When I was born, the power in the hospital went off as soon as I took my first breath. If you happen to have watched TV during the late 1960's and early 1970's the significance of the name of the doctor that delivered me will mean something to you as well. His name was Robert Young. When I was in my early 20's, attending college, I was making my regular, monthly, drive home for the weekend. As I entered a small town on the route home, the lights all over the town went out. As I approached the city limit sign, as I exited the town, I could see the lights of the town come back on in my rear view mirror. While working as an adult, I would often leave work in the evening, well after dark. On a number of occasions, while walking along the sidewalk to my car, two of the lights along the walkway would often go out as I approached. I attribute this to coincidence, but it makes for some amusing stories about one of my secret super powers. Imagine all the power outages correlated to births, miles driven and other reasonable explanations like shorts in wiring triggered by the vibration of a person walking and it is merely coincidence. Still, you may not want to get on my bad side in case I am wrong. Look out Spider-Man.
I am a first generation Ozarkian, raised in a small Missouri town. I have engaged in many of the activities associated with rural life and the outdoors and enjoyed them fully. The Ozarks is known for it clear, gravel-bottom streams and rivers and I spent a significant portion of my free time enjoying the benefits of those natural wonders.
I did well in school and excelled in science. Not surprisingly, in college I majored in biology and chemistry, and eventually pursued and achieved a graduate education in entomology. I still toy with the idea of returning to school for further study or even study in a different field, like law. It is not an uncommon occurrence for members of my family to pursue higher education as an older student as several, including my own mother, did just that.
I enjoy reading and have since I was a child. When I was 10 years old, I managed to read, "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Bill the Galactic Hero", the Bible and a western entitled "Ride Slocum Ride". The latter was a book I checked out of our local library and clearly, the nature of that book was not understood by the library staff and certainly not by my parents. It was an educational book for a 10 year old. Certainly inappropriate. But I remember it well. I read other books that year and many since, but those were the ones that stand out in my memory. If your child comes home with "Ride Slocum Ride" or any Western written under the name Jake Logan, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with those works.
Occasionally, I write poetry, articles on natural history for local consumption and I have written technical articles within my field. Writing is something that I am constantly considering doing more of, but never seem to overcome my own inertia and actually do it. I may be coming to a point where I finally exceed my personal limitations and do something about that.
My parents were Christian, but not fundamentalists and we often had family discussions about religion, history, politics, science and almost any subject under the sun. Borrowing a description I heard from others, we were book people. I attended a Baptist church until I was about 16, at which point I decided that I wanted to hang out with my buddies who were all Methodists. My parents left the decision to switch up to me as long as I was going to a church. I don't respond well to the more emotive and charismatic displays of faith and I fit in well at the Methodist church anyway. Not to say that I was immersed in that at the Baptist church. As I said, the move was based mostly on social reasons and not on doctrine or practice.
Being disposed to a certain mindset to begin with and trained in science, my view on things, while not without flaw, tends to be more analytical. I could go on about myself, but that is enough I think. Sometimes, even when the opportunity is actually about me, it is a good idea to know when to stop.
. Ill tell some facts, then things that consume me from experiences.
