The development of the ESSAYS System began in the fall of 1973,
during the writers first sabbatical leave from college teaching.
At that time there was a personal backgroud of writing many monthly Letters-to-the-Editor of The Christian
Science Monitor in Boston, Massachussetts; and monthly "Outlooks Columns" for the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa. Against that
personal background and the background of the crisis in teaching physics in the U.S.A. the first 253 essays were
written during the fall of 1973. Those original essays are now included in The Essays System.
An addition pervasive context for writing evolved in the Spring of 1974 when, without seeking the position, the author was unanimously elected to serve as the Secretary of The Iowa Democratic Party, writing for four years the official minutes of the montly meetings of it's State Central Comittee. The minutes included paraphrases of what members had said, and the minutes were regularly distributed to about 250 political leaders across Iowa; before being officially endorsed as being accurate. (They were never corrected.) During the following quarter-century the author played major roles in helping to formalize the rules which govern the Iowa Democratic Party's CAUCUS-CONVENTION-PROCEDURES within which many USA Presidential candidates have sought to begin their campaigns to reach the White House. He met many candidates, and the system did not collapse.
Later essays were written within the context of the above, and of memorable experiences regarding a "People-to-People Good-Will Trip" to physics departments within universities in Russia and China. The trip took place in October of 1983 including a few dozen national leaders of the American Physics Teaching Community. It was coordinated by the National Office of the American Association of Physics Teachers; the author being a long time member of its National Council.
At Coe College the author chaired Faculty-Student-Committees on: Computer-Policies, The Student-Run-FM-Radio-Station, The-Library, Teacher-Education, Student-Petitions, Faculty-Evaluations; and served on committies on: College-Calendar and Curriculum-Reform, Athletics, Faculty-Welfare and Evaluating-The-President. He briefly served as Secretary of the Faculty, and often served as the Chairman of the Physics Department --- in alternating terms which he first initiated at the college.
In the wider community the author was active in Civil-Rights and Peace Efforts, on a local Technical Advisory Committee on Transportation, in the Unification of Human Services, held various high offices in The Presbytery of East Iowa, and served as Secretary of the Iowa Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The author began writing the computer programs of the ORIGINAL ESSAYS System in about 1982, about the time of the trip to Russia and China. The system of programs evolved into a mature system of computer programs by 1995, when 150 copies of the ORIGINAL ESSAYS System were shared with participants in the international and trans-disciplinary conference "Einstein Meets Magrite" at New University, Brussels, Belgium. The conference participants consisted of approximately 600 scientists and humanists from 46 countries. The author of The Essays System was one of about three hundred presenters. He spoke at: Thursday, 1 June 1995 from 12:00 to 12:20 p.m. on The Essays System. After clicking on the preceeding-link, scroll down about 60% of the way on the web page looking for the link's date-time-and-title. The focus at the above conference was in effect: "Putting the world back together."
Since 1995, the focus has been on editing all of the about 2,500 essays initially-typed-on-paper, getting those essays transferred to magnetic media and upon preparing the overall system of about 6,800 essays for distribution over the world-wide-web. Little of that would have gotten done without the extensive encouragement and help of six students who worked in dedicated ways on the joint effort!
By January of 2001, there were approximately 6,800 essays available for
DOWNLOAD. A remaining text editing job was to eliminate many
inappropriate extended-strings-of-blanks within text files, which was done. Since then the focus has
been upon editing and making all essay texts imediately and readily available at www.essayz.com
without any previous need to DOWNLOAD any files. By February 2006 the initial 235 essays and about sixteen transitional
essays and many later essays had been uploaded and made available at www.essayz.com. The total
number of essays available reached 7,628 essays.
There are many ways to find essays here at essayz.com. The KEY To-Finding-Those-Ways
is to use-the-link-to FINDER where
the most-useful-links of the ESSAYS System have been
collected-for-ready-access. Also note CENTER which is
put at the top of many pages in this ESSAYS SYSTEM, as at top-center above.
Look often for CENTER and use it by clicking on CENTER.
Best wishes in your searching through the approximately 7,628
essays in this collection, written starting in 1975, prompted
by involvements in significant regional and national leadership
positions within: academic, scientific, secular and religious politics.
This web site is under continuous development. There are
imperfections and distrctions in the system. They are being
worked on. A major project now is to expend the system of
providing intuitively clear finding tools.
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During 1974 to the present on-the-average about 20 essays have been written per month.
LINK here to more information about the history of The Essays System:Relevant Histories
The Original Essays System, as noted below, is still available and still offers self-contained
flexible word-start and word-fragment search-procedures --- which can only be approximated over the world wide web.
===> The following LINKS are offered here to help Really-Insterested-Visitors to explore the history of this web site. <====
====================================SORRY=======================================
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============== THE FOLLOWING DOWN LOAD COMMAND IS NO LONGER FUNCTIONAL =========
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LINK here to the down-loadable 10 Megabyte ORIGINAL version here: ORIGINAL-Essays-System FLAWED NOW! <===
The ORIGINAL Essays System is not composed of HTML web pages. Eventually that downloadable system will be made avaiable again.
The essays WERE made available in plain DOS text form.
NOTE: After you have DOWNLOADED the Original-Essays-System and installed it on you own computer, NOT NOW! <===
you can do More-Selective-Searches Based-Upon Word-Starts --- than you can Do-Live
over the World-Wide-Web here at www.essayz.com.
LINK here to the HOME-PAGE of the down-loadable version: ORIGINAL-Essays-System-HOME-PAGE NOT NOW! <===
LINK here to the Original-Inspiration for the current-very-active-web-site: ORIGINAL-KEYWORDS NOT NOW! <===
LINK to the HOME-PAGE of the current-very-active-web-site: www.essayz.com
CENTER