I never know what to say. I’m tempted to make stuff up. Suppressing that urge, here are 56 facts with few fictions about me:
1. I was born at Fort Dix Army hospital, and lived in Trenton, New Jersey for a little over one month, before my parents drove back to Minneapolis where they first met. My Dad’s folks joined them for the ride, which included crossing into Canada near Niagara Falls.
2. I do not remember much of that trip.
3. In 1976 I took a yearlong break from college, bought a ’67 Ford Fairlane 500 and toured much of the northeast, midwest, and the west for over a year, doing odd jobs like painting houses, picking apples, moving furniture, and working as a janitor for uber-fastidious nurses at a Catholic hospital in Torrance, California.
4. That old Ford had a 289 engine I could work on myself, as it had enough room under the hood for the average guy to reach in and bang around without hoisting it up, unlike cars today.
5. I do not really think I would spend much time under the hood of my car working on it even if it had room, in part because of the busted knuckles that 289 dealt me. But I appreciate a good rationalization as much as anyone.
6. My mother became a nurse back when that was one of the few occupations open to women, then went back to college later in life, earned a couple degrees and became an administrator. I’ve never heard her complain about how it was, but she made sure my sister had more opportunities, and I think that’s cool.
7. In spite of the Bush/Cheney regime, I believe our culture has made civil progress.
8. I wish that civil rights progress (both gender and race) didn’t engender so much right wing backlash, overtly attempting to return us to the 19th or even 13th century, but the pendulum swings for a reason, I suppose.
9. I’ve seen four different species of eagles in the wild: a sea eagle off Bali, a white-tailed eagle above the Arctic in Sweden, and bald and golden eagles in the US. I’d love to see a steller’s eagle in Kamchatka.
10. I went to Rochester Mayo high school and just before graduation I won a fictionwriting contest sponsored by St. Cloud State University. They were trying to recruit high school students to their writing program, I believe, and offered a dictionary and $10 as awards. I got the check, but never got the dictionary.
11. I attended the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where I spent most of the next seven years when not traveling and appreciate the BA in English I earned there, but sometimes wonder if going to a smaller college like St. Cloud State for a year or two first might not have been a good idea.
12. My wife and I live on the island of Alameda, next to Oakland, in San Francisco Bay. I like islands. I once took ferries around the archipelago outside Stockholm and found the Baltic and the islands enchanting. I loved Indonesia, when I visited. Some day I would like to visit Alaska’s islands for an extended stay, seeing lots of eagles, eating lots of salmon, reading lots of books, and trying to string a few decent words together.
13. In the early 80s I went to night school at City College of San Francisco and submitted a story titled “The Ph.D of Cartoons” to a contest, winning 2nd place in their Pasqualetti award. This encouraged in me the notion I could write; since then I’ve edited and written for various publications ranging from a casino management magazine to office newsletters to reviewing restaurants to writing articles and columns for CNET’s Builder.com. (Eclecticism remains key.)
14. The folks for whom I reviewed restaurants (The Miningco.com, before it became About.com) wanted a blurb about me, so I told them I liked birds, books, baseball, the Beatles, beer, barbecue, Britain, Belize, and Bali.
15. I’ve also edited books for several publishers, where my pay increased as the work grew less interesting. I went from travel guides to social and behavioral science books to computer books to legal references.
16. I’m not really as mercenary as that sounds. Okay, maybe I was, a little bit. But really, money may be what Americans believe in most, but it is not my religion. I’m not much of a materialist; what gadgetry I have, I need. Really. Three working computers for two adults with three others mothballed in the closet isn’t so many is it? Really?
17. Okay, one last try: I read of a study once positing that there is an inverse relationship between how happy you are and how much stuff you have. As I understand it, the more possessions rule your life, the more you cater to maintaining your toys and rue their loss and breakage and the less happy you are.
18. By this measure, I’m doing okay—depending on how much it counts against me when I can’t find my keys, wallet, glasses, or some book I’m sure I didn’t sell back to a used bookstore, damnit.
19. I try to have a lot of systems around the house, so that I can remember where thing are. This sometimes works.
20. Yet, while I still cannot remember where I left the new watchband I bought recently, I can name the winning and losing teams for every world series ever played. This includes the 29 dismal years from 1936 to 1964, when the damn Yankees went to the world series 22 times and won 16 titles.
21. At one point in the late 1980s my boss in SF was a New York Yankees fan, the two friends I went to Candlestick Park with most often were both Yankees fans, and my housemate was a Yankees fan, leading me to suspect the creator has a wicked sense of humor.
