Thanks again to everyone for contributing to this thread. I'm learning a lot.

Okay, what jldiaz wrote really has started to make all this info come together for me. It particularly clarifies what Benson meant when he said
If I'm getting this right (and there's probably at least 50 50 odds), then jldiaz's diagram clearly illustrates the four machines.

The command

ssh -L5901:localhost:5900 user@my.XP.box's.IP

instructs the ssh client on my nokia to contact the sshd server on the XP box through port 22, they shake hands and use their mutual keys to identify each other and establish a secure tunnel over port 22.

The -L is the switch function that creates the secure tunnel through the process of port forwarding.

The 5901 (immediately following the -L) refers to the port on my nokia which is listening to the nokia's VNC client and sending what it gets through the nokia's port 22 to the XP box's port 22 where the sshd server's picks it up and then sends it through the XP box's port 5900 to the VNC server.

localhost (immediately following 5901: ) refers to the sshd server on the XP box that is listening through the XP box's port 22.

5900 refers to the port on my XP box where it receives info from the sshd server (the info it gets from the ssh client through port 22) and transmits that info to the VNC server on the XP machine.

user refers to the account that one wishes to access on the machine at my.XP.box's.IP.

Finally, I think I understand this.

But for some reason I can't make it work.

I can set up the ssh session. xterm takes the command, and then prompts me with the CLI prompt appropriate for the Cygwin terminal. It really seems like the session is set up appropriately.

But VNC won't do anything with 127.0.0.1:1

I can connect to the XP box's VNC server directly at my.XP.box's.IP.address But that's not what we're shooting for.

If my ssh client is listening to the VNC client on 5901, then it should be able to send the VNC info through port 22 to the sshd server which can send it through port 5900 to the VNC server.

Could this be a problem with my router? I've tried setting up port forwarding, but I can't make anything work. But that doesn't seem right. If I can connect the ssh between the nokia and the XP box on port 22, and I can connect the VNC between the nokia and the XP box on port 5901, then how could the router interfere with the nokia's port 5900 ability to talk to the nokia's port 22 to talk to the xp box's port 22 which finally sends it to the XP box's 5900.

Or could it be the router?

And if I can connect to the VNC server, directly, and insecurely, does that mean that any damn computer on the internet with a VNC client can connect to my XP box directly and insecurely? Or does it just work for me because I my nokia and XP box happen to be on the same wlan.

So I guess this thread can keep going if everyone's still game. I certainly won't be able to post that wiki until I work through this problem and make this work properly.