November 30, 1999

Dear Bill Gates,

I swam past your dream house the other day,
but didn't stop to knock. Frankly, your underwater
sensors had me worried. I would have liked to take
a look at Winslow Homer's _Lost On The Grand Banks_.

It's a great painting, but speaking as a friend and
fellow citizen, at $30 million you paid too much.

HIGHEST PRICE EVER PAID FOR AN AMERICAN PAINTING!!!

So why are you so interested in a picture of two
poor lost dory fishermen, momentarily high on a swell,
peering into a wall of fog? They're about as high as
they're ever going to be, unless the sea gets uglier.
They are going to die you know, and it won't be a
pretty death.

And as for you Bill, when you're on the net, are
you lost? Or found?

And the rest of us -- lost or found -- are we on it, or in it?

Your friend
Alan Sekulla