22. If I had the time, I would like to write a book about the seven AL teams other than the Yankees who went to the world series in those years, and the six NL teams who beat them, working title: Those Who Broke Through.
23. I moved to California from Minnesota in a circle of seven friends. Though we have all gone separate ways, we keep in touch. Life was a moving party for us back then, and we can still smile and laugh when we recall it. (Most of it.)
24. Lately my wife and I are reading a lot of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. He’s not a great stylist, but the characters and dialogue are a kick.
25. I read constantly as a kid, and in my late teens was heavily influenced by Kurt Vonnegut. I read a wide variety while in college and through my 20s, especially Brautigan, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Henry James, Castenada, Tom Robbins, and Dashiell Hammett. I still re-read JD Salinger’s Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, occasionally and think it a near-perfect novella.
26. In my 30s I read all of Anne Tyler’s novels, and much of Barbara Kingsolver, Gore Vidal’s historical novels, Louise Erdrich, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others. I love Langston Hughes’ Simple stories. More recently I’ve read a lot of Richard Ford, Raymond Chandler, and Graham Greene.
27. When I first read Toni Morrision’s Beloved, I couldn’t understand how such an exquisite writer was not famous and highly rewarded.
28. Since then she won the Nobel prize, and I felt a personal sort of triumph for her.
29. I can sometimes cure my insomnia by counting backward in various multiples between 13 and 20. Seventeen is good, so I start at, say, 800 and go: 783, 766, 749, 732, etc. It clears my mind.
30. It doesn’t always work.
31. My wife and I were married at the Unitarian-Universalist church in San Francisco, in a small yet very happy ceremony, with two dozen guests. Our German Shepherd / Doberman mix Vinnie attended in a tuxedo designed for dogs. The minister had to be assured Vinnie would behave before agreeing to let him attend.
32. While unforeseen events had us switch our ceremony from the Chapel to the Sanctuary, everything went very well. I even remembered my lines. Vinnie watched the ceremony quite patiently, and stole the show from everyone except the bride.
33. I grew up rooting for the Twins and Vikings, among other teams, but gradually became dis-interested in the NFL because of the constant life-shortening injuries, and rarely watch a game any more.
34. I still look in the sports page to see how the Vikings are doing.
35. I’m curious to see if they will finally win their final game of the season. As they have made the playoffs 378 times in their almost 50 years of existence yet never won a Super Bowl, ending the season on a losing note has become a grand tradition for Vikings fans.
36. I once sketched out a short story where many of the authors I liked played football. If memory serves, Ernest Hemingway was the quarterback, I had Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Herman Melville, and Charles Bukowski as linemen, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a flashy running back, and Richard Brautigan was an amazing if erratic wide receiver. Mark Twain was the head coach and was given to waxing philosophical about whatever problems the team faced.
37. The story was long on character and short on plot.
38. I was a distance runner for 30 years, and estimate that I’ve run enough miles to go from SF to New York three times.
39. I now have wonky achilles tendons that have pretty much ended my distance running days, and require pampering every once in a blue moon. The knot in my right tendon in particular has a noisome knack for acting up and begging a little TLC, which I must give it, as I often walk down Market street from SF’s ferry building to the civic center in the morning for my exercise.
40. My father ran marathons until he suffered an achilles tendon problem, too. This happened for both of us around the age of 42.
41. I once visited Speakers’ Corner in London where an arrogant man up on a box with a Union Jack flag was loudly mocking foreigners for the crowd’s amusement. He ridiculed a couple Americans as gender ambivalent because the term cowboy is made of female and male nouns. “Hey Yank, what have you got down your trousers?” he asked a young clean-cut couple who got red-faced and left. He then mocked a Dane for being from a boring country where nothing happened. When I asked him if this applied to Hamlet, he scowled and claimed to have written Hamlet.
42. I asked him if the British are called limeys because they’re a bunch of fruits, and he got quite indignant, threatening to impale me with his flag. He next mocked a jolly little Pakistani fellow who indulged the ridicule, and speculated that the Pakistani looked enough like an American Indian he might be my grandfather.
43. Before I could reply, a couple police officers escorted me away. It turns out you have to be elevated off the ground to freely speak your mind in that peculiar little country.
44. My father is an Anglophile. I’d be more of one, if I had access to their dictionaries and could fix their spellings.
45. I have seen the Minnesota Twins play baseball at nine different ballparks: old Metropolitan Stadium, Anaheim Stadium, the Oakland Coliseum, old Comiskey Park in Chicago, Milwaukee’s County Stadium, the Metrodome, Fenway Park, SF’s Pacific Bell (Your Name Here) Park, and Dodger Stadium.
