Excuses

Fair Play is edited and published by John Kelin; all credit or blame for its content must be laid at his doorstep. Contributors to this issue include Joseph Backes, Angus E. Crane, Ian Griggs, and Martin Shackelford.

(Editor Kelin writes a little non-fiction when he has the time, which isn't too often these days.)

A special note of thanks to Jan Stevens, co-editor of JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly and the keeper of their Web site, for the tip about HTML backgrounds. Fair Play remains contentedly low-tech and decidedly non-slick as web sites go, but we've always hated the default grey background you get from Netscape. With this issue, we happily drop-kick it into oblivion. Readers with newer versions of Netscape (and other browsers, no doubt) will notice we're using a white background, like old versions of Mosaic used to have by default. We always preferred that; it's the most familiar, at least for those of us who grew up reading black ink on white paper.

Thanks also to Deanie Richards of JFK Place, who encourages input to her gopher site. Deanie provides us with disk space for our Fair Play archive. Her site continues to grow and improve --- and we say that not because our archive is there. It is a repository of some very excellent material and we encourage everyone to check it out; a link to it is on our Links page.

During the preparation of Issue #14, which dealt primarily with the "November in Dallas" conference, we went back and forth over what may or may not be an important point. In the article about the awards ceremony at the conference, there was a reference to the Pioneer Award given to Elaine and Penn Jones. While we heartily endorse their receiving the award, we wondered if there was some way we could acknowledge the fact that Penn Jones was married once before, and that his first wife also made contributions to the case. (Harold Weisberg called Penn and his first wife "two of the bravest people I have ever met.") We --- I, actually, the editor John Kelin --- ultimately decided to leave out any reference to her. I think that was a mistake. This is a short quote from a letter the first Mrs. Jones sent me a few years ago:

You are correct that the days after the assassination were tough. Most of us felt grief, and anger, and a terrible feeling of helplessness.

Not Penn. He felt the grief and the anger, but he translated those feelings into action and wrote his four books...

Fair Play was founded in 1994 by John Kelin and Lalo J. Gastriani. We regard it as one big Op-Ed page; all readers are encouraged to submit articles and letters for use in future issues. You may lambaste us, praise us, or send us Web links. We will run the most thought-provoking stuff we get.

As a rule, Fair Play is oriented toward research and journalism. But we'll run JFK-related fiction, poetry, or anything else of general interest. You may send articles via email (please send a query first) to the following address:

jkelin@rmii.com

Fair Play was flattered to have been rated among the top five percent of all sites on the Web. The rating came from an outfit called Point Survey, who describe themselves thusly: "Point is a free service which rates and reviews only the best sites on the World Wide Web. We provide surfers with a standard of excellence: a catalog of the most lively, useful, and fun sites on the Net."

Fair Play was also flattered to have been chosen a Cool Site of the Day on November 22, 1994. If you've not yet checked out this site, we suggest you do.

Editor Kelin has a tendency to adopt an editorial "we" when he writes this portion of Fair Play. The plural pronoun is just a convenient device; when he says we he usually means I. The editor has also been known to use the nom de plume, "Lionel Mirthmint." As if he were fooling anybody!

Marshall

Marshall Scott Kelin, my little Marshmallow Man, is shown here in his carseat in February of this year. Marshall is now piecing together two-word sentences, such as "All done." The boy doesn't fully grasp its meaning yet, but he will become a big brother this summer.

The page one photograph of the grassy knoll and the former Texas School Book Depository building was taken by the editor in October 1993. The line beneath it, about Oswald and the American public, comes from Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact.

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