.com is another source that is iWeb-friendly, but their instructions were less than pristine and my FTP server dialogue has serious problems, so www.PedroLosDos.com may still be lost in space somewhere. If you click that site, it’s not likely to go anywhere unless I’ve called their Customer Support number and gotten the path from here to there better defined by the time this column hits all the subscriber driveways in Benicia.

In addition, another friend of mine insisted she would build me a blog and she did: www.Simpletonspath.wordpress.com. Check it out. Yes, I’m also on Facebook and YouTube. AND it’s all a kick in the pants! Not to mention my monthly newsletter, “Taproot & Aniseweed,” which goes out as a PDF to eager readers from England to the East Coast, across and along the S.F. Bay, Benicia, and even Norcal, Socal and AZ! Issue No. 47 hits in June! Woo-hoo! Are we having fun yet or what?

Sweetheart & The Old Man in the Park

Grandfather (“Farr”) Adolf Viggo Larsen gave each of us grandkids our own Jersey calf to name and call our own on their 35-acre dairy farm in Orland, California in the 1950s. What a thrill

My calf’s name was Sweetheart, daughter of Beauty (I named them both). It was the summer of 1951, and I was 8 years old. Granmore Larsen’s shadow is in the foreground of this photo. She had a Brownie box camera and was always taking at least two shots of everything, saying, “This one is going to Denmark.”

Sweetheart had white markings like her mother, but also a great white marking on her left shoulder and white spots on her legs. “What a Sweetheart!” I said when I first saw her, and that became her name.

Granmore Karen Marie Larsen had the audacity, vision and courage, when she was 16 and then a native-born Danish Rasmussen kid, to come to Oakland and work, staying with aunts and uncles who had already immigrated to the U.S. and become citizens. After a year or two here, she returned home to Denmark, married that handsome Danish cavalryman Adolf Viggo Larsen, and had their first three kids, Kaj, Bent and Karen, who would in time become two of my favorite Danish uncles and my Mom.

Karen Marie said to Adolf, “If you take us to the U.S., I will help you save for the farm.” And they did, and Mom got two more younger brothers out of the deal in Oakland (they lived above Mills College on Outlook Avenue), giving me two more Danish uncles, Arthur (Holger) and Kenny (who could sing and play “The Wabash Cannonball” on his guitar in the late 1940s).

The old man in the park is my picture from last year at the Benicia Poets’ Picnic in the Park, 2013. Funny how time flies when you’re having such a good time. Notice Granmore’s fluidly cursive writing style. Her and Adolf’s gene pools run deep in all of us.

Peter Bray lives, works and writes in Benicia.

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