About Me

I dream big. By inclination, by necessity, and by good fortune, I’ve chosen ambitious subjects that wiser people probably would not have tried to take on: an international news service; Marx and America; Creativity and Invention, Globalism and Multiculturalism; Leonardo da Vinci; Death; Migration and Genealogy; Coming of Age; the Silk Roads; Lying; Love. My ‘specialty’ is connecting things, making links, looking in the gaps. I’ve become a happy dilettante.

I’ve done this as an academic, a journalist, an actor, a writer of fiction, and as a human being. I understand the value of specializing and mastering something, but I care more about the big picture. Asked by others what my specific “field” is, I usually answer, “Creativity and Invention” – which allows me to find almost everyone else’s work, hobby, career, or way of life of interest to me. And for me, it’s always been for me the process, the exploration, rather than achieving that is most fulfilling – it’s like loving your family and friends and living life fully . . . there’s no end product, other than itself.

I could do this, because I have been fairly privileged – most, but not all of the time, there was sufficient material comfort, but it's been the love and the experiences I’ve had that make me feel richer than any billionaire. I feel compassion for those who are continuously struggling to get by and disgust for the stinking rich who are so “poor of spirit” that they keep wanting more.

I grew up in New Haven CT, lived seven years in Europe, forty in Northern California, and have strong ties to family and friends in Germany, Greece, France, and Mexico. I’ve traveled considerably, almost always choosing modest but lengthier stays to shorter, more luxurious ones. 

Holding degrees from Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Yale, and the University of Cologne, I ended up teaching college for 40 years, in seven different departments. I also worked as a journalist, business editor, translator and interpreter, bar tender, tomato picker, bus driver, delivery person, house painter, ice-cream scooper, actor, camp counselor, psychology lab worker, college advisor, secretary, and business manager. I operated one of the last manual elevators in the US, usually landing inches above or below the floor I was aiming for. 

The diverse academic and work experiences have expanded me, but so too have my travels and time in nature. Far more important, though, has been my involvement with family and friends, deep love, but also openness to my neighbors and even to brief and casual acquaintances, who have taught me so much about the world. I could not have written about creativity nor embarked on my novel trilogy without such life experience. And I certainly would not have had so much love and so much joy otherwise.

If you’ve ever read Nikos Katzansaki’s Zorba the Greek (or seen the movie), you know the dialectic between the cerebral, introvertive “boss” and the exuberant, sensuous, dancing Zorba. I always related to both, though more to Zorba. My wife refused to name our son after him, though, and my son is very grateful for that. Still . . . . 

Blessed (or cursed) with great curiosity and imagination, I’ve loved learning and feel I keep learn something new every day. Personality tests I’ve taken indicated that I am equally “thinking” and “feeling” -- though, to be honest, one side might prevail at any given time. I’m an extrovert who has learned to value time alone. I ‘think globally and act locally.’ I’m a Jew who went to a Christian Divinity School; an American who lived abroad for years; a hetero male who lived for months with ten lesbians in an “all-women’s collective;” a scholar who appreciates physical and mechanical labor; someone who deeply loves his family but is almost always glad to meet new people; a person who has maybe 10-15 years left to live, still hopes to make the world better, and wants to keep dancing till the end.

As Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald put it, almost a century ago, It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing!