About Me

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I live in unincorporated Snohomish County, about 15 minutes north of Seattle. During the day I work for a small tax accounting firm. Previous careers include editor, typographer, and opera singer.

How to Contact Me

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Although I know that Wikipedia recommends we communicate to each other by user pages, I prefer you use the "E-mail this user" function if you have anything Wikipedia-related to say to me. I don't check my user page regularly

Me and Wikipedia

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My primary contribution to Wikipedia is as an editor, not an author. I compulsively fix errors of spelling, punctuation or grammar wherever I see them. Sometimes I expand this to reworking paragraphs which were clumsily written or have become clumsy as a result of multiple authors.

Occasionally, I will flesh out a section or a stub on a topic that interests me, and even sometimes write an original article.

Topics

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An incomplete list of some recent and recurring interests:

  • American music from ~1890-1920, including Tin Pan Alley songs, ragtime, and college fight songs
  • historiography and legacy of President Harding
  • origin of street names in various cities on the U.S. Pacific coast
  • early history of Everett, Washington
  • comparative phonetics
  • American regional dialects
  • certain Puccini opera librettos and their antecedents

Help Request

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I would like to make a minor change to the appearance of my Wikipedia. I'm using the "Monobook" skin and I'm happy with everything about it except the main typeface. I don't want to switch to a different skin, but I do want to change all Helvetica to Verdana. Is there an easy way to do that? I'm thinking I'm supposed to type a code on my Monobook "Custom CSS" page, but I don't know what. I have some familiarity with basic HTML coding, but I'm not a code geek and I have no interest in becoming one. I just want someone to tell me how to change the typeface.