46. The Twins’ visit to SF was the only time I didn’t root for the Giants here. I was quite pleased with the spectacular show Twins Shannon Stewart, Torii Hunter, and Jacque Jones put on in playing the irregular outfield; the Twins scored in the first innings and led most of every game, winning two of them, and I didn’t mind the Giants pulling out a win in the 9th inning. Too much.
47. I loved old Comiskey Park, and wish I could visit it again. I liked the picnic benches under the bleachers, looking out at the outfielders. I liked the arched windows. It is as close as I have ever come to feeling transported back in time.
48. I don’t care much for Dodger Stadium. I find Dodger dogs bland and overhyped, and found their parking lot to be the worst I’ve ever experienced, having once spent almost two hours, until midnight, eagerly trying to escape the place.
49. I used to get tan when I was young, playing outside as a kid and going to the ballparks, and tanned on trips to Belize in ’89 and Bali in ’91. In December of 2000 I had a small melanoma removed from my brow, and now I apply sunscreen every day, even rainy days in winter.
50. I have thus joined the mole people. Where once I turned to face the sun, now I seek the shady side of the street. Getting a tan is now so alien to me, it seems as if the times I sat in the bleachers sprawled to maximize exposure was a distant and different incarnation.
51. As sports fans treasure garments celebrating their team, among my favorite sweatshirts is a deep blue number noting both the 1987 and 1991 world champion Minnesota Twins.
52. I was raised Unitarian-Universalist, and am grateful for its practice of religious tolerance. It is not true that you can believe anything and be UU; you cannot practice intolerance and be UU. You cannot believe in fascist white supremacy or Jihad or genocide or that a terrorist attack in NY justifies torture in prison camps or slaughter in Baghdad.
53. To be UU means developing and being able to voice your own beliefs in a coherent and consistent fashion and tolerating someone else doing the same.
54. I believe dogs are more social than people. We are perhaps smarter. Yet we can be content alone. Dogs are more content when all the pack members are together. Our two dogs believe quite deeply it is a bad idea to split up the pack and for us humans to go our separate ways when commuting. Despite the paycheck rational, they are convincing me. (You see? I’m really not that mercenary!)
55. One of the best jobs I ever had was as a paperboy for the morning Minneapolis Tribune. I got up early and had my route to myself. Darkness, dawn and early daylight, all four seasons, it was great. If I could make the kind of money I make now by going out the door at 5 AM in January in Minnesota when it’s so cold my breath forms icicles on my facemask, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
56. If you don’t understand this, my dogs do, which also ups their rating on my sociability scale.
Insightful, engaging and technically delightful. Should become a model for “About” pages. But then, it wouldn’t be special any more. Very charming. You breathe a lot of life into your life.
Thanks, David. I keep thinking of things to add but resist the urge to insert them as I got tired of renumbering the first two or four times I worked on it. Besides, I have a way to go to match the concision of yours.
I love this intro. We share a lot of favorite reads. When you’re though with Rex Stout (we have the whole collection and I’m not sure I’ll ever be through with them), visit your used book store and look for A. A. Fair. This is a pen name for Erle Stanley Gardner, but the Fair books (Donald Lam and Bertha Cool) are very different and very funny.
Rabbit pointed me your way. Come and visit sometime at http://mklekacz.wordpress.com.
Enjoyed your site, Marianne, and thanks for the kudos.
Someone else recommended AA Fair / Gardner recently; I’ll have to keep an eye peeled.
[…] you’ll find him added to my blogroll listing. If nothing else, you should go check out what he says about himself. It’s reminiscent of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses.” I really enjoyed it. One […]
I love #36 & #37. I wonder what you’re going to do about the missing lineman for Kurt Vonnegut. Might Gertrude Stein fit the bill? Your 56 facts are great. Will there will ever be a #57?
QuoinMonkey
QuoinMonkey, I’ve enjoyed your site lately, too, thanks for swinging by. (Ain’t the web grand? I mean, seriously, ain’t this fun & a great way to hook up with folks?) I like the notion of Gertrude Stein as a lineperson, especially as a ringer.
This could be what the plot has missed: Stein coming in to the game and making a key block or tackle. Or maybe both. (When first envisioned, it was old-style football, before platoons, when they went both ways.) (Both ways meaning offense and defense, not the other both ways.) (Out of respect for Alice.)
As far as adding items: hmm. If I added any more items to the first part, it would mean your citing #’s 36 and 37 would end up commented on our wedding or the Minnesota Vikings — how would you feel about that?
It is a great way to meet people. Glad you are considering Stein. 8)
About adding a #57 to your list, I see the dilemma. If I had to choose, I’d say the wedding. But maybe for safety sake, you’ll want to stick with only 56 for now.
