About Me
Michael Hooper is a journalist, husband and father of two children. He works in web development at a daily newspaper and enjoys poetry, music, art, golf, travel, good business and appreciates relationships with his family, friends and community. His grandfather, Thomas Reid Hooper, had a passion for history, kept a diary for 62 years and inspired and encouraged Michael to keep a diary. Michael has documented more than 25 years of experiences in his diaries, including his time living and working in Yellowstone Park in the early 1980s, traveling around Europe and working for a hotel in Athens, Greece, in 1990. He completed an associate's degree in architectural drafting in 1983 at Central Community College in Hastings, Neb., and a bachelor's in journalism in 1987 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He loves authors like Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway and Franz Kafka and Henry David Thoreau, Willa Cather, Dr. Karl Menninger, Al "Bud" Pagel, Roger Welsch, Ted Kooser, Arlen Lazaroff, Terry Krepel, Jonathan Eudy, George Paris, Jeanne Bourne, Christopher Burbach, Jim McLean, Steve Balderson, Tom Averill, Douglass Wallace and Kevin Young. Michael Hooper and Terry Krepel, editor of conwebwatch.com, founded the Prairie Poet Conspiracy in 1991 in Nebraska with the zany Cristine Romano. They conducted readings on the Platte River from sunset to midnight. Michael recently completed the rough draft of a book, "The Prairie Underground: The Arlen Lazaroff Story." Arlen was an amazing artist, gay, leftist, radical beatnik poet who wrote 20 books, made more than 100 paintings and collaborated with numerous other artists and musicians, but died young at age 46 on Thanksgiving Day in 2005. In the 1990s, Arlen and Michael wrote a book together called "Shattered on the Plains" which includes poems and short stories about the destitute in Kansas and Nebraska. The eclectic Dereck Higgins produced music with Arlen in the 1980s. Michael is a HUGE fan of Lincoln, Neb., band For Against. Michael went with For Against band members to Europe for shows March 16-17, 2007, at "PLANET MUSIC CLUB,, Athens, Greece and wrote a blog about their experience at http://blogs.cjonline.com/authors/41-Michael-Hooper. He went to Italy with the band in March. Michael is a longtime fan of Warren Buffett who exemplifies the best in business. "I consider myself an anomoly because I am equally passionate about business, literature, music, family," Michael says. "I consider each piece that I write a lesson for doing something bigger and better tomorrow." Michael believes President Bush manipulated the American public into going to war in Iraq and Afganistan. Bush should have kept U.S. troops home. US soldiers aren't wanted there; let the Iraqi people solve their problems and run their country and bring our troops home. Bush should not let any more innnocent people die. More than 4,000 US soldiers and 70,000 people in Iraq have died. We should seek peace, not war. A thousand hours of negotiation is better than a life lost to war. Arlen used to say, "Why can't we all just get along with one another?" Our greatest mission should be about building solidarity among all peoples of the world, not starting wars. Michael subscribes to the philosophy that you should go where you've never been before with people you don't know. This can be a bit risky, but it is a philosophy that has introduced him to some FANTASTIC people and some AMAZING places on Earth. After saving $5,000, Michael quit his job in 1990 and moved to Europe. When he was hanging out at a port near Athens, Greece, he met three others who were going to the islands. The four travelers hung out together: Joan, Sandy and Thomas and Michael were on a boat as the sun was going down and seagulls were chasing them. They were singing Beatles songs and drinking wine. He asked this beautiful stranger, Sandy Cox, to write in his diary. She wrote, "More than contentment, more than the white gulls spanning the navy sea; the sky ablaze from the crimson sun... head spinning with excitement, skin burning with every nuance of colour, intoxicated by the hot wind; songs and new friends, lured by the broken barren cliffs of the Greek isles, of hoping, but not knowing, caught in a dance that entwines human lives."
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