The author

Something about sound and words get me all hot and bothered.

Places, times and people  inspire me. Probably moreso, the space between.

Given, it’s not always a positive inspiration, but let’s not discriminate here…assholes are people too.

Don't usually sport the stash, but it went with the plaid...

What about me?

Here‘s a version.

I was a singer/bassist for five years, German major for five, English teacher in Germany for another five and for the past five a journalist.

From sound I moved to words, narrative. Listening and communicating, the thread.

I have a German translation certificate, and a B.A. in print journalism, minor in German, for what that’s all worth.

What it’s worth is that I took the time to digest the material and it is not a fancy piece of paper.

I am actually fluent in German and can understand several dialects. I can network, interview, write, communicate. But then, I did more than study the subjects.

When I wasn’t learning enough German at the University in Denver (not shit), I took my ass to Germany and learned it there.

When I realized I didn’t know much about English Grammar, I became an English teacher…or maybe it was the other way around…when I became an English trainer, I realized I didn’t know grammar…whatever.

The point is when I find out there is something I want to do, something that interests me…I get ‘er done, even if it’s not the most practical thing I could choose to do.

I worked  at the college newspaper and did about every job possible at the paper from delivering, reporting, writing to managing editor. This, knowing newspaper work is a deadend career choice. But, it was interesting. More useful than student government, or chess club.

The newspaper experience was not exactly Sartre and Camus writing Combat, but I don’t mind saying, the news coverage my compatriots and I at the Metropolitan eeked out of the unwilling students, faculty, adminstration and staff on Auraria campus was under the circumstances (the fact almost no American, let alone American students, read a newspaper (or want to write), the total lack of cooperation due to fear of loosing their jobs by the faculty and  the specific fact that our paper got almost no support from the Journalism department at the time as the department chairs had left and the department was in chaos) shear Woodward and Bernstein. Assange, I guess it is now. This site is also an archive of all that work (navigate the catagory bar on the right.)

We produced an award-winning paper year after year, one year without even a salaried director in the office, only a secretary that administration kept forgetting to payroll. We covered the Democratic National Convention when they shut down our campus and kicked us out of our offices for the week just to use the parking lot for Secret Service. During the economic crash of 2008, we were the only newspaper in Denver (in the Colorado for that matter, the demise of the Rocky Mountain News left Denver a one newspaper town ) reporting on what the State government’s cuts (60 percent) to Higher Education funding would do to the state colleges and universities.

To pat myself on the back for a second, I sat on my iniative at the crack-of-dawn monthly meeting when Metro’s board knew something bad was coming, and tipped my editor off we should go to the capitol building and see what.

When the students began to organize against the cuts, they used our paper as the ‘info-brochure’ on what had happened. I had already worked at the paper for three years at that point and actually was trying to move out the door…but I couldn’t stop going to the board meetings…they were talking some heavy shit…perhaps, it was a certain voyeurism at watching the shattering glass and flying limb accident unfold before me. It was sad really. In the end too few cared…the cuts came–Colorado was and still is doomed.

Anyway…while stress and hectic have their kick, deadlines are a rush, etc., death as I understand comes too soon to spend my whole life chasing around as one of these Babbitts or, as Dr. Thompson named them: Slick Strivers and Jingo Parrots. I prefer to take my time and appreciate the world around me for exactly what it is. Or at least as close as I can come to the truth of it.

The truth…yea…well, more about that later.

The point is…so much of life you miss if you rush through it: talk to me about quality, not quantity. Both our times, too precious to waste.

Talk to me about times, places and people. The space between. Oh…and don’t forget about food. Talk to me about eating French fries–rot weis–at Wannsee. Ice cream on Falkensteinstrasse. Sticky rice with Jeow on a mountain in Laos. A big fat juicy hamburger sitting alongside a highway in western America.

Now we’re talkin’.