I was born 1944 and reared in the central Midwestern United States in the state of Indiana, the southern portion.  This is a relatively conservative area in the U.S. at this time; however, I consider myself toward the liberal end of the political spectrum.  My younger years and professional years were spent in Evansville, Indiana, where I enjoyed both a happy youth and a fulfilling professional life.  When young, my favorite pastime was the out of doors–mostly fishing, exploring, and athletics.  During my high school years, my favorite pursuit was American football.  During college, I pursued a bachelors/masters in English and education.  For 33 years I taught high school English, finding this a rewarding and enjoyable profession.  I’m still in contact with many of my students.  I spent half of my professional life following and teaching my passion, General Semantics, the study of the relationships that exist among language, thought and behavior.  This is a discipline deeply involved in communication. I still teach this class in retirement, only now to adults. I’ve been retired 16 years.

I am married to Alice Wootton. We have a son who lives in Yucatan, Mexico, with his wife and our two beautiful grandchildren, Sandrita and Luis. Our rescue dog, Dash, sees to it that we are responsible human beings.

Beginning my retirement, we moved one hundred miles east to live against the Hoosier National Forest in a rural area.  Here, with friends we met, we created a non-profit, community service organization called Orange County HomeGrown.  For 14 years of my retirement we involved ourselves deeply in this cause creating farmers markets, exterior murals in the towns, environmental projects, and the creation of a natural food co-op.  I’m now mostly retired from those pursuits, but still enjoying things such as table tennis (we have created a table tennis club at the local high school), fly fishing, reading, birding, wildlife observation, music, gardening, collecting wood for the winter and various other forms of exercise such as yoga, which I have practiced for decades, resistance training and speed walking. We have a separate building on the property mostly dedicated to table tennis. We have a close circle of friends with whom we enjoy dining, movies, hiking, theatre, conversing. We meet monthly with friends for book group.