Ken Weeks

I'm a computer geek who runs one of the many networks on the National Institutes of Health backbone net, with a link to the Internet obviously! I actually got into the Dead via Jack - I was wearing my Kerouac tee-shirt one day at a bus stop (how fitting!) when this guy wandered up and told me he'd attended Naropa Institute...we became friends, and he introduced me to this wierd old '60s band, the Grateful Dead. That was Andy Shubert - our own Obsidian Wind/Mr. Molecule on rec.music.gdead. I met him back in '83, lost touch and then stumbled upon him last year on rec.music.gdead. Actually, I read his poems for a long time, even corresponded with him a few times before I realized who he was!

Grew up down river from Lowell - in Salisbury, Mass. I've been back a few times in recent years to wander around Centralville, hanging around Astro's Pizza (the old Textile Lunch where Jack lived upstairs). My maternal grandparents were French-Canadian, I grew up with a little bit of French-Canadian patois mixed with my English. So when I discoverd Jack - not until my 20's - altho "Road" bowled me over and got me started, I immediately felt a strong affinity for his boyhood stories, especially Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, and Visions of Gerard.

Ken Weeks = ken@codon.nih.gov