My later years acknowledge the decisive benefit of the internet and the web in allowing me the possibility of publication, therefore giving the incentive to learn subjects to write about them. I have been the author of the Democracy Science website since 1999. This combined scientific research with democratic reform. While, from my youth, I acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owed a social science degree, while coming to radically disagree, even as a student, with its out-look and aims. Whereas from middle age, I acknowledge how much I owed to the friendship of Dorothy Cowlin, largely the subject of my e-book, Dates and Dorothy. This is the second in a series of five books of my collected verse. Her letters to me, and my comments came out, in: Echoes of a Friend..... Authors have played a big part in my life. Years ago, two women independently asked me: Richard, don't you ever read anything but serious books? But Dorothy was an author who influenced me personally, as well as from the written page. And that makes all the difference. I have only become a book author myself, on retiring age, starting at stopping time!
