25-1-1995

Dear Bill,

I send you the book edited in occasion of the Jubilaeum of Ornithophilia in Utrecht; I think that you will appreciate this history of a century of Netherlands poultry life, adorned by Van Gink's illustrations, painting's masterpieces and synthesis of the animal's characteristics.

This book is a very small thing comparing with your interest for all my problems and the very precious advice.

Also I send the catalogue of our recent national show. From the animals number you may understand that the poultry fanciers here in Italy are very few, because the love for the animals isn't a tradition as in the North European countries. Our federal association is one year old and our President, who send the catalogue to you with his compliments, is a very serious person. I think that he will resuscitate the Italian aviculture, very active in the beginning of the century.

Finally I send the card of the friend of my cousin, who is very active also during the night. I think that when the atmospheric conditions are appropriate, you will contact him by radio.

I profit to send other things: a page demonstrating how many fonts are available for the laser printer and every font may be enlarged 72 points, as the animals in the Punnett's square, made by Eduardo. The cock in this page isn't a font, but a vectorized image, which may be enlarged without seeing the dots of the non vectorized images.

The other pages are a test for the text editor Microsoft Word release 6.0, and is an exercise to learn this text editor; the must difficult part in this job is joining text and graphics. But slowly I will be winner! These pages are few fragments of the future genetics’ book and will be given to the participants to the Poultry Judge School, which begins in march and where I will be the genetics’ teacher!

Other interesting experience is the page concerning the Sundaic, from the Finsterbusch’s book. With the scanner now it's possible capture the text in various languages and store in electronic file for manipulations. The acronym of this method is OCR (Optical Character Recognition), very useful. During the transcription, the computer verify also the orthography! Miracles of the electronic art!

In the past years, when my wife was living, my hobby was the macrophotography, and I was processing the slides myself and colour printing from negative. I have collected many subjects of the mountain's flora, flowers of my area and even insects, including butterflies. Now my macrophotography is limited to the fowls!

The last week I saw in TV a movie picture ambiented in NSW at the beginning of this century; the subject was the rescue of the farm of miss Richard (?), with horses, desert, sea, hills... A dream for my eyes, which a day I will realise!

I am waiting for the photocopies and I thank you very much.

A little consideration: when I will have your age, I would have your energy and perseverance in writing letters to the friends!