I am married with four children, ages 27, 25, 20, and 18. I have been happily married to my sweet wife since the day before Mt. St. Helens blew its stack.
I am a geologist by profession. I received my undergraduate degree in geology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and my Master's Degree at the University of Texas at Austin.
My wife is multilingual, speaking (in addition to English) Italian, French, German, and Arabic. She is also an artist who loves to paint settings from her travels in Italy and her life in Texas.
My wife and I lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in the eastern province with my first two children. My first child, born in Austin, Texas, was three months old when we moved there. My second child was born there. While there, I got some insight into what it's like to be in a small minority. I got to know some of the Saudis pretty closely, as well as others from different Arab nationalities. Arabic opinion of the west runs a wide spectrum of thought. One of the perks of working and living there was that my wife and I got to travel all over the world. Pretty cool! We left in 1986 and haven't returned.
I worked for the Geological Survey of Alabama for 10 years. I then moved on to work for a small (3 person) firm for nearly 3 years. Problems arose and I left there and currently work for a medium sized firm (110 employees) in Birmingham, AL.
Before I got married, before I had kids, before I became a geologist, I was a hippie. I spent a lot of time on the road with my thumb out. I went to Woodstock in 1969. I went out to Berkeley (right after the People's Park riot) and San Francisco that year with my brother, a math PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. I stayed off and on in Haight Ashbury and later hung out in Carmel, CA. I was busted twice at the 1970 anti Vietnam MayDay demonstrations in Washington D.C. I picked fruits in the Great Valley and in Yakima, Washington. I hung out in Philly in '72, picked apples in Lewiston, Maine in the fall of '72, and hitched all over New England. I lived in High Bridge Park in Spokane, Washington in 1973 during Expo with all the other hippies. I hopped freights in the northwest and midwest. I spent some time in Jemez Springs in New Mexico. I lived one summer at the hot springs by Coogar Dam Reservoir near Eugene, OR. I picked fruit with migrant workers in the Great Valley of California, hung out along the Navarro and Russian Rivers in Mendocino County, California. I lived in Portland, Oregon in '75. I got around.
Now my oldest daughter is following in my footsteps, although she is not a hitchhiker. She has been living in Arcata and Trinidad, CA. She has a great voice and writes poetry from the guts. She has tree sat in a Douglas Fir (living in a "Dream Catcher") in an attempt to protect defenseless old growth forests, and been an advocate for the homeless in Arcata. She is about as non-materialistic as a person can get. She has given away to those she considers more needy just about everything she owns. Although she is not a Christian, she embodies the Christian ideal of caring for the poor more than just about anyone I know. I think she would give away her last possession to someone if she thought they needed it more that she.
My next daughter received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree Cum Laude at the University of Montevallo. She is so sweet and lovable. She lived in Austin, TX, one of the greatest cities in the world, returned briefly to Birmingham, and has now moved to Denver to work with Americorps. (I loved Austin when I went to U. Texas in grad school.) Her first assignment was in Iowa, but since then, she has been rebuilding houses in the New Orleans area, doing the back-breaking work of rebuilding people's lives. She gets almost no pay and no recognition for the great work she does. But she does it because she is such a genuinely good person.
My youngest daughter is a sophomore at the University of Alabama. She has decided she wants be a teacher. She has always been a great self-motivator and a hard worker. I think she will make a great teacher. America needs good teachers. She is very much in love with her boyfriend, who goes to Auburn University studying wireless engineering.
My son, who is my youngest, is now a senior in high school. He loves computer games, especially World of Warcraft. The kid can spend hours and hours glued to the computer. He has a network of friends also into World of Warcraft. They communicate through the ethernet. He has a good heart and cares deeply for people and animals.
And, in case anyone out there didn't get it, my headline is facetious and, sadly, ironic. It is from an issue from the humor website the Onion."
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