Auto-Bio

I grew up in an extended family of ten living in a teensy one-bedroom apartment. All of my relatives were smokers and were semi or totally ruined by the close quarters experience. Being the youngest, I was spared most, but not all, of the angst associated with tenement living. My cousin became a kleptomaniac and I, too, was a petty thief as a pre-teen. Because you could buy switchblades at Sears in those days, I was my gang’s armorer. Happily for me, my accomplices drifted out of my life and I managed to avoid the law (mostly).

My life has been peppered with amazing events and blasted by traumatic ones.

I’ve been a farmer, a fisherman, a journalist, a newspaper editor, a grant writer, and a Certified Nursing Assistant. I’ve sold women’s shoes and men’s wallets. I’ve hawked newspapers in traffic for 3 cents a paper, soda jerked malted milks for 90 cents an hour, and boxed cough syrup on an assembly line for a buck an hour - while the Mexican women down the line made 20 cents less than I: the beginning of political consciousness. Over forty years of teaching, I’ve worked with every age student, from third grade to second year college.

I’ve lived as a communist and as a capitalist. I’ve hitchhiked across Europe several times, been a paratrooper, raced dogs on the frozen tundra, been scarred by the murder of a beloved friend, and won a prestigious national prize. I’ve written and produced award-winning video documentaries. I have not run for public office. I am unelectable.

I haven’t a single memory of ever studying in high school, nor of ever being asked by anyone at home whether I had homework. Nonetheless, I managed to get into UCLA, where my utter lack of study skills consigned me to one of the lowest GPAs ever recorded (0.67) by an entering freshman. Thus, I was invited to leave after a single semester. And a good thing, too. Otherwise, I might have ended up a pharmacist.

Taking inspiration from a short film narrated by the incomparable Edward G. Robinson, I began traveling abroad at nineteen and worked and trekked my way into adulthood. Travel does that for young people. I returned several years later to the same university and, after acquiring a BA and an MA, I quit a doctoral program, despite having a full ride scholarship. I chose, rather, the life of a seaside Bohemian, earning a living by selling sandwiches to doctors and lawyers. This idyll was interrupted when, through the carelessness of smokers in the next building, my home caught fire and I was left with the clothes on my back and my van.

I survived and returned to university for two credentials in education.

They took me to the Alaskan bush and to a life of intense romance and insane adventure. I met my wife, Penny, there. She is an incomparable graphic designer and did the covers and layout for my seven books. We have a daughter and a son. We are all doing just swell, thanks.  All of us live in Anchorage, where I write in the winter, grow flowers in our short summer, and teach Tai Chi year ‘round.