It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Bodensteiner, a one-time computer programmer who is now a teacher, still lives in Madras, but she corresponds with teachers all over the world. And every day, hundreds of people from all over the Internet "hit" the education resources pages she created on the Internet's colorful World Wide Web.
It hasn't always been easy to get onto the Internet from rural parts of Oregon. Before Bodensteiner's provider,Mtjeff.com, went on-line in November, Internet access in Jefferson County required, at the very least, a long-distance phone call. At the worst, it meant weird equipment compatibility problems and support questions that faraway providers couldn't answer.
But in the past year or so, it's become possible to get on the Internet with a local call from nearly anywhere in Oregon. It's not always the fastest or most efficient service, but it's there.
"I can live anywhere in the world because of Internet," says Dave Skinner. From his Madras home, Skinner does high performance process control programming in addition to running MtJeff.com.
.....anybody with an Internet connection, whether in Astoria, Burns or Warm Springs, can call up Carrie Bodensteiner's Crazy Quilt home page out of Madras and read up on everything from Monty Python to flyfishing.
You can't do that with cable. Not yet.
All complaints, compliments, suggestions, and extra currency to: bodenst@mtjeff.com.