The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

It's a small `Rockwell' world You know, the more years I work in this business, the smaller the world has become. For the most part, that shrinking of the global mass can be directly attributed to the electronic media, more specifically, the Internet. I've had images published in Gander, Newfoundland, all over Ontario within the Metroland chain and even in The Netherlands. I've photographed events in Europe and sent images and stories back to my office making sameday deadlines. Each time, those images and stories were transferred via the Internet-- something we tend to now take for granted. But recently, I was amazed how distance perception can be distorted by that same media. December 8, I wrote a column about my collection of Norman Rockwell Christmas Village Houses, each one featuring a scene from one of his many visual slices of everyday life that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.. I related how I'd been collecting the "Freedom" series of Norman Rockwell houses over the years, depicting the four freedom paintings Rockwell painted during the Second World War-- Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, Freedom of Worship and Freedom of Speech. I received an e-mail from Randy Clouse who wrote: "I found your article about your Christmas decorations. I feel the same way about the Rockwell village houses. I have looked in the windows many times just to see what the little folks are doing." He told how he wanted to purchase some for his wife, and asked if I had any leads on where he might find them. As it turned out, I had dropped by Zellers in Georgetown that same day and saw them on sale-- 30 per cent off. I just naturally assumed Randy lived locally, so I replied and told him they were at Zellers and wished him luck buying them for his wife. I never gave it another thought. The first week of January, I received another email from Randy, this time telling me of his Rockwell Village-buying adventure. Ted Brown