About Me
In the words-and in the spirit- of that famous thinker/philosopher (ME!)…
“He who tooteth not his own horn shall not have it tooted”….
For my first professional 30-odd years, I was a finance/banking/marketing/financial management generalist, despite my freshman English professor’s insistence that I should be majoring in English and Journalism, after reading my first assignment submissions in the Creative Writing portion of the class. He kept and read my “stuff” to all his classes as examples of what, why and how to write. I became a father for the first time shortly after, and abandoned further formal education of necessity to provide for a growing family. I delved sporadically in writing during that necessary hiatus. In the late 80’s, I met Bern Keating (Google THAT name for a real writer’s curriculum vitae!). He read some of my writing, was impressed, and suggested I pursue free-lancing professionally. Bern became my teacher and mentor, but helped only with mechanics, leaving content to my creativity. Musta worked. Over the next 15 years, I sold and had published over 1500 pieces, both writing and photography, became the Outdoor Editor of the Northeast MS Daily Journal (doing a 900-1100 word piece weekly and additional reporting assignments). I won the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association’s “Excellence in Craft” award; my submitted article judged the best out of over 27,000 entries from 16,000 SEOPA members. I have written for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Mississippi Outdoors, Mississippi Magazine, Woman’s Day, Game & Fish Publications, Deer & Deer Hunting, North America Hunter, Guns & Ammo, Gulf Coast Outdoors, Turkey Call, Turkey Hunter….memory fails me, but there are many more.
I know a whole lot about a few things, and a bit about many more. I’ll be posting on varied subjects: Hunting and Guns, Fishing, Gardening/Landscaping, Cooking and Nutrition, maybe some Day-to-Day Living and Holism. My IQ has been variously measured from the 180’s to the 200 range, I’ve aced the MENSA test, scored in the top 2% on the US Army Battery Tests (which automatically qualified me for an appointment to West Point-which I turned down).
I try to live by some simple caveats: “First, do no harm”…..the Golden Rule….the Beatitudes…The Sermon on the Mount. I am not overtly religious, but devoutly spiritual. I find comfort and inspiration in the writings of Yeshua bar Yusef (the Christ), Lao Tse, Gautama Buddha. I find the avowed literary masters (Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Robert C. Ruark, John Steinbeck, W. Somerset Maugham-to name a few-) were and are true masters of the craft (not art) of Writing.
