John Franco The family enjoys trips to wooded and wilderness areas near Cincinnati. We make a trip to Natural Bridge, Kentucky every year in the fall exactly one week after the tourist season. The views in this state park are spectacular as are the natural bridges and rock formations. This is, in my opinion, the most beautiful part of the US east of the Mississippi (I have been on all 100 miles of the Blue Ridge parkway). Another popular trip is to Perfect North Slope, Indiana for some skiing in January and February. Of course, we have favorite spots in Ohio too. For example the Air Force Museum at Wright-Paterson AFB (one of my favorites), Bowling Green State University (Veronica plays violin there in the summer), and the horse farms north of Columbus. On our first trip to a horse farm we passed through a town called Urbana in Champaign county. Later, we found out that Champaign county and Urbana, Illinois were named after these.

On Sunday nights I meet with six middle school students in the Wyoming, Ohio school district to discuss computers and programming. We talk about the WEB, graphics, C language programming and hardware. These kids have amazing ability and a very good understanding of computers and software. They are currently studying the C language. Using Turbo C they are about ready to make icons and dialog boxes and to use mouse control to move them around on the screen. Some people would love to teach at Harvard due to the tremendous talent of the student body there, but it is possible to find a similar environment at a local high school! I have been doing this for four years and have seen a consistently high quality membership. One year our club won an HP computer for finishing in first place at the annual CompuTourney, a national programming contest hosted by General Electric and Hewlett-Packard. Watching these kids learn has been an inspiration for me.

If you want to get in touch with me, click on the following email address: franco@gauss.cs.uc.edu