This article appeared in the Gainesville Sun on May 7, 1996, 
in a "University and Main" column

High mileage on the Internet by Gary Kirkland

     For those who think of e-mail as just a way to send jokes to 
co-workers, Colleen Porter may be able to offer you a few lessons 
on getting more mileage out of your modem.
     Her computer keyboard has kept her family firmly linked to 
friends and relatives in Gainesville while they are spending a few 
months in Brazil.  Colleen's husband, Sanford, is an entomologist 
studying fire ants, which are native to Brazil. He's doing 
experiments with a fly that's a promising biocontrol for the ants, 
and got a grant to spend eight months there doing his research. 
The family, Colleen and daughters Julia, 16, Becky, 15, Elaine, 4, 
and Lorissa, 2, joined him in January and will be staying through
most of May.
     In Gainesville, Colleen was an Alachua Freenet pioneer 
volunteer and learned the ins and outs of navigating the Internet. 
So she did some digital preparation before leaving.
    "I put several of my favorite recipes on our family homepage, 
so I figured that if I needed a recipe, I could just web over and 
download it; I didn't have to bring a copy of my cookbook with 
me," she explained in a recent note.
     The family lives in Rio Claro, near Sao Paulo. Communicating 
by paper mail to the states costs $1.10 and takes weeks. 
International phone calls are $5 for the first minute and $1.50 
each minute thereafter. For that reason e-mail has been a lifeline.
     It has also been a birthday line. When Becky turned 15, she 
linked up with 10 of her friends at an appointed time on the 
Alachua Freenet for a 30-minute chat.
    "It was also a weird experience to watch, because all we could 
hear was the rapid-fire clicking of keys and the frequent giggles 
from our teen-agers," Colleen writes. "And they got to save the 
transcript to relive the experience, too!"
    From a practical standpoint, an acquaintance was able to give 
her a recommendation for dealing with diaper rash in the heat of 
the January south-of-the-equator summer.
    The information flows two ways. Colleen was able to assist a 
Brazilian woman, a first-time mother-to-be, who was looking for 
information on childbirth preparation classes. Colleen tapped into 
an electronic parenting issues forum, and was able to track down 
the information with a few trips across the keyboard.

Internet grandparents
     Before leaving in January, Colleen got her in-laws, Richard 
and Lois Porter, operational and on line so they could keep in 
touch. Lois says Richard is the one with technical expertise. He 
makes no claims to being a wizard, but has worked to get up to speed.
     "I don't think I was intimidated, but I had lots of 
problems," Richard says, admitting it took a couple months to work 
out the difficulties.
      He was no newcomer to the computer world however, having 
gotten his first one in 1984. But he was a stranger to the modem 
and the doors it can open.  Still, there was serious motivation to learn.
     "The big interest was that we were going to be able to keep 
in contact with them," Lois says.
     And they haven't been disappointed, getting three to four 
letters a week, including a weekly newsletter where Colleen 
details an adventure of the week - going to church, going shopping 
for groceries, whatever - and occasional notes from Elaine and 
Morissa, dictated to their mom, who types them up just as she 
hears them.
     "It will be my turn on the 'puter," Morrisa recently informed 
her grandparents.
     "Dad and me made avocado ice cream," was Elaine's recet 
dispatch from Brazil, that also included the news "we saw bananas 
growing on a 'nana tree."
     As any grandparent can tell you, this is important stuff, no 
joke.