Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001
Subject: "4th GRADE / GREENDALE SCHOOL / FRANKLIN PARK, NJ 08852" (with poem)

Although I see that it has been reported (smh.com.au) that there is no Greendale School in Franklin Park, NJ, as written in the upper right hand corner return address on the envelope sent to Senator Daschle ---

"4th GRADE
GREENDALE SCHOOL
FRANKLIN PARK, NJ 08852"

--- there is very definitely a well-known (among a certain circle), "virtual" Greendale school.

Set in the invented town of Greendale, the school there, the "fourth" school in the town (as described on its on-line site, http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/grndale.html, coincidental with "4th GRADE")

is Greendale's most important feature: all game players must enroll as students in that school.

[First, also, the address contains a second "error" (or fiction, or "clue"): 08852 is not, strictly speaking, the zip code for Franklin Park (08853), but the zip code for a neighboring vicinity, Monmouth Junction.

[Out of the billion plus web sites that Google.com shows, there may be surprisingly few Greendale schools proper, world-wide; quickly within the first 70 Google listings, only the same names recur: there is a Greendale School District and Greendale Middle School in Greendale, WI, and Greendale Schools in Worcester, MA, Abingdon, VA, Lawrenceburg, IN; but thereafter, one would have to look internationally: Quebec, Niagara Falls, CA, Wellington, NZ, a Greendale High School in Witbank, Mpumalanga, South Africa, and a Greendale Community School in Dublin, Ireland.]

The virtual Greendale where the school is is described as "the site of the on-again, off-again Teenagers From Outer Space campaign" (!). Various web-based versions are given, and there is a book version. The first level of Google search shows it under the category "Games > Roleplaying".

"Greendale sits south of a chain of respectable mountains, which decline into gentle foothills before flattening completely into what was recently farmland." It's a highly developed virtuality with roads, restaurants, etc.

There is another interesting overlap with the events since the 11th:

"Route 101 north heads straight into the mountains and through them, arriving at the big City some two hours hence (if you travel at the speed limit). To the east, Route 972 soon takes you to the Atlantic Ocean, and deposits you in the shore town of Seaside . . ."

Seaside Heights, NJ (known as "Seaside," locally) is where the Thunderbird Motel is, one of the hideaways of the WTC terrorists (Although I am having trouble finding an on-line news report about that, it was reported within the first week after the 11th).

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The creator of the virtual Greendale school posts a little poem on his home page:

Please to remember
Eleven September --
Hijack, destruction and plot.
Our outraged reaction
To terrorist action
Should never be forgot.

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"I made myself, and though no form have I, / Am fairer
than the fairest you can spy" --- Francis Scott Key,
"A Riddle"