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| Personal background |
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| I grew up in the small Seventh-day Adventist college town of Keene, Texas where I graduated in 1976 with a degree in English-Communications. I married a Scots-Irish-Indian woman from Monroe, Louisiana and raised three children and some cats and dogs, birds and fish. I've taught school, taught swimming, canoeing and sailing, knot tying, camping and astronomy for kids. I have water skied on canoe paddles, assorted bits of lumber and my elbows. I have a couple of canoes and a catamaran, 3 guitars, two banjos, a dulcimer, a mandolin, a fiddle, 2 recorders, a penny whistle, fife, a bag of harmonicas, a bodhrain, pair of bones and a jaw harp or two - all of which I play badly. I've helped start up 6 nonprofit organizations in 25 years and raised millions of dollars none of which ever managed to stick to my bank account. I've won awards for documentary screen-writing, published poetry and short stories and a book on how to organize a charity golf tournament. I was appointed to a two year term on the Public Transportation Advisory Committee for the Great State of Texas by the Governor and I work as an advocate for seniors, people with disabilities and low income families. I'm a Reagan conservative, which puzzles my fellow advocates, who think I should spontaneously combust from the sheer incongruity. On the other hand, I've taught them to speak Republican which has improved their rate of success with the state legislature. My advocacy work includes children's issues, expanding public transportation, creating barrier free housing and promoting community wide accessibility standards that allow transportation challenged Texans to fully participate in their communities. I have three grandchildren, a son and daughter-in-law, my beautiful daughter and her new husband and we lived on beautiful Lake Palestine near Tyler, Texas until about two years ago. My middle son, an amazing young man, passed away in 2006 while finishing his senior year at UT Tyler. He was going to be a teacher. My book, "Going for the Green: An Insider's Guide to Raising Money With Charity Golf" came out in September 2008 and has 4 1/2 stars on Amazon.com. My wife's disability has necessitated my working from home in recent years. We recently moved to Puyallup, Washington in the shadow of Mt. Ranier and I've begun writing full time. I've ghost-written more than a dozen e-books in the past year and hope to have a couple of new books of my own coming out soon. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I run SETI because I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe and I think it would be interesting to eavesdrop and see what, if anything, they're talking about. Also, an alien soap opera might be just the antidote to the drek that passes for daytime TV here on Earth. If I have to listen to one more revelation that Tyrone is NOT the father, I think I shall upchuck.
If for no other reason, the SETI@Home experiment in distributed computing is well worth the effort and besides, rendering aquarium fish or expanding star fields seems to me a rather pointless thing for my computer to be doing in its down time. I also do some work on the Astro-Pulse project as well, so it's not all eavesdropping on aliens. It's fun to be part of something with the potential for success of the last stand at the Alamo. We Texans love a hopeless cause. Besides if we're involved, we always think there's a chance of success. |
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