Monday, January 21, 2008

FLASHBACK: April 12, 2005 - Publius and his first post


Often my friends in Charlotte have wondered who Publius truly is. Well, the "real" Publius was a Roman consul named Publius Valerius Publicola who helped form the Roman republic. More relevant to the history of the United States, Alexander Hamilton paid homage to Publius by using the pseudonym for many of the Federalist Paper articles.

So how did Publius come to Charlotte? Well, it is a large banking center with a Federal Reserve office, and Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury. A true genius with a hot head, the pieces slowly came together.

The first evidence of Publius and his posts were in early March of 2005, but were mostly private correspondence. The true moment of awakening came on April 12, 2005 when a young woman by the name of Jen Cooley had been posting on the Sharksbite running club about the stupid trivial details of her life that I could be certain no one cared about. The dam broke that day as Publius burst into public life with this response:


Date: April 12, 2005 11:06:44 AM EDT
To: sharksbite@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sharksbite] NEWSFLASH uninteresting post on listserv

Why do you have to bother every single person on the list with these details? It really doesn't require much effort to change the address from sharksbite to tim. In fact, I was going to email Tim this morning about my amazing morning. I didn't sleep all that well, I had my fan on the first time. I did have to get up at 4:30 to let my dog out. Can you believe my housemate was still on the couch?!? Oh, I had a decent bowl, albeit a little stale, of Golden Grahams for breakfast while I read the news. For lunch I put an apple in my bag, along with a great chicken and rice dish I made last weekend. I didn't have enough time to do my leg strengthening exercises, but don't tell my physical therapist!! Today is garbage day for me. My housemate had already brought up the garbage can, and the recycle truck had been by, but not the yard waste. Let's see, and then on the drive to work today I accidentally cut out this really cute woman off. Damn! And she had a USAT sticker on her car. There was this cab too that changed lanes right in the middle of the intersection. Thank goodness South wasn't as backed up this morning! Did you know when traffic is bad I turn left on Tremont and go up Tryon instead of taking a left on Bland? When I got to work I had a yogurt to supplement my breakfast. Boy, I'm really tired and Tuesdays are so long for me! I swim in the morning and then play Ultimate Frisbee at night.

Maybe I should talk to Nelson about setting up one of those blog things...

Publius

p.s. if you are actually offended by this email you need to talk with Mary Jo

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