About

Bio

I was fourth of seven little shiites from a Catholic, Irish brood; two older and one younger brother, one older and one younger sister. So, I’m pathetically middle, middle and in need of an audience, which conveniently manifests itself as reason for writing.

The family I grew up in, and the many families that fermented in the deep weeds of our busy neighborhood, are no more. We were that post-war 1950’s phenomenon, a last gasp of continuity before change characterized what one could expect of life. We were the norm that became the anomaly that went extinct. Perhaps too often today, the word children seems synonymous with the right not have any.

Our family was far from ideal, our neighborhood, our values, and ways of life were flawed. Still, the deeper we go into a progressive belief in self as an ideological imperative, the better our flawed old world looks. Self then was something to get over not express. It was a tough world for individual expression, and yet today it is death by individual expression without limit. I’m nostalgic for when testing known limits was subversive as hell; that is, excitement tinged with dread that hell might also become a destination. The modern ubiquity of all things permissible has a rather ironic flatness to it.

I worked my whole career in the university sector, and was privileged to have founded and acted as director of the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities. Paul was a close friend who inexplicably became a quadriplegic at age 19, just when he should have been exercising that charm with women for which he was famous. Still, a phoenix-like version of Paul rose from the ashes of the inexplicable and he remade himself, including resurrecting his charm which got him the girl and a life, until he died far too young.

Paul and many, many other students taught me the most value lesson in life—it isn’t what happens to you, its precisely how you interpret and what you do about what happens to you in life, that matters. Easy concept, toughest gig in the world to pull off. That lesson admired and internalized, but decidedly not pulled off in my life, is why I wrote Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.

University of Lost Causes is farcical allegory for said lesson not learned, for thinking what happens to any of us is determined by our ego, desires and appetite. In a world swirling with confusion and complexity, maybe the best we can do is choose a dose of humility and extend our hand to another.

Coming from a large family of mainly boys, I was glad and am blessed to have three daughters, same for composition of grandkids. I am married to the artist formerly known as Cara (you’d have to be a certain age to get this obscure Prince reference) who has become quite a good landscape painter. We met decades ago at her boyfriend’s birthday party (true story) which is why I no longer celebrate my birthday. I don’t want her to get ideas. The males in my immediate family are two Portuguese Water Dogs who neither tolerate water nor speak Portuguese. So, we run together each day, neither speaking during nor planning to swim afterwards.

After finishing my formal career at the university, I qualified as a Social Work Psychotherapist (profile: psychologytoday.com). I have also ratcheted up my middle, middle child hunt for an audience with my pen. I write opinion pieces, teach writing workshops, and have a new novel in the works. When my mom died in 2000 (article called ‘Enie’ in Reading Excepts), I wrote a piece contrasting her nursing home experience with those who live to be 100. I cited an article about centenarians having four pillars of resilience, the most remarkable pillar being that, “they aren’t done yet.”

We need work, we need occupation, and we need to share our heavily flawed, unvarnished selves with others. This is what I know, maybe all I know, and it is who I am. The concept of a shared not-done-yet life also offers plausible deniability and relief for not being everything our modern ego tells us we deserve to be. Happiness seems less a plan to enact than what can happen when least expected.