Postilion. (n) A person who rides on a horse which is pulling a carriage, to guide it.

It was only in the early nineteenth century that roads suitable for vehicles made it possible for coaches to cross Alpine passes. The postal horn was an essential instrument to the Postilion, who used it to signal his presence on the steep, winding roads. The postal horn is the symbol in yellow shown in the icon for Postilion.

Do you know why a horn appears on mailboxes? Messengers and Postilions used a small brass horn to signal their arrival. Use of the horn soon became obligatory for the Postilion, who had to know at least eight signals, each with a particular meaning: arrival, distress, departure, and so on. But what made the horn so popular was its constant use over several centuries, rather than the regulations requiring that it be carried. Today the horn is the postal emblem of many countries.

Postilion has long been my home on the World Wide Web, dating back to my efforts to craft a useful e-mail client program for use with the X-Windows system on Unix. While I have gathered more web homes as time has passed, Postilion is still my most comfortable one.

Now that Postilion, my email package, has essesntailly drifted off into obscurity, I am recycling the postilion.org domain for my main personal web presence. Here you will find links to all my various web sites:

• Our Old House the web site where my wife and I chronical the work we do on our 115 year old home.

• Writings various fiction and non-fiction pieces I have written over the past 20 years.

• Blog My own annoying little weblog, where you can stalk my every whim.

• Politics My political rants, articles, letters to the editor, etc.

• Software The software I have written or contributed to, including Postilion, my X-Windows email package

• Toilet Tissue a celebration of marketing gone wrong