I was born in the January of 1930, just as The Great Depression was getting underway.
Nevertheless, my childhood memories were as if from a Golden Age. When I was very
young I was fascinated by maps, and Geography was my favourite subject in school.
When I was eight years old I could draw, freehand, a map of Europe, and could also
do North and South America.
This love of Geography was a prelude to my early onset of wanderlust. I was always running away
from home, not so much as an escape but as a running toward The Unknown. I was always driven by
curiosity for different places. I had always been puzzled and fascinated by boundary lines and frontiers.
I'd marvel that a language could stop short of an imaginary line and another start up on the other side.
I became a compulsive traveller, and I joined up with the US Air Force two times. I was able to see most
of the world. At last, I went to University, and took courses in varied and unrelated subjects, at last getting a
degree in British Literature of the 19th Century. After my student days, I went to work as a scientific illustrator
for James Van Allen, the famed discoverer of the radiation belts round the world which are named for him.
Late in life, I became a poet, almost unexpectedly, and wrote poems in whatever spare moments that came my way.
I hadn't published a poem until I was in my mid forties, and, after several years of rejection slips, I started to fly!
After retiring from my "day job" I accidentally fell into a new career in television. I have become the host and producer of a show on one of my local cable channels called The Poets' Corner. This is a whole new vista for me, and I'm absorbing more new knowledge and experience than I ever have before. I'm now convinced that this is where I should have started in life!
