I was born in the Bronx in New York in September of 1945. My name is Barbara Brenner. As long as I can remember, I loved music. It took me out of myself. My family struggled financially, but they were all hard workers and strived for the better things in life: music, art, travel, education, the pursuit of knowledge.  As a very young girl, I would sneak out of the house at night, when Mom thought I was in bed already, and join the "groups" that would sing on the street corners, harmonizing and singing acapella. Dion and the Belmonts came from this area (Belmont Avenue giving the name to his group).  My mother worked extremely hard to keep a home for us. She went out and cleaned other people's homes to bring in money to support our own. My sister, Virginia, married young. She had (and still has) a beautiful voice and loves music as much as I do. When I was young, she used to take me around with her. After she was married and lived in Massachusetts, I was invited to come stay with her for a summer. She bought me a huge beach ball which was probably as big as I was.  My brother Bob was in the Navy and the sight of him in his sailor whites awed me. He was always happy-go-lucky and used to put his arm around my Mom and say she was his favorite gal.  My aunt Mary had a wonderful large old house and I can remember going there in the summer and her bringing out a plate of sugar cookies and homemade lemonade. I'd enjoy the refreshments, sitting drowsily and watching the sun make the sky shimmer and the breeze make the shrubs whisper softly. The wonderful thing about childhood is the timelessness of it. As adults we are always conscious of hours, days, years. A child lives in the moment. We grew up playing "potsie", using chalk to mark out our game on the street. Or, with a pink rubber ball, we would sing out "A my name is Alice and my husband's name is Al, we come from Alabama and we sell Albums.". Or "B my name is Barbara and I come from Baltimore. My husband's name is Bob and we sell Bats!."  On summer evenings, families used to sit out on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building on 179th St. and have some good, clean fun. Sometimes the parents would even join in as we skipped rope (even double-dutch, where 2 ropes were going at once). Pop-beads were the big rage. Sometimes my girl friend Cookie's Dad would make snow cones with shaved ice in paper cups which he then poured your favorite syrup over: cherry, lime, strawberry, etc. My Dad used to take me to City Island, where he would fish. We had a potato baker we would stick the potatoes in and place over the fire we built. They were the best potatoes I ever had. The outsides were kind of burnt, but they had a special flavor from being cooked over our fire of driftwood. Or maybe it was just the memory.... Who knows? Dad played a number of instruments, but I'd say the guitar was his mainstay. He used to have fun with the harmonica as well. His repertoire was large and varied and our family really loved the music. Aunt Mary used to kick up her heels quite a bit on the faster ones. My brother Don is a wonder. Today, he knows I don't know how many song titles of the fifties and sixties, and is an oldies record collector. He recently bought a 1959 Studebaker Lark, which he is bringing to mint condition and is having it painted turquoise and white. I can't wait to see pictures of it! He belongs to a club for Studebaker owners. My brother Charlie has a brilliant mind and a sensitive soul. Life is hard on those types, as we all know. I'm pretty proud of all my family and what they have proved they can do. No slouches there. I've been in the Graphic Arts industry for over twenty-five years as a typographer, producing ads, annual reports, brochures, books, and directories. I'm currently the Database Publishing Manager in a Directories division of a Fortune 500 company. Between myself and the three people who work for me, we deliver 17 business-to-business directories in print and on CD-ROM. I work on a 400mHz Compaq computer running windows NT. We are networked to a Sun Sparc station server, using X-terminal software by Hummingbird. Our typesetting software is called Miles 33. It's used by places such as Boston University and the United States Supreme Court. It is a sophisticated batch processing typesetting program (code-based, not desktop publishing) which encompasses a database input program, multiple index extraction capabilities, and a Sort program, as well as sophisticated search and replace tables. I know enough UNIX to "get around" as system administrator and am pretty savvy on PC's. Lately, I have been doing some MS Access development, and building forms and reports for one of our projects. My resume is, of course, online: brenner_resume.html My computer at home is a Gateway Pentium 166 mHz with Altec Lansing speakers and an 8.4 gig drive. I work in Hightstown, NJ for PRIMEDIA Inc. and live in Jackson Township (Ocean County) NJ. I have a wonderful husband who puts up with all my "webcentricities". His name is Rodney Kohn. The things I enjoy most when I'm not working are sketching or painting in watercolor, gardening, reading, music (rock 'n roll, classical, reggae, light jazz) and ... you guessed it ... computing. I find the internet extremely exciting as a medium of information exchange and communication. Lately, it seems to have become my ONLY leisure time activity. Who knows? I'm constantly learning new things. I have an excellent capacity for learning new software and mostly teach myself. I am almost never bored because I have so many interests. This website has been one of my favorite pastimes. I have heard from so many wonderful people who liked the music and remembered the past through them. I hope they all keep on coming back.