QM
Quoinmonkey, I’m detecting a good sense of humor, here — one of the best ingredients for writers. Is there any chance of a similar “about’ page on the Red Ravine site?
It could even be round robin, and add an element of mystery.
Hmmm. I like that idea of an “About Us” round robin. I’ll have to bring it up with the other red Raviners. It’s really something to consider. Especially mixing it up. Mystery – that’s a little of what we wanted to get across over there. I’ll keep you posted!
QM
[…] my About section, I was born at Fort Dix Army Hosptial, and we lived in Trenton for a little over the first […]
[…] and get me into these waters, I will start with one of those lists: 50 things about me. Thanks to Ombudsben for giving such a stellar […]
Just dropping in to discover Red Tom Flint’s other identity, aarr!
I’ll be back. 🙂
Aye, and ’twas good to have you swing over and drop by, Azahar, yer welcome anytime, now empty the doubloons out of your pockets, give me back the jewels you stuffed into your belt, and you can take these bottles of 151 proof rum with ye, to shew there be no hard feelin’s. Now be off with ye!
— “Red Tom“
[…] Since then, he has met with similar rebuffs involving Vienna sausages, French fries, and Chinese fortune cookies. He found some consolation in a Belgian white ale. You can read more about him by clicking here. […]
🙂
[…] Since then, he has met with similar rebuffs involving Vienna sausages, French fries, and Chinese fortune cookies. He found some consolation in a Belgian white ale. You can read more about him by clicking here. […]
I haven’t seen you post for a while, so I thought I would check your “about” list and look for clues as to your whereabouts. My guess best is that you have taken a pile of books and a writing project or two, slathered yourself in sunscreen and are hunkered down at Pac Bell Park. Either that or you and your pack have run off to some Alaskan island.
Hope you are well.
Good to hear form you, LB.
You’re right — a big project has expropriated a large part of my brain, but I do intend to check in again, soon.
Cheers!
I have a google alert set up that lists stuff posted about Morgantown, WV. I happened to live there for a few years, but have since returned home to Brisbane, Australia. There was a link to your Fallingwater posting, so that’s how I made it here. Enjoyed reading about you — will sign up to your RSS feed for future enjoyment.
Cheers!
Morgantown and Brisbane! My guess is that there is no direct flight.
Could you tell me much about Morgantown? My sense was that there was money, once, but it has hit upon hard times. Is the University the primary source of income? Or is there something else? We were surprised to see the light rail they have running to downtown.
Cheers back atcha, RV!
Sorry for the delay in responding, but here goes:
Morgantown’s main “industry” is certainly the University, which attracts a lot of out of state students as well as local WV kids. NJ kids seem to like to go there for some reason — maybe the tuition is less there as an out of state student compared to being an in-state NJ student?
Morgantown also has pretty decent health facilities, all of which seem to to be connected to the Uni. Not surprising given WVU has a teaching hospital.
There are also large outposts for some Federal Agencies, including the FBI, NIOSH, and the EPA. The relative proximity to the DC area is probably responsible for that.
There is also a pharmaceutical company called Mylan based in Morgantown and the owner is fairly influential. He donated a pile of $ to the University and got his name on the football stadium as a result (and who knows what else).
The light rail was put in to get students around the 3 campuses. I don’t know what you thought of the traffic, but on a typical day in M’town, it can drive you to insanity trying to get anywhere in a decent time. In fact, I reckon I can get around Brisbane (with a population ~ 1.5million) faster than I could Morgantown. The place was just never designed for a state University and all the accompanying vehicles.
The PRT (Personal Rapid Transport) light rail system was the answer to the issues, though some might not be so kind to it. It does break down sometime, just it does run like clockwork, on time.
Cheers and Happy New Year to you. It’s a BIG one for you guys with a new President etc.
Kim
http://admissions.wvu.edu/undergraduate/discover/prt.asp
This is the best “about” page I’ve ever read. Really, it is.
I think we are on the same page about lots of things which pleases me for some reason. Maybe it’s because of your Minnesota roots.
#52 & #53 mirror my own beliefs. I wish we had a UU congregation here.
I’m going to give #29 a try…tonight!
Thanks, Cheryl. You’re too kind.
Hi, nice to meet you !
I, also, really enjoyed this. There’s a strange sort of tenderness to it.*
Thanks very much.
*does that sound weird? It wasn’t meant to.
Thanks for the notes. No, dervish, it didn’t sound weird. I have to admit, I’m a little chagrined to see how out-dated parts of this are. Time for an update? Perhaps a 2nd page.