I was born in the shadow of  'the bomb' at the end of the first half of the 20th century. Formative events in my life were: the electrocutions of Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg, duck and cover exercises, the deaths of Marilyn, JFK, Martin, Bobby, and Malcolm, the Cuban missile scare....and the Vietnam war.  

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An early memory is that of drawing in the dirt with a stick, probably at about 4 years old. Drawing has been a regular activity of mine ever since. When I was 17 or so, after reading Sartre's trilogy, I talked to an army recruiter in the hope of going to army language school.  I ended up in French Indochina for 3 years dressed somewhat like a large pickle.  I never set foot in the army's language school, but I did learn to speak Korean and Vietnamese fairly well.

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Went to college on the GI Bill after I returned to the states..... worked as a fruit picker, high school teacher, graphic artist, furniture mover, photographer, offset printer, itinerant artist, architectural drafter, art gallery guy, entrepreneur, college professor, gas station attendant, and picture framer. 

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At the dawn of the new century I snagged the elusive tenure-track teaching job at a small community college near the Mexico/California border. After 12 years there I retired to a semi-rural area north of Reno and east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There I pass my days trying to grow food (and weeds) in my garden, watch Scandinavian, French and UK who-dun-its on tv with my wife Imelda, spend time in my  studio, hang out with my dog Jaxon, take short afternoon naps, pull weeds and try to figure out the meaning of the big questions in life over a good cup of coffee.

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The shadows and the weeds are as dense as ever.