The Author:
I cash in moments to spare writing or reading non-fiction with aspirations of the New York Times Bestseller list. I’ll listen to a wide variety of music: over a meal, I prefer ambient electronic, folk, foreign, Jazz from its inception through the ’50s, classical strings or piano. While driving I select Tool, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, or Tiger Army. My wife cooks Mediterranean; I make a mean stir fry or marinated chicken on a bed of romaine. We both like red wines. I enjoy Turkish or dark-but-not-quite-French Roast coffee by day and Brown or Red Ale by night. Years ago I played bass and electric guitar but realized I’d have to sacrifice writing to pursue music with any passion.
This Blog:
We all have a mythos, a “speech, thought, story, myth” from which we come. The village of nine hundred and three people in whose bosom I became lags behind cultural evolution and has been quite pleased about this. Looking back at the past century, I see equal representation of that-from-which-I-come in Willa Cather, Norman Rockwell, and, perhaps, Garrison Keillor. It’s that from which Kerouac fled, Dean rebelled, Leary tried to inspire, Kesey couldn’t freak out, Thompson tried to rally, Buchanan speaks to, Reagan was brought to power through, and some would say, the American Dream hasn’t yet been paroled from.
Nevermind Ishmael; Melville was too wordy. Call me the confused voice of Americana, wondering when things got complicated. Perhaps with too much zip, I need to fight the good fight. This Midgard is a temporary realm according to my Swedish ancestry and Hel a place for warriors who die without glory.
I’m a small town boy who, as a young man, allowed himself to soak in sentimentality for the city, scratched its underbelly, found employment with book peddlers in the information industry, embodied idealism, and became ordered to war.
Returning from Iraq to hearth and home, I found niche with no civil crowd. I experimented in life with those who recite culture, followed by they who cull passions, and have settled among they who profess the Living Faith.
During the journey I’ve earned myself a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction. Each night, I practice defining that which the term means. We’ll both see where it leads…
