Ellen Gray: My So-Called Home Page
``Show a little faith
There's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right
Oh, and that's all right with me.''
Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road
Welcome to my home on the Web, located on the Voicenet server, which seems to be a decent neighborhood.
This page's title is a reference to one of my favorite television shows ever, ABC's ``My So-Called Life,'' which, sadly, not enough other people watched to make its continued existence economically feasible.
You're the 
visitor to this site since Oct. 15, 1995, according to WebCounter.
I'm a television writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, where I write a column four days a week.
I've been on line (off and on) since about 1985, when I first signed on to CompuServe with a pre-DOS Epson QX-16. I try to keep up, but the Web swallows too much time (and they pay me to watch TV, after all). My favorite places tend to be other newspaper's sites, but here are some other places I like to check into occasionally:
- WebCrawler. The simplest search engine I've found so far. And you can get here from there.
- The Jane Austen Info Page. The truth is, I prefer to read her work in book form, but there is a lot of information here other than the six novels in hypertext. If you haven't read some of her very early, or uncompleted works, check this site.
- The Office of Human Radiation Experiments. Like most TV critics, I'm a big fan of Fox's ``The X-Files,'' and this government-run Web page deserves its own episode.
- Mr. Showbiz. Professionally written, updated daily. Must reading for anyone in the entertainment news business.
- Homicide: Life on the Web. Maintained by a student at the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, this is a nice alternative to those antiseptic sites maintained by the major networks.
- Kennys Book Shop. This family-run bookstore in Galway is one of Ireland's finest and the Web site one of the most imaginative commercial ones I've seen. Visitors can search the store's extensive catalog or arrange for weekly e-mail updates on books of Irish interest. I've visited the shop in person and this site really catches its spirit.
But hey, more about me:
- I'm married to Al Heavens, who covers real estate for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He can be reached at AlHeavens@phillynews.com.
- We have two sons, Nicholas, 14, and Patrick, 7. Nicholas has the messiest room in America. See for yourself. I've occasionally threatened to put a Webcam in there and encourage people in Australia to tell him it's time to clean it up. You could try. Patrick is not yet on line, although he's been known to dictate e-mail messages to his grandmother in Connecticut through Nick.
- Patrick, who has Down's syndrome, is in kindergarten, where he's learning to read. These are the first two sentences he read, in January 1997:
Max the cat sat.
Max sat and sat.
It's poetry, isn't it?
There appear to be a lot of people interested in Down's on the Internet and on on-line services such as America Online, where I'm told there are chat rooms on the subject going seven nights a week. If you or a family member have Down syndrome and this interests you, post a message to news:bit.listserv.down-syn and prepare for a warm welcome.
